Drinking water on boats

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted User YDKXO
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We use PET free plastic water bottles from sports shops (made for cyclists and joggers etc) we fill and fridge them at home and take them to the boat in cool bags with ice packs
 
Deleted User said:
With all the recent and well merited publicity about single use plastics, what do forumites do about drinking water on board if they dont want to drink water from their tanks? I must admit we buy drinking water in large plastic bottles (rather than multiple small ones) in order to save on waste but that still creates plastic waste about which I'm somewhat ashamed

Is it sufficient to drop a couple of water purification tablets into your tank on a regular basis to make the water potable? Are there modestly priced treatment systems available to make tank water potable?
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You do not have to rely on bottled water or on fitting carbon filters. I use AquaSol, not tablets, a liquid which you add to your tank with each fillup. Do make sure all filling hoses are clean and flushed through before use, add AquaSol in the right proportion and, in my opinion, the water stays good to drink and does not affect the tea or coffee. I have been using this stuff for 5 years now and have not had to do a major tank cleanout. If i drain the tank during the frost season i just refill with the correct dose of AquaSol. I found it works better than the tablets. https://www.cleantabs.co.uk/aqua-sol.php 300ml Bottle, about £8 Purifies 750 Litres Add one capful to every 25 litres Of water when filling tank.

Www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk
 
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We drink from the tank and it has not made us ill yet. The boat is new, so the tanks should be pretty clean and we do add Aqua Tabs on every refill. They give the water a rather strong chlorine taste, so we use a Brita filter jug to remove the flavour before drinking it or using it for cooking.
 
I have s/s tanks and just fill them up with tap water. I do have a general ecology filter and only use that for drinking water. I have found that once UK tap water is boiled a filter is not worth normally using.
 
longjohnsilver said:
Mike, just use gin for everything. Makes tea and coffee taste great.
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In the mid '90s I was working in the Balkans where the locals distill their own. As there was a shortage of bottles (along with much else) our interpreter re-used the bottles that our drinking water came in. I was at least half a mug into my coffee one day wondering why it tasted a bit odd (but rather good) before I realised that there had been a slight mix up in refilling the coffeemaker. Given the strength of the stuff I was surprised the machine hadn't exploded. We also (deliberately) used it for anti-freeze in the windscreen washers of our vehicles.
 
For those refilling single use plastic, this is a bad idea, particularly if exposed to sunlight (and shade does not mean they are not exposed) as poisons from the plastic leach into the water, they become unsafe after a single use (hence...) (see WHO guidelines and research). There are plenty of refillable devices both metal/wood/multi-use plastic

As for aqua tabs. Are you people nuts (I simply can't believe people do this routinely)? This is simply silly (expensive and not environmentally friendly). That tank is made specifically for fresh water. The cleaning regime should be (and should be quite safe for some time): Empty the tank, fill with a cleaning solution (bicarb works wonders, but plenty of other options available), then rinse through until the salty taste goes away (3 or 4 refill-then-empties is a belts and braces approach). Some people like to use really hot water at this point (anything over 60C for ten minutes should cover most things without harming the tank/connections) and just give it a few cycles. You should then be safe for over a month of sailing no issues.

Check for legionella bacteria routinely but you should have no issues whatsoever. Once you've finished, empty the tank, rinse through (fill with anti-bacterial cleaning solution maybe?), ready for the next trip. If you're getting water from unsafe source, that's when you need the tablets, at which point I would question whether that water should be going into your fresh water tank. You can get fittings into your tank to prevent the growth of bacteria as well as various filters.
 
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Reverse osmosis watermakers aren't that expensive anymore and surely they give good potable water for drinking with some extra inline filters?
I recall a thread on here where Magnum (RIP) was specking a high-end watermaker with built in water softener for his new boat that did it all.......eye watering £50k iirc but did sound the business. It would filter dock water also before it hit the tanks.
 
Our previous small boat had a flexible bag tank that always added a plasticky taste to the water, so I didn't drink that. But the current boat has a rotomoulded rigid tank, and the water from it tastes just as it did when it went in. I dose the tank and plumbing with cleaning powder each spring on general principles, but I suspect it's probably not really necessary. I've never flushed my house's plastic plumbing, after all.

I drink a lot of water on board, usually have a glass in the cupholder by the binnacle. It's straight from the galley tap, tastes fresh, and hasn't ever caused any health worries. If I sailed somewhere where the shore water was suspect then I'd buy bottles, but here in the UK and northern France the only bottled water I have on board is the untouched emergency backup.

Pete
 
moresparks said:
Many years ago when I had a small sailing boat I fitted a small flexible water tank in one of the lockers and fed the pipes to the sink via a pump and an inline active charcoal filter that was changed every year. I filled up using the marina tap and treated the tank to purification tablets. The charcoal filter removed any “purification taste” and left perfectly clean tasting drinking water. I could take the portable tank home in the winter for a very good clean and rinse out. Maybe old simple ideas could work?
I was led to believe by some in the “green community” that re-using the plastic bottles could be harmful to your health if not properly treated. Not sure how true that statement is!!
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Actually it is true as nearly all plastics leach out various substances, while some do this within days, others leach out after a period of time.

