Water Maker

[Piers]

When we bought Play d'eau, we had her fitted with a Sea Fresh H208A water maker. But in 14 years, we've never had to use it so it just sits in the lazarette, doing nothing. We're at the point where we're thinking if we should dump it, make it work, or what? But if we brought it back to life, would we ever use it, and would we be in the same position in years to come?

Ideas?

 

[Nick_H]

Do you plan on keeping the boat where she is long term, or moving somewhere warmer?

In parts of the med it's not unusual to anchor out for several days at a time. We don't have a watermaker, and have managed without but it's sometimes a hassle to get water. This summer in N Corsica for instance we had to wait quite a while in St Florent to be allowed into port just for water, then in Calvi there was no water between 11am and 7pm, so the only way to fill up was to get an overnight berth.

It's not a big enough problem to persuade me to fit a watermaker, but if I had one i'd certainly use it.

In N Europe where the weather is less settled and the water is colder, boating is more about visiting different ports, so there's always an opportunity to top up the water tank, as you've found over the last 14 years. Unless you really need the space I wouldn't remove it though, in case your plans change or you decide to sell, in which case a water maker will be a plus.

 

[benjenbav]

Surely no-one actually ever throws anything out? It's one thing to talk about doing it, but we all know that, one day, whatever it is at the back of the cupboard will be exactly what is needed. :encouragement:

 

[vas]

+1 on what Nick says...

Bear in mind, that re commissioning it means spending a grand or two on membranes... (depending on number and size of membranes)

So probably keep it in and only fire it up when you decide you really need it.

V.

 

[Talulah]

Just bought a new membrane for our Little Wonder watermaker. £500.
It won't be fitted until it's next needed. They have a very long shelf life but once used need to be used weekly or decommissioned properly to protect the membrane.

 

[jrudge]

Do you plan on keeping the boat where she is long term, or moving somewhere warmer?

In parts of the med it's not unusual to anchor out for several days at a time. We don't have a watermaker, and have managed without but it's sometimes a hassle to get water. This summer in N Corsica for instance we had to wait quite a while in St Florent to be allowed into port just for water, then in Calvi there was no water between 11am and 7pm, so the only way to fill up was to get an overnight berth.

It's not a big enough problem to persuade me to fit a watermaker, but if I had one i'd certainly use it.

In N Europe where the weather is less settled and the water is colder, boating is more about visiting different ports, so there's always an opportunity to top up the water tank, as you've found over the last 14 years. Unless you really need the space I wouldn't remove it though, in case your plans change or you decide to sell, in which case a water maker will be a plus.

This post knocks it on the head. I am fitting one now - it is a real pain watching water all the time. Mallorca not so bad - Ibiza really tricky.

If you don't need it then you may as well put on eBay ( where i bought mine) which is in the shop now being serviced and checked ( and poss new membranes)

 

[jfm]

Piers, just use it. I agree with Nick-h above but you shouldn't imho use it just when you need it. It's a first resort, not a last resort. When I'm on passage I make sure to leave the dock nearly empty (jettisoning town water if necessary) so that when I arrive at destination I have tanks full of made water. Try washing your hair in it and you'll never want town water again. And it's much better in d/washer and w/machine

You have to do some sums of course so you arrive at destination with enough water: mine is 280lph but I typically get 220 ish, as they do not do what they say on the tin in the salty med. Might be better where you are, but no worries

The reason I try to make water underway rather than at anchor is that big w/makers are a bit noisy

All this talk of high maintenance is nuts. I have the same w'maker on my current boat since new build 2013. When switched off it switches to "auto backflush" and in 5 years I have never changed the membrane, pickled it, or done any of that folklore nonsense you read about, and the thing runs perfectly fine. I just change the inlet filter and carbon back flush filters now and again (takes 3 minutes). There's also an oil change in the high pressure pump to do at 250 hrs or whatever - easy job, less than a lawnmower oil change.

Yours is a quality job with decent capacity and will I hope have all the "easy use" features I mention. Mine is HRO seafari = similar good stuff. If you have never used it yet the membrane will be fine

I think you should just use the thing. You don't know what you're missing!

My first sq78 had one as a tick box option -the first w'makerI had owned. 140lph, same as yours. I liked it so much that I upgraded to 280lph on second sq78, and I wouldn't be without one on any future boat. For all the reasons Nick-h says. I remember being in the Fairline factory one time looking at boats in build and one sq78 customer had specced TWO watermakers, he loved them so much. Join the club Piers!

