# Kayak/Portable Live Well Build and Write Up



## Hannibal (Aug 10, 2007)

Kayak/Portable Live Well Build Walk Through

Well, my project is done ........... except for actually placing it on the kayak and making a couple final measurements and splices. I took SOME pictures and some notes so hopefully if someone is interested, they can use this as a reference. To be honest, it wasn't that hard to do. Nor was it expensive. Some of the electrical specifics were a bit confusing but a few guys here (and elsewhere) were a great help. 

Parts Needed:
1 - Cooler (I used an Igloo with outside measurements of 18"L x 14"W x 12"H). Sizing fit well in my back bin on my OK Prowler Big Game.
1 - 3/4" Diameter Thru-Hull 90-degree Bend
1 - 3/4" Aerator Nozzle Spray head (sometimes can be found with 3/4" 90-deg bend).
1 - 1.5" Diameter x 3" L Thru-Hull fitting
1 - 7"L x 3"W x 5"H "Activity/battery box" - Size will vary depending on battery size.
1 - 12v 8amp rechargeable/sealed battery - 6v can be used. 
1 - Atwood Tsunami 500 gph Bilge Pump
8' - 3/4 flexible clear tubing (should be more than enough length)
1 roll - 12 to 14 gauge wire (red/positive for ID)
1 roll - 12 to 14 gauge wire (black/negative for ID)
1 - In line fuse holder (of matching wire size)
1 - 3 amp fuse
1 - Toggle switch
4 - Female end quick connects (of matching wire size)

Misc. items:
- Assorted heat shrink/wrap for splice covers
- Small screws for attaching box to cooler (must be shorter than cooler wall thickness ............ TRIPLE check)
- Marine grade silicone sealant.

Process:

1) Determine heights of various penetrations. To help the flow and mixing of water, I decided to put my drain on the opposite side of the cooler. Obviously the drain needs to be lower than the aerator nozzle where the water is entering. Consider amount of water (and weight) you want to carry when determining the drain height. Remember: Take L x W x H (in inches) of the planned volume of water. Divide that number by 231 and it will give you gallons of water in that volume. Multiply that value x 8.333 and it will give you the approximate weight of that volume of water. Adjust the drain level accordingly.

Rough sketch (sorry the server my CAD program is on is not available right now):











2) Once marked - start with cutting in the wall penetration for the intake line (aerator). Make measurements of the outside diameter of the fitting you will be cutting in. For example, though using a 3/4" thru-hull 90-degree bend for the intake - its OD was 1" I believe. Cut accordingly. Mark a center point and take your time. Make sure you are clear of any edges/ridges on either the inside wall or outside. Avoid cutting into anything BUT a smooth/flat surface. Typically the inside wall of the cooler is far thinner than the outside, so don't push too hard or you will crack the inside wall rather than drill through it. 









*** Ignore the date/time stamp …………………..

3) Once drilled through, coat the inside edges of the hole (usually foam) with a good bit of silicone sealant. This will help keep any water from getting between the walls. Also place some sealant on the edges of that fitting that will be touching the cooler walls. Push the 90-degree bend through the opening and tighten down (usually by screwing down). I aligned mine at roughly 45-degrees angled down to the bottom center of the cooler. Think ahead to whatever makes most sense for how you will be hanging your pump overboard. You want to limit any bends or kinks in the line.










4) If purchased separately, screw on aerator nozzle spray head to 90-degree bend.










5) Repeat the same process for the 1.5" drain. Find center point for your drain hole. Make sure the invert of the drain (bottom most point of the inside of the fitting) is at least an inch to two inches below the height at which the water is coming into the cooler. REPEAT: Not the invert of the hole you will be cutting ............ the actual height at which the water will begin exiting the cooler ONCE the fitting has been installed). Once you've determined that height, make your cut as you did in Step #3. Be even more careful with this cut as the bigger surface area will put even more stress on the inside wall of the cooler.

6) Once cut through, coat the insides of the hole you cut with sealant as well as the edges of the fitting that will touch the cooler walls. Install fitting and tighten down. Make the extension piece ends out on the outside of the cooler. This way, you can attach a tube that will carry the drainage outside of your kayak. 

