How do you save water aboard

[wingssail]

Our water capacity is 140 gallons. In port, when we do not conserve, we refill after 7 days. So this is 20 gallons per day. OK, that is a lot, but showers and dishes...But it is two persons!

Away from the dock our 140 gallons lasts about 28 days, so that is 5 gallons per day, or 2.5 gallons per person.

Add to that about 1 gallon per day from the watermaker, which we use for drinking.

That puts us up to 6 gallons per day (3 gallons per person).

This is not very good I guess compared to others in this thread, but it serves us.

How do we go from 20 gallons to 6 gallons per day?

Dishes washed in salt water (a pressure salt water system plumbed through the boat) and showers every third day. No other changes.

If doing an ocean crossing we'd probably change to using the foot pump, and maybe carry some water on deck (but we've never done that).

We always have made it to port before the tanks run out.

Edit:

We catch a lot of rain water in our awning. 1 inch of rain equals about 50 gallons. A good rainstorm (without a lot of wind) fills our tanks.

But there is another comment I'd like to make: We have never felt that we wanted living aboard to be a hardship. We don't want to be camping out, we'd rater be as comfy as living in a condo. I know many people adapt to the water conservation requirements and don't think of them as hardships, but for us, using a spray bottle instead of a tap at the galley sink, or showering in salt water with a rinse in fresh, or some of the other measures, would, we think, get tiring after a while.

Now we've lived on this boat for 35 years. So I guess that strategy has worked for us.

[Don C L]

I have 2 of these 2 gallon chemical sprayers (I take the wands off). Guess I only need one but they fit in a hatch easily on my little boat, and when we get where we're going I put one out on deck to get warm and the kids can take showers when we get back in the afternoon. It's amazing how much water you can save when you have a directed stream. You can soap up and rinse off with one gallon if you're careful.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Cool Hand Luke

Great info... what does your setup look like? What filters do you use? How did you connect them? Maybe send me a PM or lets start a separate thread. But that's awesome!! Sounds like you got it figured out

If you start a new thread, I'll try and follow along. For now I can just say we have a pretty standard dual-cartrige inline filter system. The filters are your standard 10" tube filters. I usually buy them from a hardware store. The first one is a physical filter, around 1 micron I think. The other is a carbon filter that removes odours and tastes.

Something like this: https://www.homedepot.ca/product/hdx...set/1000803796

Originally Posted by Don C L

I have 2 of these 2 gallon chemical sprayers (I take the wands off). Guess I only need one but they fit in a hatch easily on my little boat, and when we get where we're going I put one out on deck to get warm and the kids can take showers when we get back in the afternoon. It's amazing how much water you can save when you have a directed stream. You can soap up and rinse off with one gallon if you're careful.

We carry one of these for our cockpit shower. Ours is black, so it heats up quite well in the sun. I converted the sprayer to a trigger nozzel using a standard kitchen faucet side sprayer. Something like this: https://www.homedepot.ca/product/dan...ide/1000837729

Our tank is 3.5 gallons. It's good for three showers for us. We usually use rain water for this.

[Barkingmad]

Being Canadian as well I'd like to know what you have for a filter system as well since I can probably source it easily.

Despite 100's of gallons a summer going through my system I always have a slight chemical thing going on. I'm positive years ago the(a) previous owner poured the cheap 4$ rv ethanol antifreeze in the tanks.

[goboatingnow]

Like others I change my water strategy based on the trip and water availability

Round the Ionian I carry about 7 -8 days water the main use being shower downs after swimming

We don’t drink from the tanks. , this is an old habit from many boats ago. We can drink it if needed ( I purify on every fill )

I think it’s horses for courses

I took 4 adults across the Atlantic , we left with 750 litres , arrived with 400 !!!