Water Maker Installation

Main goal (apart from getting water):

• Super clean, tidy installation.

• All in one area

• Easy operation

What we did different

Compared to other installations we've seen, ours is more compact and clean for some specific reasons.

• We have the valves for "Sample/Product" and "Tank1/ Tank2 " installed into the same box as the gauges.

• We have the "Sample" water led to the fresh water spigot (the one for the foot-pump) in the galley sink.

Conclusions

We are able to make all water we use onboard by running the watermaker for many hours one day a week. It is more efficient to run it for a long time one day, rather than short time every day. The reason being that you have to back-flush the system wasting 3.5 gallons every time.

We picked the Spectra unit for several reasons. First, it's a 12 volt, low power, high efficiency (electrical) unit. So we don't need the inverter to make water. Second, the 150 unit can make water in low sea-temperature conditions, which is important to us since we want to be able to go to high latitudes. If we would only cruise warmer waters, we would go for the 200T. The downside with the 12 volt systems are capacity. We only make 6.5 gallons an hour (8.5 for the 200T).

We're very satisfied with our choice. However, if we had a generator onboard, we would have chosen a line voltage watermaker with much higher capacity. In other words, we would sacrifice energy efficiency for speed of making water. DC systems have lower capacity. It's easy to find AC watermakers that produce 40+ gal/hour. However, as recommended, we run our watermaker every 5 days and only replenish what we've used. Since it's most often only the two of us aboard, and that we grew up with a 100L (25Gal) of water capacity and no watermaker on previous boats, we do not consume that much water. We almost exclusively make water while under way. So it works very well for us. But if anyone envision having plenty of people on-board, and landlubbers who you do not want to be the water-police for. Then an AC system might make sense.