making water

Those of you who have been following my blogs for a while might remember my water-maker issues. Crossing the Pacific to Hawaii, the water maker was leaking so badly it was putting more fresh water in the bilge than it was in the tank.

I've torn it apart a couple time over the years, but this time I decided to take it to the manufactures service rep because he has a bench in a lab that supplies what the unit needs to operate. For a reasonable price he was able to resolve the leaks much better than I probably would have been able to on the boat.

It was with that background that I was looking forward to firing up the new rebuilt water maker. Alas, when I did it failed.

It was quickly evident that the feed pump wasn't turning on.

I exchanged emails with the Spectra service rep who suggested we try isolating a pressure switch. If the pressure becomes too high, the water maker is shut down by turning off the feed pump. When we did that the water maker worked great. In fact, as we're motoring along now it's making 6 gallons of water per hour. This is a nine hour day so we should be able to make more than 50 gallons. Showers tonight!