Hey Bill- great pics of your tidy work with your sea chest. By hull #422 (our boat) Amel was installing a ball valve ahead of the 5 port manifold. You could be running the engine or genset and cut off raw water to the AC, anchor wash, heads, and watermaker (only as a group). I've been going back and forth on adding 5 ball valves as in 10 years of ownership and work on each pump using sea water, it's never been a huge need to isolate a port in this way. Maybe a bit less cleanup but no big deal.

On the material used for the manifold, obviously I'm looking for strength.. although anyone swinging a 5 lb hammer in the engine room is usually asked to leave....not sure how much weight I attach to bronze's fire retardant properties as when you look around the engine room at all the plastic (ie sea chest itself) and hosing it's hard to imagine a fire where your bronze fitting saved your boat. Maybe if your AC pump capacitor underneath it went Chernobyl ?

These posts are so incredibly valuable to me. Great to see people's approaches, problems, and choices......definitely copying some of yours. Thanks.

Thomas Kleman
SV L'ORIENT
SM2K 422
Oahu