Watermaker

Hi, could anybody give advice on where the best place to feed the water into the tanks water produced from a water maker. I am curretly feeding in, via a T connection, after the high pressure valve (with the valve open) and before the pump. I have the pressure system switched on.   As we have three tanks it is not practical to feed into all three tanks directly.

I am told by the manufactures this is correct, but I am not convinced as the pressure pump is creating suction so the sweet water has to fight this pressure to get into the tanks.  

Dear John,

did you see Stefano's (Oracabessa, 411/009) Schenker watermaker installation during the Rendez-vous? If not I will ask him to reply and post some pics.

Fair winds!

Matteo (38/067 Only You)

Hi John,
It sounds like the manufacturer is correct. We have two water makers, and our 135ltr/hr has the sweet water going to a valve directly on the suction manifold, in our case 5 tanks, via its own valve. This allows the water to be directed to any tank, and is the same effect as you have done using the tee. It does have to overcome the pressure of partially filled tanks, as you point out, but this big watermaker is nearly unaffected. We tested this the same way we periodically run the output to a 20 ltr container and time it filling, and so we have a benchmark for filters, pump seals and RO elements performance.

Our second water maker is a PUR 40, only 6 litres/hr, and it is installed to one tank only by taking off the cleaning/inspection plate on the top of the tank and installing a new fitting there.
The sweet water now falls into this tank only, without backpressure of a partially full tank, and out put is improved by just under 10% for this small unit. We tried it both ways.

Both watermakers have booster pumps, and this greatly aids keeping rated output as the suction filters become loaded up.

Hope this information is useful.

Robert

Hi John,

I simply pipe the fresh water direct into the No.1 tank. I have had an extra inlet pipe welded onto the cap. This seems to work very well. I have not set up pipe work to the No.2 tank as I tend to keep this as a reserve tank and only use the No.1 tank. I have on two occasions had problems with the inlet. I use the same inlet as the sea water pump, which is slightly offset to port. On these occasions the inlet must have rolled clear of the water and the priming has been lost, thus letting the high pressure pump run dry. This destroys the pump, as in my case it is not self priming. I therefore carry a spare pump head in case this happens, which it did on the way back from the Azores this summer.

I am intrigued as to where you have put the watermaker. I could not work it out from your photos on the web site.

Cheers

Anthony