What about water? Should we have a watermaker?
LinoCat has 2 300Liter watertanks that is 600Liter.
If we assume 4 people on board, each consuming 5 Liters a day this would make 30 days of water supply.
This seems to be plenty. But what if the drinking water is not ok that you have filled in your tanks? What if a tank is leaking?
First when bluewater cruising you have to switch the tanks continously to make sure that you are not loosing all the water in tank B after having emptied tank A.
Second you need to make sure that the water that you fill is OK. This is fairly easy in Europe but tricky in other parts of the world.
Before we fill water in a marina we let the water un for a while because the pipes on the docks and the hoses might have been filled with the same water for a while and in the sun this makes a perfect breeding ground for bacteria.
After the water from the hose is feeling much colder we usually start filling the tanks.
The next question is: How to get the water OUT of the tank? Stupid question?
What if you only have an electrical pump but you have a total power failure? Or the pump is broken? yes you might convert another pump into this one.
The better option is to install an additional manual pump. This also preserves electricity.
So on LinoCat we have 2 footpump at the galley sink. One for freshwater the other one for saltwater. To preserve freshwater we can wash the dishes with saltwater and then only quickly rinse them.
The best saved supply is the one you did not spend :-)
For safety issues we still want to have at least 100Liter bottled water and if only used for preparing babyfood or emergencies.
Also water from the marina might have an odd taste so for the Espresso or tea nice bottled water is a beautiful option.
Nevertheless coming back to the initital question.
What is a watermaker? How does it work? Should we have one?
A watermaker is not "making" water by some miracle reaction it is rather a desalinator, which produces freshwater out of saltwater by reverse osmosis.
A high pressure pump (60bar) is pumping seawater through a pipe with a membrane.
This membrane has a huge surface and is permitting water moelcules to slip through but not salt. So by that we can gain some liters per hour of drinkable extremly clean freshwater.
Of course not in a marina but out in the blue where the saltwaterquality is good.
Depending on the model there are watermakers which are driven by electricity or by engine. We have decided for a 30Liter/hour Spectra 200 watermaker. The current it drawas is acceptable and so is the output. Rudolf and Gabriele from sunways proposed having a much bigger oner but we do not have the space for that.
The watermaker is then pumping the freshwater into one of the tanks and can be manually switched over to the other one.
So we should never run out of fresh drinking water (in theory at least)
Regards
Michael
If we assume 4 people on board, each consuming 5 Liters a day this would make 30 days of water supply.
This seems to be plenty. But what if the drinking water is not ok that you have filled in your tanks? What if a tank is leaking?
First when bluewater cruising you have to switch the tanks continously to make sure that you are not loosing all the water in tank B after having emptied tank A.
Second you need to make sure that the water that you fill is OK. This is fairly easy in Europe but tricky in other parts of the world.
Before we fill water in a marina we let the water un for a while because the pipes on the docks and the hoses might have been filled with the same water for a while and in the sun this makes a perfect breeding ground for bacteria.
After the water from the hose is feeling much colder we usually start filling the tanks.
The next question is: How to get the water OUT of the tank? Stupid question?What if you only have an electrical pump but you have a total power failure? Or the pump is broken? yes you might convert another pump into this one.
The better option is to install an additional manual pump. This also preserves electricity.
So on LinoCat we have 2 footpump at the galley sink. One for freshwater the other one for saltwater. To preserve freshwater we can wash the dishes with saltwater and then only quickly rinse them.
The best saved supply is the one you did not spend :-)
For safety issues we still want to have at least 100Liter bottled water and if only used for preparing babyfood or emergencies.
Also water from the marina might have an odd taste so for the Espresso or tea nice bottled water is a beautiful option.
Nevertheless coming back to the initital question.
What is a watermaker? How does it work? Should we have one?
A watermaker is not "making" water by some miracle reaction it is rather a desalinator, which produces freshwater out of saltwater by reverse osmosis.
A high pressure pump (60bar) is pumping seawater through a pipe with a membrane.
This membrane has a huge surface and is permitting water moelcules to slip through but not salt. So by that we can gain some liters per hour of drinkable extremly clean freshwater.
Of course not in a marina but out in the blue where the saltwaterquality is good.
Depending on the model there are watermakers which are driven by electricity or by engine. We have decided for a 30Liter/hour Spectra 200 watermaker. The current it drawas is acceptable and so is the output. Rudolf and Gabriele from sunways proposed having a much bigger oner but we do not have the space for that.
The watermaker is then pumping the freshwater into one of the tanks and can be manually switched over to the other one.
So we should never run out of fresh drinking water (in theory at least)
Regards
Michael
Comments