My boat is a 2014 and has the white non metal thru hulls with the brass /bronze ball valves.My plan is to go with Tru Design with collars.

If I go this route do I need to change the white thru hulls as well?

Can any one tell me the material of the white through hulls.Are they all one size?

Would be keen to hear from any of you who have done this conversion before.

Best regards to all

Duncan

So in your case.  You'll need to know the existing thread size and have sufficient length on the thru hull.  And the internal nut would have to fit under the collar too.  

I wonder why Hanse did now use also the valves of tru design. I am going to change the valves of my 2016 385.

Axel

Same with me,  2017. But how do we know that the white seacocks are trudesign? I didn't see any label anywhere. 

Axel wrote:

"The white thru hulls are Tru Design!

I wonder why Hanse did now use also the valves of tru design. I am going to change the valves of my 2016 385."

It is rather obvious, the Trudesign valves cost 5 times as much as the cheap kitchen-brass valves which Hanse continue to put in our boats.

Look at:

https://myhanse.com/a-sinking-ship_topic13569.html" rel="nofollow - https://myhanse.com/a-sinking-ship_topic13569.html

-and you can see how your ball-valves look like after 8-10 years.

You will find people equally vocal on both bronze and TruDesign.    In my opinion, there are three issues you want to solve:

1.   The degradation of the plastic thru-hull.   The manual and Hanse indicate you need to replace them every 5 years.   To me this is not as serious as the next issue.

2.   The strength issue when putting a lot of torque on the ball valve.   CE says that it needs to take 600lbs of torque before breaking the combination of thru-hull and ball valve.    Hanse says the combination is CE certified, therefore it is supposed to be OK.   To me, however,   I've put a lot less than 600lbs of force and felt like I was about to snap it in cold, fall, weather and I'd rather not take the chance.   To me,  this is because there is no wide base to spread the load.   Its a narrow connection.

3.  The raw water strainer for the AC unit (at least on my boat) screws directly on top of the ball valve and this is one you open and close all the time.   Its a pain to get to and, again,  I worry about it snapping at the wrong time.

If you still have the original ball valve/thru-hull combination,  I strongly suggest that you carry wooden plugs in case something happens and you need to deal with the hole.    The problem is NOT Tru-Design, its the connection of the two pieces.

In my case I replaced them all with traditional groco ball valves and moved/redesigned the AC thru-hull. See pictures.

The TruDesign works well,  and does not have the bonding problem.  Its a stronger set-up than the factory implementation  because it has the wide base/collar set-up.    Either can work just as well in my opinion.

Rick

I'm doing the same project in a few weeks on my 2016 505, all the underwater seacocks and the thru-hulls will be replaced with Groco. 

I think you'll find that when you attempt to unscrew the seacock you may well unseat the thru hull, so be prepared to replace them as well. Others on the forum have reported success preserving the true design thru hulls, so your results may vary. Let us know how you make out. 

Agree with Rick on the AC sea cock - it is a flimsy design. On my boat it was not bonded, and the sea cock and manifold was suspect after just a few seasons, the sea cock replaced by a Groco unit, the manifold rebuilt, and everything properly bonded. 

Harvey

This season i had a rather significant leak on the rear right toilet seacock and realized that this one had not been replaced by a truedesign ....

I'm very interested about the air conditionning manifold change, since I did not bring any upgrade on this particular one and am a bit concerned about his condition.

Any idea?

 Thanks!

Rick I am supposing that the hulls trainer is for the A/C water inlet .If so is there any reason you would not have one for the main engine inlet and maybe the Genset inlet.

Cheers

Duncan

There already is a strainer for the engine and the genset.  They are just located in the engine compartment next to the generator.   In my area, we get eel grass and I clean them out regularly.  I

I added a new strainer above what Hanse did for my watermaker intake.   That one was originally the salt water intake for the aft head, but I converted the heads to fresh water and repurposed it.

he other thing I did was add a scoop strainer on the hull for the big intakes (AC and engine).   This reduces the problem dramatically.  The AC strainer used to *ALWAYS* collect things quickly, but with the strainer on its much better.