 

[scubaman]

Piers, just use it. I agree with Nick-h above but you shouldn't imho use it just when you need it. It's a first resort, not a last resort. When I'm on passage I make sure to leave the dock nearly empty (jettisoning town water if necessary) so that when I arrive at destination I have tanks full of made water. Try washing your hair in it and you'll never want town water again. And it's much better in d/washer and w/machine

You have to do some sums of course so you arrive at destination with enough water: mine is 280lph but I typically get 220 ish, as they do not do what they say on the tin in the salty med. Might be better where you are, but no worries

The reason I try to make water underway rather than at anchor is that big w/makers are a bit noisy

All this talk of high maintenance is nuts. I have the same w'maker on my current boat since new build 2013. When switched off it switches to "auto backflush" and in 5 years I have never changed the membrane, pickled it, or done any of that folklore nonsense you read about, and the thing runs perfectly fine. I just change the inlet filter and carbon back flush filters now and again (takes 3 minutes). There's also an oil change in the high pressure pump to do at 250 hrs or whatever - easy job, less than a lawnmower oil change.

Yours is a quality job with decent capacity and will I hope have all the "easy use" features I mention. Mine is HRO seafari = similar good stuff. If you have never used it yet the membrane will be fine

I think you should just use the thing. You don't know what you're missing!

My first sq78 had one as a tick box option -the first w'makerI had owned. 140lph, same as yours. I liked it so much that I upgraded to 280lph on second sq78, and I wouldn't be without one on any future boat. For all the reasons Nick-h says. I remember being in the Fairline factory one time looking at boats in build and one sq78 customer had specced TWO watermakers, he loved them so much. Join the club Piers!

Sorry if this is a silly question, but do you use made tank water for cooking or drinking?

 

[jfm]

Sorry if this is a silly question, but do you use made tank water for cooking or drinking?

We use made water for everything (including cooking, brushing teeth) except drinking - we mostly use bottled water for drinking. No particular logic to any of that - the made water is very drinkable but everyone prefers to grab cold bottles of Evian etc from the fridge

I make sure to get through my 1000 litres of water every day. If the boat doesn't have 8-10pax on board I don't tell people to turn the showers off and I encourage them to waste a bit of water. I like to get the tank down to 10% daily then refill, so the water is always fresh.

 

[Magnum]

I'm with jfm on the water maker maintenance issue. We don't pickle our membranes and never have. I do auto flush every 7 days though which uses about 40L of water on our Sea Recovery unit.

jfm, have you ever considered going to the next stage of water purification by fitting a Spot Zero system? You can feed it with dock or water maker water and the results are incredible. No need to dry the boat by hand, just let it drip dry for a spot free finish.

 

[jfm]

I'm with jfm on the water maker maintenance issue. We don't pickle our membranes and never have. I do auto flush every 7 days though which uses about 40L of water on our Sea Recovery unit.

jfm, have you ever considered going to the next stage of water purification by fitting a Spot Zero system? You can feed it with dock or water maker water and the results are incredible. No need to dry the boat by hand, just let it drip dry for a spot free finish.

Mine is SeaRecovery too, with 7 day auto backflush, and it has been brilliant. Both the smaller 140lph unit I had before and now this 280lph unit. Main issue is to change the carbon filter for the backflush supply often, else the membrane is damaged by chlorine if it back flushes using dockwater - the carbon takes out the chlorine.

I've thought about spot zero but am not convinced

The water makerwater is so good that it already does perfect washdowns, so I don't see the need to re-process that water.

Dockwater however would be nice to process through RO. Those ion-exchange resins that you see lots of people using are rubbish so a reverse osmosis system like SpotZero is the right method, but the problem is that the flow rates and rejection rates from these spot zero systems just don't cut it in my book.

Typically you might come into port low on water in the evening, or you're going out for the day and notice that your water is low, both of which can happen if you haven't or aren't going to spend many hours underway running a noisy watermaker. In these situations you don't want a system that only does 300-400 lph else you'll be waiting too long. You could of course have say 2x 1000 litre tanks on a 24m boat, and take 1000 litres of dockwater in 15 mins into tank #1 then go to sea and let the system take 3 hours to process it and put it into tank #2, but you generally wont have the space to devote to two 1000 litre tanks.

So while I like the concept I don't see that it really works, at least in my use of the boat, as a good purifier of dockwater, and I feel it is pointless to re-process watermaker water when it is so good to begin with.

