To kick this series off I want to go over all the pieces and parts of Utopia's potable water system. From tankage, water procurement, pressurization, hot water and desalination I will try to be as through as possible. So lets talk water:
Tankage
So where do we keep the water on our boat? Utopia is a Caliber 40 LRC sailboat and the LRC stands for Long Range Cruiser. One of the things that makes it a long range cruiser is the tankage it boast for water, fuel and blackwater. Utopia comes with forward and and aft water tanks that sit on the centerline of the boat under the sole of the salon and forward berth. The aft tank is 110 gallons and the forward is 55 gallons making a grand total of 165 gallons of freshwater that we can carry on the boat. When one tank empties it takes just a few seconds to close the valve to the empty tank and open the valve to the other tank. One of the items I would like to the system to add is a level gauge. Right now there is a sight glass on each tank and I can look into it to "sort of" see how much water we have left. It's not perfect but having two tanks is helpful in case we misjudge usage. I think a ballpark estimate of usage for me and Sondra for bathing and cooking is about 10 gallons a day which is over two weeks of water. If we had to we could stretch it much longer than that.
Distribution and Filtration
This brings us to the distribution portion. On board we have five locations on the boat where we have pressurized water on board. Starting from front to back: forward shower, forward sink, galley sink, aft head sink/shower combo and swim platform shower. Each one of these has a drain that flows down to a thru-hull at the bottom of the boat. This water does not go do the holding tank (which I will cover in another article and is standard for most boats in this area). Knowing this, we are very cognizant of what goes down the drain in the sinks.
Throughout the boat we have a pex piping network for hot and cold water that is pressurized through a 12 v pump up to a useable pressure. In line with that pump is an accumulator which helps the pump not cycle continuously while using the water. If you have used a water system on a boat you know that intermittent "whirr" of pump cycling on and off. Without an accumulator it would be very annoying when you turn on the faucets. When we first come to the boat we turn the pump, which will pressurize the system a few seconds; It will then be quiet, ready for water usage whenever you need. It's always a good idea to turn off the pressure when you leave the boat. An interesting story story is that one evening upon returning to the boat after going out for dinner, we found the drinking water faucet in the galley running! This alarmed us at first, until we figured our that our cat had kicked the faucet when he came to greet our return, and it started running the water. I could see a situation where one could accidently leave the water, emptying out one of the water tanks. Problematic to say the least. Sometime we place a cup over the faucet to attempt to cat-proof the faucet.
In line with the pressure systems is a total boat filtration system. When the water leaves the tank it goes through a carbon filter before it reaches any of the faucets. In addition to that, we have a stand alone drinking faucet that has an additional Seagull filter in the galley. This has been very successful in making our drinking water taste just as good as the water that comes out of the tap on land.
Hot Water
A small but important item. We have a 10-gallon hot water heater that works through the inverter (120 AC), or when the engine is on, will heat the water up to an alarmingly high temperature. It uses about 1,000 watts when it's heating, so we want to heat the water and then turn it off if we are in energy conservation mode, for example, we need to remember to shut it off while at anchor, turning it on just during the short periods we may need it. Once heated it stays hot for several hours. After running the engine we have hot water for many hours since it's hotter than the element can make it.
Water Sources
Utopia has two deck fittings for the two water tanks along the port side of the boat. It's easy enough to fill the tanks at the marina and we typically use an RV filter at the point it enters the tanks. That primary filter removes a lot of the impurities before it enters the tank and the additional filters after the tanks make it very clean for consumption. We also add some water conditioner when we fill the tanks. I am not sure if this helps or not but the last owner did it and he indicated that it kept the water fresher in the tanks for a longer period of time.
One thing Utopia has was a big selling point for us, and that is the watermaker. When we are remote and we don't have an other freshwater source, the watermaker will be where we get our H2O. Sondra went into it in some detail last week and I touched on it a bit before, but we have a Spectra Cape Horn watermaker (desalinator) that is very energy efficient (runs on 12 v battery bank) and makes up to 16 gallons an hour. In essence it take salt water out of the ocean via a low pressure pump and send it through another high pressure pump which in turn passes it through a membrane that lets freshwater through and stops the salt water from passing. The salt water brine reject water is passed overboard again and the fresh water it sent to a testing spigot at the galley. Salt water has about 35,000 parts per million (ppm) of salt. The membrane reduces this down to around 200 ppm which is considered very potable drinking water. Once we have determined that the water coming from the watermaker is good, we turn a valve and the water is then directed to the freshwater tanks.
The watermaker does have some additional maintenance to keep the system in top working order. Every time we use it we need to back flush it with some fresh water to keep the sea life out of the filter. Even if we aren't using it we need to do this at least every 5 days to keep the filters fresh. Also, when leaving the boat for an extend period of time we need to "pickle" the water maker. That just means filling the filter, pumps and hoses with a special solution that will pretty much keep critters from growing in the system.
The last item is something we might add in the future and that would be some kind of rain catchment system. It's very common for sailboats to shunt water from the decks into the deck fill fittings. We could fashion some sort of diversion system to do this. Not critical for us right now but might be something to keep in mind as a back up to the watermaker.
So that pretty much sums it up for Drinking Water. I think the next topic will be a doozy and I will be covering our Black Water system for the boat. I will probably discuss some nasty stuff and recent fun rebuild of our Lavac vacuum head so stay tuned!
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