Watermaker location?

Hi Jeff – thanks for the reply.

Yes – watermaker decisions are tough. They are not cheap and add maintenance. Do we really need one for our future cruising plans? If yes, what’s the best watermaker?

I’ve been pondering this for a couple months, reading as much as I can. We finally decided that there is no right answer, so we decided that if we get one, what is best for us is:

1) If we buy a DC model, then we can run from renewable energy when possible, and run the engine to produce DC power when desperate. Besides, an engine driven one makes me think we’d be lugging from shore jerry cans of diesel rather than jugs of water.

2) We won’t use excessive amounts of water just because we can make fresh water since running the watermaker is not free.

3) We have to run the watermaker frequently to avoid pickling, so we’ll pick a unit that in about 3 hours run time will produce our needs and run it every 2-3 days using excess renewable energy.

4) We’ll pick a DC unit that has consumables and other parts readily available from a variety of sources, rather than pick one that requires proprietary (and therefore more expensive) parts.

Hope these guesses are right for us. It’s so hard to know, without ever having used one. But I think we’re about to buy one and find out.

Marilyn

Hi Jeff –
I didn’t mean we will fill the water tank in 3 hours of runtime, but that we will meet our needs in 3 hours runtime.

We’ve learned that the 2 of us comfortably need about 4-5 gallons. Sure we could use more, but that’s enough for our normal cruising lifestyle. So if we run the unit every 3 days for 3 hours, we’ll need to produce 15 gallons usable water plus the water needed for flushing the system (maybe another 3 gallons). If we decide we need more water than that, then maybe we’ll run the unit every 2 days so we can have 7.5 gallons per day.

Our future cruising plans take us to where reliable water will not be available, so we’re going to have to do something. We’re debating on adding wing tanks to increase capacity and then rely on rainwater catchment, or install the watermaker and believe that a mechanical device will work when we need it to. Both solutions have a certain amount of faith involved.

We will update later if we decide to buy one and install it.

Marilyn

We decide to install a Village Marine Little Wonder LWM-145 in the aft head space (which is no longer a head on our boat).
We used the watermaker on our Pacific crossing from the Seattle area to Hilo Hawaii. We were very happy to have it, since we did not have significant rain for the entire 29 day trip. We would run it about 45 mins a day to fill 3 gallon jugs, which kept us in drinking water. We used the tank water for cooking and washing.

The unit seems to work as spec’d. I think the manual is HORRIBLE. It’s a mishmash of former information from before Parker bought the company, and new Parker information. Sometimes the information is contradictory.

We bought the unit from Oil Filter Service in San Diego. Funny name for a company that sells watermakers, but they are a large Parker distributor and so picked up these LWM models. I found Oil Filter Service to be very helpful, and I would buy from them again. They have an online shop where you can see prices. We got a good sale price during the San Diego boat show, and then had the unit shipped to Seattle for us to install it. Their technician gave us phone support during the install.