These are mainly bisphenols and bisphenol A is the most common followed by bisphenol S and bisphenols are a known toxin which can be looked up for their various toxins and leaching and the same reason many manufacturers of household appliances such as fridges with water dispensers are going BPA free with their plastics.
Ask any water supplier and you get the stock diatribe of "our water meets all current quality regulations" and nobody asks what these quality standards are as they vary around the world; sure you can get water purification tablets and they are merely another chemical compound being placed into your system so leaching plastic tanks with added chemicals are actually worse.

There is a simple way to use tap water and this is to use a stainless steel water tank and install a water filtration system to supply all your drinking water and you remove the plastic leaching and you filter the tap water to remove many of the other impurities such as bleach of chlorine gas, and make your potable water much safer; you can install an inline filtration system but this filters all your water which may not need filtering fir items such as washing machines or showers, so install an inline system just before your taps and you get the best quality water you can get.
 
brief discussion with the swmbo yesterday,
guess what the conclusion is: keep it as it is,
she doesn't like the taste of anything else but bottle water,
and insists on avoiding that guests get sick from drinking tank water,
I have to point out that we use tank water for cooking, coffee, dishwasher, rinsing vegetables, teeth cleaning, ..only drinking is from the bottles.

re waste, we are used and have a system to seperate plastic / glass / and general waste,
in many places we can dump it seperated.
This season I was shocked that in some modern marina's sa Villassimius and Teulada, waste is not collected separated.
 
BartW said:
we use tank water for cooking, coffee, dishwasher, rinsing vegetables, teeth cleaning, ..only drinking is from the bottles.
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B, fwiw, we do exactly the same, except that we use bottled water also for tea/coffee.
Essentially, whenever we actually drink the water, regardless of whether it's boiled or not.
Again fwiw, some friends of ours use it also for teeth cleaning.
Which might make sense, bu we don't, mostly for practicality/laziness reasons... :rolleyes:
 
MapisM said:
Which might make sense, bu we don't, mostly for practicality/laziness reasons... :rolleyes:
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+1

this season we had the best coffee ever onboard,
Jelena was able to make it exactly how I like it with the Bialetti,
the small details make a difference, :-)
and afaik she used water from the tank...
but you know that the Bialetti vaporises the water.
 
We only use water tank water for drinking - no bottled water allowed on board apart from those who prefer fizzy water - and all water passes through a 2 micron carbon filter.

Once every three years we sterilise the whole water system, using Milton fluid (https://www.milton-tm.com/en/consumer/products/sterilising-fluid). I add the fluid, fill the tanks to the top, turn on all outlets until I smell the fluid has come through, top the tanks up, and leave it to do its work for 24 hours. Then I empty and flush the tanks and pipework which takes a few hours.

Afterwards, I disconnect each of the four tanks' supply pipes and flush any tank debris.

Never had any tummy upsets by doing this.

BUT, I now use a pre-filter when filling the tanks (https://www.asap-supplies.com/seagull-dockside-pre-filter-system) in the hope that when flushing the tanks next time, there'll be minimum debris- https://www.playdeau.com/clean-water-please/

Piers
 
Piers said:
We only use water tank water for drinking - no bottled water allowed on board apart from those who prefer fizzy water - and all water passes through a 2 micron carbon filter.

Once every three years we sterilise the whole water system, using Milton fluid (https://www.milton-tm.com/en/consumer/products/sterilising-fluid). I add the fluid, fill the tanks to the top, turn on all outlets until I smell the fluid has come through, top the tanks up, and leave it to do its work for 24 hours. Then I empty and flush the tanks and pipework which takes a few hours.

Afterwards, I disconnect each of the four tanks' supply pipes and flush any tank debris.

Never had any tummy upsets by doing this.

BUT, I now use a pre-filter when filling the tanks (https://www.asap-supplies.com/seagull-dockside-pre-filter-system) in the hope that when flushing the tanks next time, there'll be minimum debris- https://www.playdeau.com/clean-water-please/

Piers
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How, do you flush tank debris?
 
I have just spent the last 3 months sailing around GB, by the end there was a very strong gaseous aroma from the tap when turned on. It put me off even making tea and coffee.
 
Piers said:
Pontoon hose into the tanks, add an 1" or so, open connections from the tanks to the boat plumbing, drain into bilge. Pump out bilge.
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Good grief! The last time we got any significant amount of water in the bilges, it took us weeks to get the boat dry again. Double skinned boats with lots of space for water to slosh around!
 
BartW said:
brief discussion with the swmbo yesterday,
guess what the conclusion is: keep it as it is,
she doesn't like the taste of anything else but bottle water,
and insists on avoiding that guests get sick from drinking tank water,
I have to point out that we use tank water for cooking, coffee, dishwasher, rinsing vegetables, teeth cleaning, ..only drinking is from the bottles.

re waste, we are used and have a system to seperate plastic / glass / and general waste,
in many places we can dump it seperated.
This season I was shocked that in some modern marina's sa Villassimius and Teulada, waste is not collected separated.
Click to expand...

Yes, we found the same at both of those and the Canaries have been a welcome change with recycling separate bins at marinas. But we still use bottled water, and then tank for the usual washing up, hot drinks and showers. Partly out of old habit on small boats with little tanks, partly because water quality in Greece very variable. You would fill up a tank and then notice a pay tap a few metres away that said “Potable”
 
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