Water Maker

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Bears Spirit

Newbie
Joined
Dec 15, 2017
Messages
1
Location
Canada
Vessel Name
Snug at Sea
Vessel Make
Pilgrim 40
Well, the time has finally arrived and we get to travel to Vancouver Island to go through the process of buying our retirement float home ... 1995 40' Queenship Aft Cabin. As she comes without a tender, we have settled on the Gala A300HD, Yamaha F9.9 and Seawise davit system quote we received. It was reasonable easy to validate this pricing.

As we expect to do a lot of extended cruising in the PNW, the Admiral and I both feel that a water maker is a necessity. Any advise from members here would be greatly appreciated, as we have no knowledge or experience in this area. This boat is fitted with a 100 gallon fwt.
 
Welcome Bear! Good info on the threads above. Crusty and I have the same water maker, 40gpm. A great system.


Again, welcome to the floating retirement!
 
40 gpm?

So what do you do with 57,600 gallons of water per day if you run your maker 24 hours?:)
 
The issue of whether a 12v or 110v watermaker is right up there with the best anchor and singles vs twins. No agreement.

Virtue of 110v is large output per hour, but realistically requires the generator to be running. 12 v units can be run off the battery bank.

As a practical matter for me the decision is with a 110v unit can I get enough output during my normal 45 minutes of generator run time. With my 12 v unit I run it for 2 hours then continue to run it during the 45 minutes when I charge my batteries. Also with the 12 v unit I almost always run it when underway, which in my case is clean ocean water. Clean water is not found in a number of harbors in which we anchor and in which we do run the generator.
 
So what do you do with 57,600 gallons of water per day if you run your maker 24 hours?:)
I'd be interested in learning more about a 2,400 gph watermaker, especially the fuel required to run it for 24 hours.

Likely only suited for larger boats?
 
Unless you want the expense of total automatic, proprietary filters, membranes, parts, Cruise RO or something very similar is the way to go. I wish I would have bought one of theirs instead of building my own. It's a great deal!
Having plenty of water makes life much easier aboard. I make 50 gallons an hour, rarely run the watermaker an hour a day unless I have lots of people aboard, and then still have plenty of water. I haven't used dock water in 6 years.
Washer, dishwasher, icemakers, long showers, just like a house, but no grass to cut.
 
Yes, you want a water maker. For two people, 24 gph works fine for us, and that includes my pressure washing the boat every couple of days with fresh water, fresh water flush toilets, showers, washing machine, etc. I wired ours to the inverter, so we make water under way, or if at anchor via genset in 90 minutes or so.
 
The issue of whether a 12v or 110v watermaker is right up there with the best anchor and singles vs twins. No agreement.

Virtue of 110v is large output per hour, but realistically requires the generator to be running. 12 v units can be run off the battery bank.

As a practical matter for me the decision is with a 110v unit can I get enough output during my normal 45 minutes of generator run time. With my 12 v unit I run it for 2 hours then continue to run it during the 45 minutes when I charge my batteries. Also with the 12 v unit I almost always run it when underway, which in my case is clean ocean water. Clean water is not found in a number of harbors in which we anchor and in which we do run the generator.

Most of the time in our trip this past summer, Crusty and I would be making 4 to 6 hour runs, so running the water maker for 3 hours wasn't an issue and as I am an electric boat, running the genny was also no issue.
 

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