Boat setup
Plumbed Ballast
A permanently installed ballast system with fixed plumbing—pumps, hoses, intakes, vents, and drains—that fills and empties hard tanks or sacs automatically without manual hoses.
Plumbed ballast refers to a ballast setup with permanent plumbing: dedicated pumps, hoses, through-hull intakes, vent lines, and drains that fill and empty the boat's tanks or bags at the touch of a button. This contrasts with portable bags filled by hand with a removable pump. Vent lines are a necessary part of any plumbed bag system because without them the bag will either trap air and not fill to capacity or grow larger than its compartment.
Plumbed systems use either reversible (flexible-impeller) pumps that fill and drain through a single bottom port, or one-directional aerator pumps that move water at higher velocity for the fastest fill and drain times. Many factory boats offer Plug and Play (PnP) plumbed upgrades that use existing pumps to fill auxiliary bags.