Testing a Katadyn 40e watermaker when living in a freshwater environment.

[Grith]

Hi all Just looking for some advice. I have purchased a secondhand Katadyn 40e reverse osmosis watermaker. It is for a planned 3 month trip without resupply ability next year. I am balancing a permanent fitment and trying to box it to make it portable as I don’t think we will use it much after this coming trip having enough onboard water storage and sea/riverwater tricks to last 4-6 weeks and being a coastal and inland waters craft we are not usually away from potable water sources longer than that.
We live in a fresh water river/lake side marina development and the nearest seawater is over an hours drive by car away and 6 hours by yacht.
Can someone suggest the best way to test the Katadyn and for me to practice use and cleaning whilst located here not wanting our big adventure to be my first real use.
Thanks in anticipation.

[Sailmonkey]

Buy some artificial ocean for an aquarium, mix up 5 gallons of seawater and use that to run the thing. Just be sure to use non chlorinated water.

Usually available at the aquarium store.

https://www.peacocksalt.com/seamix-a...ater-25kg-bag/

[Grith]

Originally Posted by Sailmonkey

Buy some artificial ocean for an aquarium, mix up 5 gallons of seawater and use that to run the thing. Just be sure to use non chlorinated water.

Usually available at the aquarium store.

https://www.peacocksalt.com/seamix-a...ater-25kg-bag/

Great suggestion thanks. We exist on river and rainwater here so chlorination no issue. 🙂

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Grith

Hi all Just looking for some advice. I have purchased a secondhand Katadyn 40e reverse osmosis watermaker. It is for a planned 3 month trip without resupply ability next year. I am balancing a permanent fitment and trying to box it to make it portable as I don’t think we will use it much after this coming trip having enough onboard water storage and sea/riverwater tricks to last 4-6 weeks and being a coastal and inland waters craft we are not usually away from potable water sources longer than that.
We live in a fresh water river/lake side marina development and the nearest seawater is over an hours drive by car away and 6 hours by yacht.
Can someone suggest the best way to test the Katadyn and for me to practice use and cleaning whilst located here not wanting our big adventure to be my first real use.
Thanks in anticipation.

Here's some good I found from a couple years ago .
https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...er-256824.html
A cruisers forum search is a good friend .

[dougweibel]

You will probably want to test the water maker longer than a 5 gallon bucket will supply input so direct the output of the water maker, both the brine discharge and the fresh water output, back into the original 5 gallon bucket. If you don't send the fresh water output back to the input bucket the salinity will increase as all the salt stays in the loop but you are removing fresh water. Taking reasonable quantities out will make no difference but you wouldn't want to take out a couple gallons and have the salinity double.

[s/v Jedi]

Besides buying ocean water for the test (which is needed to verify if it works correctly) you can also run fresh water through it from lakes and rivers to make it potable. But there is a catch: you must adjust pressure for the maximum output of the membrane, not for a value like for example 800psi because the membrane would produce too much then.

[Pete7]

Gary's manual for the 35 and 40 is in the CF library. His website is down, but his manual lives on following his work on these over many years:

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...rt=date&page=2

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Pete7

Gary's manual for the 35 and 40 is in the CF library. His website is down, but his manual lives on following his work on these over many years:

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...rt=date&page=2

Excellent Pete this will save me lots of emails. I have had it on file for a decade or more myself

[Grith]

Just an update. Having played with all sorts of potential locations on my small trailerable cruising yacht and not being happy with any I finally decided to make my secondhand Katadyn Power Survivor 40e a portable unit.
After hunting around I found a pelican style case copy at a discount auto parts store for A$99 and proceeded to play with fitting the 40e into it.
The fitment is complete now and I am very happy with the outcome which may on some belated research turn out to be smaller and lighter than any commercially available 12v powered Reverse Osmosis portable solution.
If anyone has or knows of smaller lighter alternatives I would be very interested in a link to view them?
I was very fortunate my secondhand unit came with a new membrane and lots of spares including two extra two way valves which I put to good use. All three are used in ,through and on the case.
The waste brine (in, to stop leaking further brine after use), output ( through, with just the handle protruding to change between a product testing output and the product delivery line) and (on, is the intake line with selection between the salt water inlet and inlet for pickling brine).
The last had to be “on”( via screwing the valve stored in the case externally to a protruding through the lid thread) due to finding a way to fit the prefilter into the case whilst remaining able to change the filter cartridge with the filter in place.
The case also stores a spare prefilter cartridge, pickling fluid, lubrication fluid, testing meter and all the required hoses when the unit is in use along with a few other spares.
Closed up it is fairly water resistant and I am still working on this aspect with a view to making it almost water tight.
In use the case is closed and sits upright on my stern swim platform secured to my yacht by its sturdy handle to a Bimini pole support.
It stores extremely compactly in my stern generator box still leaving room for my smaller Honda eu10 generator but not quite enough for the Honda eu2.2 it is designed to accommodate due to both needing to tilt slightly to pass through the opening and conflicting if the bigger one is already in there.
It will however also alternatively fit in one of the cockpit lockers or an under settee berth locker. With our new extended solar panel setup we didn’t even need to fire up the smaller Honda eu10 on our last two month cruise and I am considering leaving even this behind in future so this isn’t a big issue.
The unit in its case with all spares and accessories weighs under 20.5kgs making it a truely portable unit weighing less than my 20litres portable fuel containers.