Watermaker to fill multiple tanks

[Nibiruwayne]

Originally Posted by Tellie

"Sour" is am term I've always used for bio-fouling, and yes it can happen as quickly as overnight.

"If you are filling your tanks from a watermaker, your tanks will never go "sour" and certainly not "overnight."....,

Then you don't quite understand how it happens. In fact using RO only in your tank will hasten fouling faster than filling your tanks with good dock water. Dock water contains a certain amount chlorine to maintain the quality of water. RO water has none. Your fresh water tanks all have air vents. These air vents is where you get tank contamination from regardless of how careful you filter the incoming water. Depending on where your air vent terminates can mean a lot. Some terminate on the outside of the hull where it is exposed to outside air contaminants. Many are just terminated with a short hose vented into a locker, bilge, lazarett, etc. area that sees tons of mold and other growth issues. These fresh water tanks are constantly "Breathing" in and out through these air vents as water sloshes around as the boat is moving. All the effort to maintain a clean tank is great, but you just can't defeat the air vent. Just adding RO water to a tank means nothing. For the most part it's like putting good bourbon in a dirty glass.

Biofilm is a problem on any boat with a water supply system. It is true that RO water has no bio protection unless you add a chemical like chlorine. These days nobody wants to drink water out of the tanks of a boat, and instead, prefer or demand bottled water. This takes up space and adds costs, and then there's the refuse. We solved the problem by purchasing a couple of inline filters for solids, and then plumbing in a low energy consuming device called a pfds. This is a brand new cool product that when supplied with a small amount of AC current from your genset or dockpower into DC current. This device then produces 2ppm of ozone from the water itself. Ozone kills and destroys bacteria, fungi, parasites such as GIardia, all viruses and prions ( the cystic form of viruses-like a spore), and it does this 3000 times faster than chlorine. There is no residual toxic chemical like you have with chlorine. And it makes any water supply, including rivers and lakes, perfectly safe to drink after it has degraded for 30 minutes.
All our water flows through this pfds on the way to the tanks. It makes the water safe. And, as the previous writer said, we then can add a smaller amount of chlorine for residual protection.
In our installation, we put another pfds before the water supply to the galley sink to provide safe water to cook and drink with without adding chlorine.
To learn more look up BNA (Biosure North America), San Antonio, Texas,
Until 2020, these products were not available in North America.
Further, there are personal portable tumblers that do the same thing using a re=chargeable battery energy supply.
This has no doubt minimized cross contamination on our boat, we spray and use ozone in our onboard clothes washer and we spray our raw food and vegetables ( think chicken-Salmonella) before we cook it.
I am a dentist and use it extensively in my office for all kinds of disinfection and decontamination- all you need is water and a little electricity.

All the best

[rabbi1384]

Originally Posted by Nibiruwayne

Biofilm is a problem on any boat with a water supply system. It is true that RO water has no bio protection unless you add a chemical like chlorine. These days nobody wants to drink water out of the tanks of a boat, and instead, prefer or demand bottled water. This takes up space and adds costs, and then there's the refuse. We solved the problem by purchasing a couple of inline filters for solids, and then plumbing in a low energy consuming device called a pfds. This is a brand new cool product that when supplied with a small amount of AC current from your genset or dockpower into DC current. This device then produces 2ppm of ozone from the water itself. Ozone kills and destroys bacteria, fungi, parasites such as GIardia, all viruses and prions ( the cystic form of viruses-like a spore), and it does this 3000 times faster than chlorine. There is no residual toxic chemical like you have with chlorine. And it makes any water supply, including rivers and lakes, perfectly safe to drink after it has degraded for 30 minutes.
All our water flows through this pfds on the way to the tanks. It makes the water safe. And, as the previous writer said, we then can add a smaller amount of chlorine for residual protection.
In our installation, we put another pfds before the water supply to the galley sink to provide safe water to cook and drink with without adding chlorine.
To learn more look up BNA (Biosure North America), San Antonio, Texas,
Until 2020, these products were not available in North America.
Further, there are personal portable tumblers that do the same thing using a re=chargeable battery energy supply.
This has no doubt minimized cross contamination on our boat, we spray and use ozone in our onboard clothes washer and we spray our raw food and vegetables ( think chicken-Salmonella) before we cook it.
I am a dentist and use it extensively in my office for all kinds of disinfection and decontamination- all you need is water and a little electricity.

