We've got a
Spectra Catalina 300 with an MPC-500 Mkii installed. It was professionally installed by a
Spectra authorized re-seller in 2011 in
New England. It's worked well for years, so we can likely assume a reasonable and proper install.
Last Septemberish it started acting oddly, throwing out High Pressure warnings. We've had problems with Pressure warnings before and bad senders. I couldn't get a spare easily in
Fiji, so after doing all the stand checks -
water input lines clear, no kinks, etc. and even going so far as to clean the membrane, we decided it was the sender. So I over
rode the alarms and made
water for our last month or so in
Fiji before leaving for NZ. Pressure readings were running 130-150psi.
In NZ the water was too murky for watermaking most of the time, so we replaced the carbon filter and lived off
dock water. We ran it a few times when we moved to more
remote locations with more clear water.
All throughout, except for high pressure readings, it made good water. Decent salinity (~250-350ppm, checked with it's own and an external TDS meter), decent volume 11-12 GPM. But for most of our time in NZ we left it on the five day
cleaning cycle and didn't use it.
Back in the tropics now, and I'm seeing a few odd things, and I don't like how it's working.
1) I replaced the pressure sender (the EL-SSR-150 one). It turns out I'd brain farted and had not one, but TWO of those in my nav station I'd not filed properly in the spare
parts places. Pressure readings are unchanged.
2) It IS making water, around 10ish GPM with decent PPS. But the filter cartridge is not filling, and the pressure readings are coming in very high - 175 PSI and climbing. So I'm not running it at all.
Bring output volume is quite good. The intake line is clear, at least to the filter. In a
training incident the "close the through hull" step was done after the "remove the filter for cleaning" step...plenty of water flow there.
I've gone through some of the Trouble Shooting steps for pressure readings and the numbers look poor, I've still got to finish that testing.
But more importantly, the water filter is not completely filling. It used to fill the filter completely, but the water on intake now is only going halfway up the filter canister.
That seems like a wonky boost
pump to me. But I'm supposed to get Bad Prefilter warnings and the like for that, no?
Any insight into this mess would be appreciated. (Hey Tellie!!)
Thanks.