Water Test and Pics of Wave

So we finally had a good weather day so I decided to head to the lake after work and dunk the boat in just long enough to do a quick test.  I primarily surf goofy so that is all I tested.  It was just my wife, 19 month old son and I.  There wasn't any time to invite a third so that we could surf so this was just a quick outing to do a test.  The water was still very cold anyway since this test was done on April 1st.

I began by filling up the integrated bow sac only.  After about 6 minutes it was still not full so I became very curious why it would be taking so long.  My hoses are clear and I could see pockets of air being sucked through them along with some water.  I eventually realized that the pumps were sucking some air through my drain hoses.  I have a check valve on each of them to prevent this from happening but apparently something was wrong with them.  I called wakemakers where I purchased the check valves from and they didn't have a good solution for me.  They said they use them in this type of installation all the time and never have an issue, especially with this brand of check valves.  So I went back home and  attempted to see if moving the check valves closer to the pump would help seal up the check valve better.  The check valves appeared to not be sealing because there wasn't enough pressure to completely close the rubber flapper inside them.  After a second water test, I found that moving the check valves closer to the pump did help a bit.  They still did not initially seal up completely but I found that they can be forced shut by filling the sac for a few seconds and then switching the pumps to drain for a moment then switching it back to fill again.  What happened when I did this was that it sent water into the drain hose which helped force the flapper closed once I switched to fill again.  So having the check valves on the drain hoses located at a low point  does help seal them up.  That means that water will be in the drain hoses most of the time.  That won't be a concern except when it comes time to winterize.  I plan on sending RV antifreeze through my fill and drain hoses each winter so that will take care of any possibility of any water remaining in the hoses.

In previous posts, I mentioned that I usually had a sac on the seat and one on the floor behind the driver seat before I did the custom ballast.  I found that with a jumbo sac in the locker that it produces just as good as a wave without the two additional sacs.  That means that the new system produces the same wave as I had before without any sacs being visible.  I was very pleased with that.  It looked just as good but it is hard to say until I get a chance to surf it.

I then decided to fill up a 400lb sac on the floor behind the driver seat just to see what it would do.  So still nothing on the seats.  It definitely slammed the boat and made the wave a bit bigger.  I was taking on a tiny bit of water through the side vent when under way.  I never filled up one on the seat like I did with the old system.  I'd for sure have to tape up my rear air vents if I was to do that.  I might try it one of these days just to see what it looks like.

Anyway, sorry for the long story.  I'll update this once I have a chance to do a better test and surf the wave.  In the meantime, here's a video (wave only) of the two setups I tried out during this initial water test.

YouTube video of ballast test

UPDATE:
Here's a video of us surfing using the new ballast setup.  The goofy side had 1100lb rear locker, 200lb starboard tank under bench seat, 400lb sac on floor behind driver, 400lb integrated bow sac, and the switchblade set at level 1.  The regular side had the 1100lb rear locker sac, 400lb sac on top of bench seat pushed toward observers seat, 400lb integrated bow sac, switchblade set at level 2.  Going 12mph on perfect pass (11.2mph GPS speed)

Inland Surfer Mucus, etc from codyb25 on Vimeo.