Serviced Watermaker

It’s a Village Marine Tec “little wonder” watermaker.  Supposed to output 6-8 gph (gallons per hour).  The installation by the previous owner’s is quite beautiful–very compact, well labelled, with plenty of attention to detail.  We hadn’t used or even tried the watermaker whatsoever; it wasn’t a priority in light of more critical projects.

Before we departed San Diego I wanted to get this taken care of, because I knew it would be nearly impossible to get parts anywhere along our route.  Even though I was pretty positive that it would need a new membrane, I turned it on and ran it and messed around with it a bit to get the hang of it before replacing it, so that I wouldn’t ruin our new membrane.

First I had to redo much of the plumbing: the original configuration of the boat had pressurized freshwater which we removed, and the watermaker was plumbed into that system.  So I carefully considered all the rules and requirements listed in the watermaker manual, designed a new plumbing arrangement, and made that happen.

One of the biggest changes with the plumbing is that the carbon filter became unnecessary within the watermaker circuit, so I replumbed the system so the water from the tank passes through the carbon filter on its way to the galley sink.  Convenient that I could use the existing installation to filter our drinking water.  Next owners of Syzygy, hopefully you read this and take note and are less confused as a result.

I replaced the membrane–that was close to $300 I believe.  Then I dismantled, cleaned, reassembled, and changed the oil in the high-pressure pump.  Things still weren’t proceeding smoothly, so I redid all the wiring–new terminals, cleaned the terminal block, put dielectric grease on everything.  Still not happy.  After much investigation I discovered that the low-pressure pump had a cracked a manifold, so I had to spend another $250 for the pump–expensive pump, a little sealed, magnetically operated jobby.

After all that was said and done, the thing worked–at about 4 gallons per hour.  Which makes me really mad, because 4 gallons per hour is next to nothing.  It turned out to be very impractical to ever run the pump, because it drew so much power for so little return.  Moreover, with two 75 gallon water tanks we never got close to running out of water.  We didn’t even have to refill it that often–with three people on board it still lasted about 3 weeks without a refill.  Not having pressurized water, and only using a small amount of freshwater for rinsing off after salt water showers made an enormous difference in water usage.  Plus we carried spare four 6-gallon jerry jugs of emergency water up on the rail, besides.

Consequently, the watermaker was operated only rarely, which is bad for the membrane and causes it to fail–you’re supposed to run it at least once a week to keep it operational.  So I spent all that money and did all that work and the watermaker is too low volume to be worthwhile, and wasn’t even necessary.  Bummer.