How can you get that hose onto your bilge pump fitting, when it just doesn’t want to squeeze on? If you’ve been maintaining your boat, chances are at some point you have come across the problem when you are fitting a new bilge pump or seacocks or some other marine pipe and the hose you have chosen just doesn’t want to fit over the fitting.
Sometimes no amount of pushing and levering will get the pipe or hose onto the fitting, unless you know the trick!
At this point you might be thinking let’s just get the next size hose up, but there are two reasons why often that doesn’t work: one is that the next sized hose up is actually too loose and in this case when you try and squeeze the hose down onto the pipe fitting with Jubilee clips or other hose clips the hose does not make a good seal. The other reason why it might not be an option to get the next size up of hose is that the hose you already have is a perfect match to the fitting at the other end (for example the skin-fitting that passes through the hull of the boat).
Sometimes it seems more often than not, you have to battle to get a tight hose onto a fitting. In this guide we show you how to do this the easy way.
What you will need:
• Your hose (cut to length)
• Your bilge pump or fitting
• Jubilee clips or other pipe clips
• Washing up liquid
• A dry cloth
• A freshly boiled kettle of water
When you are setting up and getting everything ready make sure you put the Jubilee clips (or other chosen pipe clips) onto the hose in advance if the other end of the hose is already attached. It is very annoying if you forget this, as you then either have to pull the hose off again or completely unwind the Jubilee clips to get them on (which takes ages!)
When you are sure you have everything ready the next step is to smear some washing-up liquid onto the outside of the fitting. I don’t suggest putting any one the hose. You will now have a slippery fitting and probably a slippery hand (which you don’t want) so clean your hand with the cloth at this point.
Next step is to boil the kettle (or pan) of water. Doing the next part will be easy! as long as you get the timing right - these are the steps:
• Have everything to hand
• Put the end of the hose into the boiled water and wait for a minute or two
• Pull the hose out of the water and use a cloth the quickly dry off the outside of the hose
• Push the hose onto the fitting (which still has the washing-up liquid on to make it slippery)
• Push the hose fully on to the fitting as quickly as you can, this works best if you can do it in one go, because as soon as the hose touches the fitting it starts losing heat, and it is the heat which made it pliable
If you followed these steps and ended up with the hose only part-way on and couldn’t get it any further, then the chances are that starting again for a second attempt will work perfectly as you now have had a practice run and know exactly the sequence, timing and how hard you need to push. If the hose is still stubborn then a bit of sideways to-and-fro movement as you push it on should help.
Lastly is to put on the Jubilee clips, ideally you will have room for two clips for security.
If you found this guide useful you might like to check out our other articles and guides either from our youtube channel, or from our website which can be found here …..
boatfittings.co.uk