water, water everywhere......

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seabright

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We are in the canaries at the moment awaiting the trades. Could anyone advise a cheap way to purify our water without the crew (incl Beth age 4) either refusing ti drink it because of the taste or expereincing a slow death through the effects of detergent?

Any help would be much appreciated. Happy sailing.
 
Are you in real doubt about the water ?? the canaries is usually ok.

in an emergency use 6-8 drops of 6% additive free chlorox bleach per gallon. otherwise, I would leave it alone.. it can be treated at the time you think you have a problem, you dont need to pretreat.
 
Thanks for that. No problems in the canaries but thinking ahead to Pacific etc. Very unlike me to think ahead.......
 
Excellent, have an enjoyable and safe trip. the government advice for disaster water purification of water containing biological contaminents or agents is 8 drops per gallon.
The best advice I can give is probably as follows.

Check the water before you fill, ask around..
If a hose is used, let it run for a few mins to clear out stagnent water.
Have multiple tanks on board with valves.
Consider a simple method of rainwater collection, a normal bimin with a plastic skin fitting in it to collect water..
Try not to fill all your tanks from the same source if possible.
Use a particulate filter on the oulet, I can recommend the Jabsco ones (we are chaging over to standard household 10" housings and filters), but the jabsco filters last so long that we have enough in stock for 5 years !!.. they produce a silver / carbon unit that makes almost all water taste like perriere, seriously good, and great for teas !.
Use food grade pipes if possible.

If you take on contaminated water, unlikely in westernised areas, then you will need to purify it with the bleach, it wont hurt you at all, but the taste in those doses can be offputting for some, mixed with juice may help, or in the extremely unlikely event you need to dop this, you will usually find that you have ample water in other forms on board for the little one.

If you ever find contaminents have occured whilst the water was on the boat, it is probably down to lack of use, one of the things to watch with split tanks, a mixed blessing.. you need to use the tanks in rotation and make sure it happens, tanks used a lot generally have no problems, tanks left sitting can and do have problems..

If you have drunk the water locally for a few days prior to leaving without effect, then you will almost certainly have no worries.
Joe
 
[ QUOTE ]
What a bloody good posting. Captain GotOutTheBedTheRightSide this morning, eh? /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

I thought that aswell.... different bloke today /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Get a charcoal filter and fit it between your foot pump and tap.

If you do not have a foot pump and tap then fit one ASAP. Using a manual pump at sea will help keep your water consumption down.
Good luck on your crossing.
 
Hi, and welcome to the forum. We have a General Ecology which will render Ganges water safe and nice to drink. Have a read of the technical data...it's used by the armed forces, I think. Good but pricey though the filters last ages and you don't change them until they stop passing water.

http://www.generalecologyeurope.com/

The UK agent is very reliable....

Edit:- Beware - the second link I posted earlier was one of those scam websites, they are trying to get you to buy a competitor's system. The correct UK distributor is the one above. Sorry. Only just realised.

There is a lousy distributor lurking somewhere on the Iberial Peninsular. Avoid him.
 
I don't think that UV sterilisation is the way forward for boats. The problem is that even if the incoming water is nice it gets a horrid taste in the tanks. The UV won't help that at all. I use a 5 micron pre-filter on all water entering the boat, a polyphosphate cartridge to condition corrosively-hard water and then filter drinking water with the General Ecology (see post above).

The pre-filter is mainly to keep rust, mud, sand and muck out though at 5 microns it removes a high proportion of microbes, cysts and lots of horrid things. Otherwise you can get rusty mud collecting at the bottom of the tanks. Depends where you are.
 
Strongly second Lemain's General Ecology filter. Easy to fit, filters last for ages (our last one lasted a year) and the water tastes like evian. Not very expensive and value for money probably the best piece of kit on our boat. Cheers Patrick and Sinead and S/V Foxglove
 
That is an unfair comparison. Do you know what is in the kit supplied by General Ecology (= Seagull, which is the brand name)? The kit includes a really good quality faucet with all plumbing, steel pressure vessel as well as the filter element. By the time you have bought a faucet, pipes, 10" housing, mountings, filter(s) (I think you would need at least two 10" housings to even approximate to a Seagull) you will have taken up two or three times the space and not saved as much as you might think.

I have several 10" filters; one for the watermaker and two for pre-filtering and conditioning of incoming dockside water so I know what is involved. I'm not convinced that you would get filter elements of the General Ecology quality for a 10" housing. the Seagull are tested and rated for filtration of foul undrinkable water and full test results are shown online.

Others have said that it tastes like Evian, etc. That is true...everyone who tries our tank water through the filter is delighted and even the fussiest are happy to use than instead of bottled.

You're not comparing like with like. I grant you it is not cheap, but it is fair value, IMO.
 
Possibly it is David (an unfair comparison), but 10" filters are available in ALL configurations and materials - the elements that is... the housing are around 20 squids, one of payment, and the filter depending where you buy them, also cheap, the silver carbon were, I thin, 9 squids for 2... they are even cheaper in the US.
so say, 40 quid for a unit including food quality hoses.. we just added a new mixer tap to the galley sink, 50 euros (37 quid) inc fittings to half inch food hose (we used garden qucik release connectors).
Filtering nasties is oft a matter of particulate size the filter is designed for along with the composition.
Same as the watermaker, first criteria was industry standard membranes, filters, and pumps, not custom made units which tie one to the supplier at inflated prices.. the good old sw2540 is available worldwide at normal prices, that also uses, like yours, 10" units, standard.. it makes the spares situation easier too lol..

the unit you describe is obviously great quality, well thought out etc, but as with most things, there are alternatives that offer the same performance at a much lower cost.

Joe
 
Firstly, there are health issues with silver. Then, some filter cartridges don't have the strength to take full pump pressure when blocked. When you take a General Ecology cartridge out you can see how heavily engineered it is and it is specifically rated to take high pump pressures. i.e. you use it until the water flow falls to an unacceptable level. I do trust the GE filter to take out bacteria, viruses and cysts but I would not trust an ordinary 10" filter. Spun poly, maybe, but they are only usually 5 micron and don't have the charcoal.
 
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