I have 4 Stainless marine strainers listed in the swap section, for less than half the price of a new one.

Sea Strainer
 

I am running Livorsi 5" cans on 600SCI (twins) with Merc XR low water pickup. They work very well but need to be cleaned out after 1 hour of running through Kelp patches and Turle Grass. I would like to change to something that has a "back flush" feature to dump the seaweed into the bilge. Anyone know of a product that has this? Or can I make up a systme with ball valves and hoses to create a back wash?

Those are Gil/CORSA units, which I have on my boat. The band clamp can be a bit tough, depending on where you have them mounted, but as long as you keep a little silicone grease on the lid o-ring, they work very well. No tools required and reasonably priced. Available in several different right- and left-hand layouts.

Not likely, as for many this means directly putting salt water into the bilge. Do your strainers have removable baskets that you can pull out and shake out overboard? If you do not, I would advise finding some that do. The ones with fixed baskets/screens are kind of hard to clean.

dave whats to much length? mines like 18 to 24 '' on a Gil strainer its worked 15yrs, but I am using a large one on the blower motor which should be about the same so what do you call to far thanks. art

no way cheapest is a gil = harden marine also livorsi GS bought them out it should be about 250 to 279 now.

the GS is THE OLD GIL =274.00 its easy to take a part and for a stock big block is fine, I used it with 650hp.

Good question "too much" can be answered a couple of ways.

Any length more than the minimum necessary to make the run is one definition. Ive see then plumbed from right at the stern 8 inches from the sea pump to all the way to under a ski locker between seats- its common to mount them in front of the engines for convienence but the hose length gets long pretty quickly.

The longer the hose the harder and longer the water pump runs "dry" before getting wet.

Too much is any length too long to fill the strainer when completely dry before eating an impeller. I learned the hard way to ALWAYS prime up a strainer after the boat has sat and drained down completely.

Uncle Dave

Correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding on something that hasn't been addressed so far is if your boat comes out of the water, the sea strainer will hold some water so the impeller doesn't become dry, and the 10" would hold more water then the 5", which means it would better protect your engine.