This is the before picture.    I had already replaced the AC manifold because the cheap brass popped a leak right in the middle of the fitting (not at a joint).    I wasn't going to wait for the cheap brass ball valves to pop as well.

The larger hose with pink fluid in it is a pump for my watermaker that had just been winterized.  This was before I did the project at the end of the season.

This is the replacement design with the new seacocks.  The thru-hull for the AC strainer is separate from the strainer itself (better access).

FWIW

That's when I came upon a posting in the 505 forum that appears to be further validated by some here that the thru-hull skin fittings are already TruDesign(!).  If correct, this alleviates my concern about the plastic fittings and makes me wonder if I bother with changing the thru-hull portion if that's already installed with 5200.

For a 2017 588 a few questions to those in the know:

The issue is not the plastic.     The issue is the design of the combination.   Hanse simply puts a ball valve on top of the plastic thru hull.    Whether the plastic thru hull is TruDesign or not doesn't matter.

A proper seacock should have a wide base and a design (preferably one piece) that can take the force that comes with the problem.  If not one piece, then some have collars that perform the same physical function.    The factory Hanse fittings are cheap brass fittings screwed onto plastic thru hulls.  Not only is the metal suspect, its not strong. 

CE certification requires it take a certain amount of torque before the combination snaps.  Hanse says their combination meets that requirement.   I have my doubts given what I have seen. With a wide base and a TruDesign or wide flange GROCO seacock,  you have no worries about snapping anything off the thru-hull.   

Bottom line:  Its not about plastic vs bronze.   Its about cobbling together something that technically works but won't hold up when you need it.

So with the good news that the thru-hulls are already TruDesign and may not need replacing.  How about my remaining questions?

Altogether a good experience.If you have A/C please look very closely at your distribution header.Mine was in very poor condition.

Duncan.

This was an estimate I got a few years back before I did the thru-hulls.    I did not have it done by Hinkley, but this had the sizes and cost.   There are a lot of holes in the bottom of our boats... :-)

Considering this included labor, not a bad number.  

When we replaced our valves after almost 10 years use some were like new on the inside whilst others that looked OK on the outside but were badly corroded on the inside. The engine sea water intake and the sullage tank drain valves were in the worst condition. One of the sullage tank valves was leaking because the "ball" part of the valve was scored. The nipples in each case were corroded and very thin. The air cond sea water inlet valve was also in poor condition. Our engine sea water inlet valve is 1 1/4" with a 90 degree 38mm nipple. The sullage tanks drain valves are 1 1/4" with 38 mm nipple with a 90 degrees nipple. The air cond sea water thru hull is 1". I think it is better to replace all the valves rather than leave a few which could fail in a few years time. 

I did, unfortunately, discover that I'm not quite as lucky as I was hoping.  While the existing thru-hulls are TruDesign, they are very likely to be BSP ... the standard elsewhere on the boat and in many parts of the world.  So, those of you elsewhere can have better luck by getting BSP TruDesign valves to put on your BSP TruDesign thru-hulls.  Unfortunately, the US distributor is NPS TruDesign only for the ball valves.  So this thread incompatibility will require me to change the thru-hulls to NPS to match the ball valves available.

At least I discovered it before!

https://defender.com/en_us/groco-ibv-series-bspp-bronze-inline-ball-valve" rel="nofollow - https://defender.com/en_us/groco-ibv-series-bspp-bronze-inline-ball-valve

Instead, I have decided that the simpler thing to do was import BSP valves, a few BSP thru-hull fittings in case we wreck some getting the old bronze ball valves off, and BSP thread-to-barb adapters from a country where that's the standard.  I randomly selected the UK and found that I could live with the ex-VAT pricing given how much I'll save by not swapping out 20 perfectly fine thru-hulls.

I'll circle back in a month or so with either lessons learned or a successful report.  Thank you to those who provided feedback on this thread topic -- it prevented a major derailing of the project.