Hour meter on bilge pumps

What do you mean exactly? like an odometer to know when to change them? or to know how much they have run since you last were on board?

If the former, i'd question the usefulness... I wonder until what point one can establish the lifetime of a bilge pump, and also how consistent that may be?? I'd say its so volatile that knowing the numebr of hours a particular pump has been on would be quite useless in determining when to replace it...

If you mean to know how much it has run, I think this is quite common?? Our boat has a custom plc system that has a tracking of manual and automatic bilge pump activations for all areas... it even alarms if there is a certain number of activations in a certain amount of time, etc... but i'm pretty sure you dont need a PLC-based ship management to have something basic?

iirc there are bilge pump panels that have counters?
Yep: http://www.celectron.co.uk/bw8kit.html

I see... me neither... a search on google for "bilge counter" or "bilge pump counter" yields many results... i think I cant post links to other forums here, so I wont, but there may even be more discussions on here about it...

I think in the days of leaking wooden boats, an hour meter on the bilge pump might determine if the boat was leaking more and needed to be hauled, they might have merit. In modern boats, I think if a prudent owner checks his bilges on a regular basis they wouldn't be necessary. Any running leak, such as a leaking stuffing box should be caught on a visual inspection.

Great idea and very easy to implement. This wouldn't be so much for if the bilges are filling up and checking them regularly, but how often, when away, and if / how much they are cycling while away. On a regularly used boat I can't see much of the value, but for a boat that sits tied up for any length of time, it's a great concept. An hour meter with smaller decimals would be ideal as the pumps run in rather short increments.

On an older wooden boat, I'd almost consider it a must.

Years ago we wired in Hobbs Hour Meters to the bilge pumps of an old lapstrake planked Chris Craft. The owner had noticed his pump running more often. We found that the pumps did not run at the dock, but when running into a chop, the water would build up and the pump was gushing away when they stopped. We finally found that the garboards were loosening up right at the forefoot and repaired the problem.

I have also installed these to see if a fiberglass boat had developed a leak:

Water Witch Products

It was on a Bertram 31 with a custom teak deck that did not allow a lot of inspection. The Counter told us that the boat wasn't leaking at rest, but washing water was finding it's way slowly through the limbers into the bilge. The counters are probably best used to see a trend or change in how often the pumps are running.

Probably a better idea for that is a computer linked alarm so the owner can be notified while away.