build your own watermaker

[Guest]

It is a matter of marketing. You can say you built a pump that is wrecked with Sodium metabisulfite or you can blame the chemical supplier for sending the wrong stuff and then put a warning in the manuals that only Spectra pickling chemicals can be used. Since the pump will not take kindly to the most widely used chemical in water maker use I believe my version.

From the manual:
[ QUOTE ]
Warning! The Spectra SC-1 Storage compound is specially formulated to be
used as a Spectra system preservative. Sodium bisulfite or metabisulfite
should not be used as a preservative in the Spectra systems. Use of
sodium bisulfite will attack materials used in the Spectra systems and
void the warranty.


[/ QUOTE ]

 

[Anonymous]

I was told that, according to Spectra, they (Spectra) had shipped Spectra storage solution that was incompatible with the plastic, and this resulted in lots of failures which they sorted without quibble under warranty. Sounds plausible enough to me since they still say don't use Sodium Metabisulfite and maybe some bright spark had packed SM in the mistaken belief that it was OK.

Certainly I had no quibble in June, some six years after the date of manufacture, after a change of owner, for a problem that could not possibly have been due to chemicals (the glass connecting rod had broken - n.b. the new ones are a plastic, not glass). That has to be WAY over and above the call of duty? I was well impressed and am only too pleased to let people know the sort of service you get from Spectra and their agents.

Edit: PS the new Clark pump was shipped from the US to Mallorca and then to Ibiza and we were up and running less than five days after my initial report!

 

[rivalranger]

These guys are at the boat show, on the hydrovane stand.

www.water-makers.co.uk

Looks like they sell all the parts to make a modular water maker system for about 2k.