7) With all wall penetrations complete, you can now attach the 3/4" tubing to both the 3/4" 90-degree bend and the bilge pump. Do NOT cut the tubing until you've made all final measurements and you've had a chance to place the live well on your kayak.

YOUR BASIC PLUMBING IS DONE …………….. now onto the "fun" electrical portion of the program. 

The process is relatively simple though, admittedly, I was a bit overwhelmed at first. To be "simple" - you are just connecting the negative wire from the bilge to the negative wire on your battery and then repeating the process with the positive wire. However, on the positive wire side of things, you are going to have a few "breaks" in the line.

Let's start with the spacing limitations. If using the same battery and box I did, you will have very little working room inside the activity box due to the sizing of the battery. Where this becomes an issue is: A) mounting a toggle switch and B) rigging the fuse/fuse holder.










Looking down into the battery box (face pulled off), I drilled a hole just big enough to pass my toggle switch through. I had to first make sure where I could put it by placing the battery inside the box. To help with spacing issues and avoid any possible crimping of lines - I placed the toggle switch on the opposite side of the box from the battery terminals. Install your toggle switch and tighten it down. 


















I then installed female quick connects to both ends of the fuse holder - cutting the line to length so I could go directly from the positive power terminal, to the fuse holder wire, directly to the prong on the toggle switch. At this point, I had power up to the toggle switch. From here on out - it's simply point A to point B. 










First, pull off more wire than you know you will need. Sounds a bit dumb but it will save you more splices in the long run when you make final measurements when the live well is placed on your kayak.

Install female quick connects on one end of both the positive/red wire and the negative/black wire. Connect the black wire to the negative terminal on the battery. Connect the positive/red wire to the open prong on the toggle switch. 

At this point, figure out the best exit point for your wires so that they can be attached to the tubing that runs down to your pump. Drill a small hole - just big enough to allow both wires to pass through. Once drilled - fish wires through penetration and pull out slack. 










With a little bit of finesse, you should be able to place the battery back inside the box with little room for it to move around. Make sure you can get the lid on properly and without much issue.










Once you've double checked that the power is off (either by disconnecting the positive wire or by having the toggle switch off) - go ahead a cut away some of the wire sheath off the other ends of the wire. Make sure to leave plenty of exposed wire, as you will be doing a splice connection. Once you've cut away the sheathing - make a quick test splice on both lines. 

With the Atwood, the brown wire coming from the pump is the positive.

Once both lines are spliced together, go ahead and turn the power back on. If everything is done correctly, you should hear a little hum coming from the pump. 

To do a test run, fill up a 5 gallon bucket and submerge the pump. Turn the power on and the water should flow through the tubing and spray/fall into to the cooler. With enough water, the cooler should fill up to the drain level where it will spill out through the drain hole or travel down another piece of tubing (if installed) to a point of your choice. 







Adjust the aerator nozzle as needed to control flow. You can open it all the way up to where it nearly matches the pump flow or you can close it off to where water barely trickles out.


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## Hannibal (Aug 10, 2007)

You now have a live well that will pull water from outside of your kayak and drain out of it. As a perk, you can use this live well as a stand alone "self recirculating" system simply by filling it up once with fresh water and placing the bilge pump back inside the tank. The bilge pump will pull the water out of the cooler and run it back through the aerator - adding oxygen back into the water. Certainly beats a 5 gallon bucket that quickly heats up and loses oxygen saturation.



Once everything is working properly, you can then choose to "mount" your battery box. It's up to you. You can also lay it along side your tank if you so chose. I decided to mount it for a more finished look. Best idea in my head was to use small "drywall anchors". I may have the term wrong but they are the little cone like plastic pieces that you push into a hole. And when you place a screw in them, they expand, thereby locking it in place. 

To do this - first make sure that the anchors are not longer than the cooler walls are thick. When in doubt – don’t do it. If you think it may be close - don't do it. Not worth ruining your cooler. But once you've found the correct size anchors and the appropriate bolts (I avoided pointed screws for obvious reason). Use your battery box as a template and mark out a couple holes. Each corner had a place already predrilled but I chose to add another in the top middle for added support. Once I marked my holes, I simply drilled a hole and pushed the anchors into place - using a little bit of silicone sealant as a precaution. I then lined up my box and screw the box down into the anchors. Certainly not like hammering nail into wood but it feels like it should take a good bit of abuse before loosening up. Normal handling/carrying shouldn't be an issue. 


















