Dedicated drinking water tank

[Grith]

I had a quick look at Tasmania crossing prices.

With your truck and slider you will not get much change out of $2,000 return, unless I've missed something, and if you stay in Tasmania for a month it will cost you about $1,000 for caravan parks.

If you sail from Australia's south coast, Eden, Lakes Entrance you can cross via the Kent Group to 3 Hummock and it will cost nothing and the almost compete absence of marinas means you will anchor for free. You might need to juggle what to do with the truck, slider and trailer (take them home and bus back to the yacht....?). Don't be discouraged by the horror stories of Bass Strait - you just need patience and careful assessment of the plentiful forecasts.

I think you over emphasise the difficulty of pickling a RO unit. Your $7,000 for the RO unit looks good to me.

Jonathan

Hi Johnathan Thanks for the advice.
We are just coming over to Tassie in the Slide on Truck camper this coming Jan costing only $199 to bring that each way.
We are fully self contained and try to avoid caravan parks wherever possible not needing the power or water, toilets or showers they provide.
Being AWD with high clearance and very short at under 6 metres I find any isolated lay-by, dead end back road or low cost unserviced site or farmers paddock being made available for camping are all perfectly adequate for our style of brief overnighting moving on each day.
We will sail/power over in our yacht at some stage as our big get out of jail free card sitting on our stern allows quick runs from approaching unforecast weather changes.
This time we will bring an inflatable white water capable kayak/raft for river camping and our backpacks/tent and push bikes and make do with those whist staring longingly out at lovely sailing waters!
$7000 is a lot for a RO watermaker we may not need using wild water sources hence my dilemma.
I costed the trip with towing our yacht on the ferry and it was more like $2,500 which is beyond our early retired budget!

 

[[70521]]

Was thinking of fitting a small water tank for just drinking water. Anyone done this. Needs to be plumbed into an existing foot pump but big lid for cleaning. Might be difficult to arrange a filler. Thinking of 20 litres and maybe just take the tank to the tap and maybe fit one of those French marina quick couplings. My wife keeps buying bottled water but I'd rather save the space for beer.

I would be more concerned by the quality of the marina pipework.

How long are you aboard? How much do you drink?

I find that 99.9% of water drunk onboard is boiled for tea or coffee. One or two drops of water in my whisky will be OK.

 

[Neeves]

Was thinking of fitting a small water tank for just drinking water. Anyone done this. Needs to be plumbed into an existing foot pump but big lid for cleaning. Might be difficult to arrange a filler. Thinking of 20 litres and maybe just take the tank to the tap and maybe fit one of those French marina quick couplings. My wife keeps buying bottled water but I'd rather save the space for beer.

In Oz we can buy 'bottled' water in a variety of containers from 250ml to 10,000ml - and maybe bigger. It all seems expensive (and unnecessary). However marital harmony is the mother of invention

Larger containers have taps, sort of, and these taps can be removed - to allow the empty container to be re-filled from your domestic tap at home. If you have 'eye height' lockers at your galley it might accept one of these larger containers and your wife could have fresh clean water available to her (and you) any time she wanted.

No plumbing required.

Jonathan

 

[Neeves]

Hi Johnathan Thanks for the advice.
We are just coming over to Tassie in the Slide on Truck camper this coming Jan costing only $199 to bring that each way.
We are fully self contained and try to avoid caravan parks wherever possible not needing the power or water, toilets or showers they provide.
Being AWD with high clearance and very short at under 6 metres I find any isolated lay-by, dead end back road or low cost unserviced site or farmers paddock being made available for camping are all perfectly adequate for our style of brief overnighting moving on each day.
We will sail/power over in our yacht at some stage as our big get out of jail free card sitting on our stern allows quick runs from approaching unforecast weather changes.
This time we will bring an inflatable white water capable kayak/raft for river camping and our backpacks/tent and push bikes and make do with those whist staring longingly out at lovely sailing waters!View attachment 162522
$7000 is a lot for a RO watermaker we may not need using wild water sources hence my dilemma.
I costed the trip with towing our yacht on the ferry and it was more like $2,500 which is beyond our early retired budget!

Don't miss the Gordon river, you can take the yacht a good way up, Port Davey is yacht territory - but you need the yacht for both. The Tamar is navigable to Launceston and if you want a challenge - check out the Pieman on the way to Port Davey as you traverse the west coast.

Jonathan

 

[geem]

I would be more concerned by the quality of the marina pipework.

How long are you aboard? How much do you drink?

I find that 99.9% of water drunk onboard is boiled for tea or coffee. One or two drops of water in my whisky will be OK.

If you are in a hot climate, you need to drink a lot of liquid. If you relied on whisky, you would be in no fit state to sail
Hot drinks are not always desirable in temperatures of 30/35degC

 

[noelex]

Was thinking of fitting a small water tank for just drinking water. Anyone done this. Needs to be plumbed into an existing foot pump but big lid for cleaning. Might be difficult to arrange a filler. Thinking of 20 litres and maybe just take the tank to the tap and maybe fit one of those French marina quick couplings. My wife keeps buying bottled water but I'd rather save the space for beer.

This is exactly what we did and it works well.

We have a seperate stainless steel drinking water tank with its own tap in the galley. This is fed directly from the watermaker. When this drinking water tank is full, the water overflows into the main tanks. Because of its small volume the water turnover is high so any drinking water is usually only several days old.

We also use water from this tank to rinse the watermaker. Rinsing with product water ensures there is no possibility of chlorine (although the last time we filled with any "town" water was almost five years ago).

This also works well when collecting rainwater (which is our backup to the watermaker). We put the "best" water after everything has been thoroughly rinsed for a long period into the drinking water tank.

 

[geem]

This is exactly what we did and it works well.

We have a seperate stainless steel drinking water tank with its own tap in the galley. This is fed directly from the watermaker. When this drinking water tank is full, the water overflows into the main tanks. Because of its small volume the water turnover is high so any drinking water is usually only several days old.

We also use water from this tank to rinse the watermaker. Rinsing with product water ensures there is no possibility of chlorine (although the last time we filled with any "town" water was almost five years ago).

This also works well when collecting rainwater (which is our backup to the watermaker). We put the "best" water after everything has been thoroughly rinsed for a long period into the drinking water tank.

Our water tank is 800 litres. We have a w00 litres per hour watermaker. We use about 60 litres per day. We only help about 300 to 400 litres maximum in the tank on a normal basis otherwise we are just carrying weight for no reason. The water turns over in about a week as a result

 

[KAM]

This is what I finished up with. Very simple container in the locker with a quick release fitting. No more lugging bottles from the supermarket.

 

[rogerthebodger]

If I go to an area where drinking water is suspect either by boat or car, we take a 20 lit blue container with a tap to ease of use.

Some time ago I got a small hand operator Water maker katadyn pur Watermaker survivor 35

I got it from EBay as an ex USAF serval kit just for drinking water or on a life raft