Then there is rejection rate: RO machines reject some of the water they draw as the "brine" With a normal watermaker 80-90% of the seawater sucked in is rejected right back to the sea but that doesn't matter because you have unlimited seawater obviously. But when you're purifying your already made water, and these units reject 1/3 of their throughput as the "brine", you have a big negative. If you tag a spot zero onto your 300lph watermaker you create a 200lph watermaking system, erk. So on top of the €10k cost of the spot zero system you therefore have to add the cost, noise and extra space of a 50% bigger watermaker. Just doesn't make sense to me. I find the marketing a bit hyped and lacking in real analysis and data too

 

[Magnum]

Agreed jfm, the main application for spot zero is dockwater.

Low water upon arrival isn't really an issue as we always run the water maker at anchor or under way. Worst case scenario would be 75% full.

We have specified a 348l/h water maker and 473l/h spot zero system to fill new Magnum's 1350l water tank, so from dock water we get 1/3 tank in an hour.

 

[MapisM]

Dockwater however would be nice to process through RO. Those ion-exchange resins that you see lots of people using are rubbish so a reverse osmosis system like SpotZero is the right method

I fully agree that it's pointless to further process the water produced by a watermaker with a RO system, which can instead make sense for loading dockwater.
Otoh, I can't understand why you dismiss the alternative of ion exchange water softeners, for that purpose.
As a premise, I'm not interested in a watermaker, because I don't need it for my typical boat usage. But since I spend a LOT of time onboard, I am indeed interested in having decent fresh water - both from direct dock supply, and when loading the tank before going out.
So, I thought to discuss the alternative of a full flagged RO purifier vs. a ion exchange water softener with an old colleague and friend who forgot more about all this stuff than most chemist will ever know.
And his only question was: are you going to drink the processed water?
I told him that I am not, because I also use - as you do - water for everything but drinking.
On that basis, his suggestion was to avoid wasting money for a RO equipment, because a much cheaper, simpler and more efficient water softener (plus a good filter) would have been for all intent and purposes equally effective.
Btw, this matches nicely my experience at home, where I have a large water softener+filter, plus a small RO purifier in the kitchen, specifically meant to supply drinking water. And while the difference between the original hard water and the softened one is like day and night (much softer hairs, no marks when rinsing shower walls, no deposits on taps, etc.), there is absolutely no perceivable difference in these respects between softened-only and softened+purified water.

 

[Piers]

Thanks for all the replies. Really interesting.

May I ask a further qn? Do you have separate water tanks. E.g., one for water maker water, the other for dock water?

 

[Magnum]

Thanks for all the replies. Really interesting.

May I ask a further qn? Do you have separate water tanks. E.g., one for water maker water, the other for dock water?

No we don't, hence the plan to run dock water through the spot zero system.

 

[Bouba]

I take bottled water aboard for drinking. Only a tiny percentage of water is actually consumed so it’s economical to take a six pack of 1.5 litre bottles which should be enough for a couple for a weekend

 

[jfm]

Thanks for all the replies. Really interesting.

May I ask a further qn? Do you have separate water tanks. E.g., one for water maker water, the other for dock water?

My boat is plumbed to do this:

1. two tanks, connected by a linking pipe that can be shut with a valve,
2. Valves that allow the pump to draw from either or both tanks
3. Watermaker feeds to one tank only
4. Each tank can be individually dock filled
5. Separate contents gauge for each tank

But I never use this facility. I leave the valve open in the balancing pipe that connects the two tanks, and run the system as one virtual tank.

I have not dual-plumbed the boat, so I could not have watermaker water feeding some taps/showers/hosepipes, and town water feeding others. I thought about it and didn't see the point. But I could, within 30 seconds of valve operation in the crew cabin, without removing any panels or using any tools, switch from whole boat being fed by w/maker water, to whole boat being fed by town water. And if you could be bothered (I couldn't) you could do all this with electric valves (3, I think) and switches on the dashboard.

 

[NGM]

Having just re-read BartW great thread on his bladder tank project it made me curious why people don't consider this for extra water capacity. Our tanks at 450l are typically fine for 1 or 2 nights at anchor with sensible consumption. For the few occasions each year when we maybe out for 3-5 nights the idea of doubling that capacity with bladder tanks seems quite compelling. Apart from the installation logistics is there any reason why this is not sensible alternative for occasional use ?