*** Ignore 90-Deg bend in upper right hand of corner. We will chalk that up to trial and error ................. lol.

From here on out - it's up to you to make final adjustments to the length of tubing and associated wiring. My plan, once placed on my kayak, is to cut down the tubing and run the wiring from the battery down along the tube in order to meet the bilge pump wiring. This way, there is no significant slack in my wires. I can simply tape them to the tubing to prevent any unwanted snags. I may also cut in some quick connects just outside of the battery box so that I can easily remove the tubing/pump away from the cooler - making storage a breeze. Be sure to use the heat shrink tubing for splices ……….. simple to use and highly effective. 

Another plan is to install a piece of 1.5” tubing to channel the water leaving the drain back out of the kayak. Even as it stands now, the water would either fall outside of the kayak or into the back well area where the scuppers would remove it. I just think it would be a bit nicer. 

And last but not least, I will attach a cord of some sort to the pump and rig it to the kayak so I can easily lower it into the water or yank it out when I decide to get moving.

Hope you found this informative and easy to follow. It was actually a very simple build and something that had me a bit overwhelmed before I decided to “just do it”. Please let me know if I missed anything on the parts list or you want more explanation on a particular step/aspect of the build!


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## seajay (Dec 18, 2005)

Nice work and write-up.


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## Rockstar (Jun 23, 2004)

How many gallons does it hold? I can imagine it'd be quite heavy.


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## Hannibal (Aug 10, 2007)

Rockstar said:


> How many gallons does it hold? I can imagine it'd be quite heavy.



7.5 gallons so I have that figured up at 62 lbs. Definately a good bit of weight. I am seriously considering installing a 2nd drain at a lower elevation to cut down on weight when kayaking. I could then cap that 2nd drain to allow for more water (back to the original drain) when I am using the live well on the beach or on the pier.


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## Hannibal (Aug 10, 2007)

Mod/Admin - I'd like to edit my original post. Have cleaned up some stuff but can't edit the original thread.


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## uncdub13 (Aug 9, 2003)

Nice. Looks like it'll get the job done. I'm sure plenty of other people will appreciate the time you took to share it in detail as well.

I made one pretty similar to that last year, but with a slightly smaller cooler and 360 gph pump. I run it off 8 AA's which will give like 1.5-2 hours of continuous run time, so I only turn it on for like a minute or so every few minutes, depending on how much bait I'm keeping (and the type). I bring a spare battery pack just in case. I might end up putting a timer switch on there eventually, but that method worked pretty damn good and wasnt much trouble, so I dont know. I bought one of those cabelas batteries like you got but returned it. I'm assuming that thing will run it all day long.

One thing you might want to consider is adding a drain plug somewhere near the bottom so you can empty it while still on the water. It's nice to be able to dump that weight quickly when you need to. Just a thought.


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## Hannibal (Aug 10, 2007)

I've thought about that. Maybe just a plug and drain that can be yanked and drained out through the scupper. Was a bit hesitant to add more holes into the cooler (especially when considering putting into a 2nd slightly lower drain to reduce water volume). Figured it might just be as easy to disconnect the 3/4" hose from the thru-hull fitting/aerator head and put the bilge into the cooler. Should pump the water out through the tube and out of the boat.


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## uncdub13 (Aug 9, 2003)

Yeah mine drains directly through the scupper. I made a tube insert like you see on many boat livewells to regulate water level. Pull that tube out and it drains all the water. You could make tubes of shorter lengths if you wanted less water volume. The only problem I encountered with that method is that the allignment of my scupper hole puts that tube a little too close to the squared corner of the cooler and certain baits like large menhaden will tend to get themselves stuck. Luckily it's usually just that one dumb bait who sacrifices himself for the rest and hogs up the whole corner, so no big deal...ha.


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## reelax84 (Jun 27, 2007)

Have u tried this out yet on the water? I made one similar last year with the same pump and a 5 gallon bucket. The only thing i didnt like about it was the added weight and pump hanging down in the water really slows u down. Another thing to think about is when using it in shallow water the pump will suck in lots of sand and junk that will clog ur pump fast. Also if u plan to do any type of serious surf launches with it u will want to be able to disassemble it easily on the water and strap it down good, so when u spill it aint all gone. A timer swith is a good idea too because u will need to recirculate water very frequently with a few large baits. Its easy to forget and end up with a tank full of fresh cut chum! So how much did ya spend on that setup?


