I broke my Watermaker. Dumb error.

We have a Village Marine WM. I bought all new membranes and cleaning cartridges in the hope of using it much more this year. I went through all the flushing, cleaning cartridges protocol by the book.. all seemed fine as expected. Then I started the watermaking process. However stupidly, I had the seacock closed and the unit started making weird noises. I took me 15-20 sec, if that, to realize what’s happening. Turned things off, opened the seacock & started again. Now, the LP pump develops only negative pressure in watermaking mode.

I am trying different things recommended by Parker (who bought out VM?) but no luck so far.

Lack of concentration trying to finish a project deep into the night.

Streff

Back to the pier hose.

Streff said:

We have a Village Marine WM. I bought all new membranes and cleaning cartridges in the hope of using it much more this year. I went through all the flushing, cleaning cartridges protocol by the book.. all seemed fine as expected. Then I started the watermaking process. However stupidly, I had the seacock closed and the unit started making weird noises. I took me 15-20 sec, if that, to realize what’s happening. Turned things off, opened the seacock & started again. Now, the LP pump develops only negative pressure in watermaking mode.

I am trying different things recommended by Parker (who bought out VM?) but no luck so far.

Lack of concentration trying to finish a project deep into the night.

Streff

Click to expand...

Usually when you dead head the high pressure output it blows a hose loose, so I assume you only started the low pressure pump before discovering your error. But I'm confused what you mean by "negative pressure". My VM only shows flow, which starts at zero gpm, and can't reflect negative anything. Could you clarify?

So your LP pump is not operating it seems.

A few seconds should not damage it. Have you tried to just power the LP pump???

It should provide positive pressure to the HP pump.

Do you have a low pressure gauge on your watermaker? My watermaker LP pump supplies about 40 PSI to the HP when it's off, and about 20 when the HP pump is running.

Thank you for the comments. I do have a gauge for the LP pump. It ranges from -20 to 30 psi. Usually when I activate the LP pump it shows 10psi. Now when I run it to make water, it reads -10psi creeping to 0psi. Anything under 5psi, manual says check prefilter (which is fine).

Interestingly when I do a Flush the LP pump jumps to 30psi then back to 5psi. It never did that.

When I operate the LP by itself, it shows negative vacuum psi.

When I screwed up, one of the hoses made a high sucking noise then back normal. There is a valve solenoid that connects the hoses from the membranes, pump, etc.. It is connected to the output water gauge as well. I think this unit got subjected to the high vacuum pressure and got damaged. But I have no way to test it.

Could the high vacuum pressure sucking on the strainer cause damage to it. I don’t have the spinnaker to open the strainer. Not easy to find when cruising.

Streff

You probably just need to re-prime the LP pump.

gsholz said:

You probably just need to re-prime the LP pump.

Click to expand...

Quite possibly correct.

Certainly there is a problem in the LP pump or it's feed