All the best

Theoretically sound but might leave a bad taste right? I imagine Rhine water being treated like that and I can imagine it would be safe to drink. Tasty might be a different issue there.

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by rabbi1384

You shouldn't feed directly into the tanks at all because you risk contamination. Fill a Jerry can and then fill the tanks.

Is that what you do?

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by rabbi1384

So guys, it's really not that difficult to understand. [...]
But hey, you guys of course know it better, I'm only a humble sailor who crosses oceans for the fun of it.

Yet, you're insinuating everyone else on this forum doesn't know what she's talking about...

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by rabbi1384

Interesting how all these threads turn personal. I already regret that after many years of absence I again joined a forum. I honestly think that most serious sailors don't bother and that's just what I'll do again.

Oh, sorry, I missed that post! So you just joined "again" spreading your wisdom and all you get back is.... no. forget it...

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by rabbi1384

[...]
Shame that the internet is just full of smartass know it alls.

What's your boat's name again? Why don't you put that in your signature? Just so I can make a wide berth...

[rabbi1384]

Originally Posted by hzcruiser

Yet, you're insinuating everyone else on this forum doesn't know what she's talking about...

Nope. Just saying that how you install it depends on your requirements. But on forums people seem to like dogma more than using their heads.

[rabbi1384]

Originally Posted by hzcruiser

What's your boat's name again? Why don't you put that in your signature? Just so I can make a wide berth...

Definitely recommended. Muriel is the name.

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by rabbi1384

Definitely recommended. Muriel is the name.

Thanks for that!

And what made you pick rabbi, if I may ask?

[rabbi1384]

? That's my name. What made you pick hzcruiser?

And by the way this is exactly what I mean. Only personal level. Most members on forums are normally nice guys but there's always the few who always have to be right and dominate the discussion. And when they realize they're wrong they get personal. I'm just waiting to see when the mod finally confirms the deletion of my profile on this site.
Right from the beginning you implied that only your opinion is valid and that everyone should come to see that with growing experience. Incredibly insulting to other sailors who might have found their own way of doing things and might share them on this public platform.
Anyhow, I wish you fair winds nonetheless and may they never take you anywhere close to where I'm at unless you bring a bottle of chilled white wine with you.

[rabbi1384]

Originally Posted by hzcruiser

Is that what you do?

On my other boat yes, that's exactly what I do because I use the water maker water for drinking water and the 900 liters in the tanks for everything else.

On the boat I'm living on for now I don't do it like that. I have a dedicated small tank from which I can pump the water into the main deposit as required.

I do the same with diesel by the way and so do many other sailors. Maybe not anglophones generally but especially French and Germans I know like to do that. Might be a cultural difference there too.

In both cases you could call this a day tank and even though you will surely deny that, this is a very common system for blue water cruisers.

[Lepke]

I only use RO water and live aboard. In time the tanks will contaminate. About once a month I add a small amount of chlorine (below delectable levels) to the line going to the water tank manifold. I also have filters on the galley sink and filter incoming water. In the winter I have a private dock on a river and make new water from fresh river water. My water tastes great and is usually complemented by other boat users. Water made from fresh usually has a TDS of zero or 1. The pressure only needs to be about 1/10 the pressure of making with salt water. I've had the water tested and it beats any city water by 100x. No metals, no nitrates, no chlorine, no fluoride, etc. as you'd expect from RO.

[wingssail]

We have 4 tanks. Our four tanks each have shut off valves for filling and others for opening to supply the pressure water system. We rotate the use of these tanks to keep them all equally used and freshness is not a problem (it was when we reserved tank 4 for about six months, now we don't do that).

Watermaker feeds only one tank. This is because our watermaker is small and we generally would never get that tank full with the minimal amount of daily watermaker usage. (if we make 5 gallons and use 5 gallons the tank never fills.) In fact we usually just fill water bottles from the sampling tube in the galley, toss them into the fridge, then turn off the watermaker. We have ice cold drinking water for the next day. The tank never gets much watermaker water.

However, if the watermaker did fill the tank, we'd simply open the valves to one or more other tank and the water will flow between them (we have a manifold with a valve for each tank for feeding the pressure system. with more than one tank open the water can flow from one to the other).

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by rabbi1384

? That's my name. What made you pick hzcruiser?

[...]
Anyhow, I wish you fair winds nonetheless and may they never take you anywhere close to where I'm at unless you bring a bottle of chilled white wine with you.

Cheers to that!

HZ are my initials...