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## Hannibal (Aug 10, 2007)

reelax84 said:


> Have u tried this out yet on the water? I made one similar last year with the same pump and a 5 gallon bucket. The only thing i didnt like about it was the added weight and pump hanging down in the water really slows u down. Another thing to think about is when using it in shallow water the pump will suck in lots of sand and junk that will clog ur pump fast. Also if u plan to do any type of serious surf launches with it u will want to be able to disassemble it easily on the water and strap it down good, so when u spill it aint all gone. A timer swith is a good idea too because u will need to recirculate water very frequently with a few large baits. Its easy to forget and end up with a tank full of fresh cut chum! So how much did ya spend on that setup?


Haven't tried it out yet - just finished it up last night. Your questions/concerns were considered. The added weight is a problem I can't solve. I will just have to balance weight vs impact. I will be able to control water height somewhat with the additional of another drain installed at a lower height. On shallow travel, the pump will either be pulled in to the kayak, or tied off so it stays high in the water column. The pump itself does have a screen on it for some of the bigger debris. 

Doubt it I will take this out through the surf. Most of the surf launches I do are strictly to drop off shark bait so I won't have much need. In the event I decide otherwise, it can easily be strapped down in the real storage area. Also, when drained, it weighs very little. I could run it out empty, drop the pump, and fill er up in a matter of minutes. 

Thought about a timer switch but I figured with the battery I am using, it would provide enough juice to cover really any outing I would be on (I got to do the math though). Aside from that, I can leave it on constantly and it would simply pull water in and spill it out of the drain - thereby recirculating the water constantly. But in reality, I can easily switch in on and off with the toggle switch very easily and would leave it on if lucky enough to have THAT much bait in the tank. The timer may be a future add on though when I get a bit bored and want to tinker with it. Certainly a good idea for someone who wants to spend the extra $30 though.

As for price - about $75.


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## RW_20 (Oct 16, 2007)

Hannibal, Very nice and professional. Looks great and I,m sure it will work great as well. I like the use of the self contained battery box. One thing you may want to consider is installing a separate two wire plug exiting from the battery box so you can connect a battery tender (charger) without having to gain entry into the box every time you need to charge it. Plus leaving it on the tender when storing will greatly extend the battery life. The additional plug will also give you an auxiliary power connection if you need it. Most tenders come with the connector for easy connection. Do yourself a favor and put some dielectric grease on the connections at your battery to inhibit corrosion. Salt air really plays havoc on electrical connections.
As for bait clogging the drain, you could add a conical screen, or a short piece of tube with holes drilled in the side so nothing could block the entire drain hole. 

Again very nice job, good pics and info.


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## uncdub13 (Aug 9, 2003)

reelax84 said:


> Have u tried this out yet on the water? I made one similar last year with the same pump and a 5 gallon bucket. The only thing i didnt like about it was the added weight and pump hanging down in the water really slows u down.


I was a little concerned about that before I made mine, but I made it so the pump just barely hangs in the water far enough to stay primed and really dont feel like it adds much drag. I dont know, maybe that's because I was used to dragging around a f'n flow-troll bucket instead.


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## news_watch (Jun 1, 2005)

another approach:http://www.martialartsacademy.org/quietman's bait tank.htm

drop a frozen waterbottle in it to compensate for no insulation.

I have not personally tried this one yet.

nw


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## Soaked (Jul 21, 2006)

uncdub13 said:


> I was a little concerned about that before I made mine, but I made it so the pump just barely hangs in the water far enough to stay primed and really dont feel like it adds much drag. I dont know, maybe that's because I was used to dragging around a f'n flow-troll bucket instead.


Does the pump really have to be submerged? Why can't you mount it to the side of the cooler and run an intake tube down into the water?


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## Hannibal (Aug 10, 2007)

While I assume you can find an exception to the rule, a bilge pump is meant to push water. More or less push it from the pump to another destination ............. so it can drain boat hulls, etc, etc. It's not meant to pull water to it from a secondary hose submerged in the water.


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