water in boat

The last few times I have been on the water I have noticed that my automatic bilge is coming on. When I manually turn the bilge pump on water is also coming out of the boat. I'm pretty sure there are is not a hole in the boat. The bilge will come on automatically every 2 or 3 hours.
My livewells do not hold water very good, I assume the valves are bad or is there a water line or connection inside the boat that is allowing water into the boat? Any thoughts on this problem? How would you check to see if water is leaking on the lines inside without taking batteries and gas tank out?

Put some food dye in your livewell water, then see if the bilge water is the same color. If it is, somewhere in the livewell connections is your problem. If its not colored, you have a leak somewhere else.

Hope this helps,

Grumpy

That's a good idea, thanks

Does the boat sit outside also, with a cover, this time of year when I go out and my carpet gets soaked it will drain for quite a few days. Just a thought

By the way, the somewhere else leak could be in the lines COMING INTO the livewells. To check that, you might try pouring colored water into the livewell intake hole from the outside, if there is not any color coming from the livewell water first..

[QUOTE=EZGO;393128]Does the boat sit outside also, with a cover, this time of year when I go out and my carpet gets soaked it will drain for quite a few days. Just a thought[/QUOTE]

No, my baby stays inside the basement where it's warm and dry.

[QUOTE=Grumpy;393129]By the way, the somewhere else leak could be in the lines COMING INTO the livewells. To check that, you might try pouring colored water into the livewell intake hole from the outside, if there is not any color coming from the livewell water first..[/QUOTE]

The screens that are over the holes for incoming lines are plastic. Do they screw off or snap off. I have a tendacy to break things when i work on them.

what kind of boat is it? and the through the hull fittings are threaded and have a plastic nut on the inside

ZX Skeeter.

When you get that figured out, let me know. I also have a ZX Skeeter and mine does the same thing, only part of the time. I think that I have it isolated it to the livewell drains. Mine is a 96 model and I have the manual drain valves that are located by the console. If I leave them open from my last trip to the lake, I get a lot of water on board. If I remember to shut them, not so much. Let me know if this helps.

Check the O-ring on your drain plug. If they become cracked or buggered up it's amazing how much water they will allow in.

I had the same problem, took my boat to my dealer they looked for possible areas that could leak and came up with zero. I decided to try it myself so I pulled my boat out to the driveway, put in plug, unhooked my battery so pumps wouldn't come on and started filling my hull with water. In a couple of minutes I noticed water running back out of one of my livewell pick up ports. I found a hole on one of the hoses were it clamped to the pick up port that runs through the back of the transom. I cut it off about an inch and reclamped it problem solved. Hope this might help.