Presentation of our Powersurvivor 80-ii water maker

Finally we have received our “new” Powersurvivor 80-ii water maker! We bought it second hand, it has had two owners in the past but has never been installed. It is an older version (the newer one is called Powersurvivor 80E-ii).

It runs on the 12V system, meaning the solar panels, so we don’t have to start the generator or the engine in order to produce water. This is possible since this model reuses energy in a way the most other water makers just waste over a pressure valve. When this is installed Anne-Mon will become a pretty much self-sustained boat (except the diesel, but with our enormous tanks running out of diesel is probably not an issue) and we will be able to sail to distant shores.

If you want to read more about the other equipment we got for our sailboat so far, click on the link HERE, or navigate to Cost & Information -> Sailboat Equipment. 

Below in the blog post you can read some more about our thoughts about installing the water maker, but first lets tell what more we did last weekend after our sail.

When we got back from our weekend sail to Lådna we stayed at the boat for a while to do some work. First thing we did was to finish our hot water system, the only thing left to do was to put the expansion tank to the engine cooling system in position. Our water heater is located higher than the engine and that is why we needed to add the expansion tank to raise the cooling level. That was necessary to be able to heat our water heater without adding an extra circulation pump.

We have mentioned it earlier but our water heater is extended with a beer keg for extra volume, which we have added some extra isolation on.

We put the expansion tank for the engine in position and tried it, but at first it didn’t work. The issue was that it was very difficult to bleed the hoses going to the heater.

We had to empty the cooling system and change the position of the bleeding valve to be able to get the system up and running.  After change the valve position we filled up the system, bled it ant it was up and running. We now have hot water production when we run the engine 🙂

After we were finished we continued with trying to figure out how we want to have the fresh water system with our new water maker and a solution for the holding tank. Lets start with the fresh water system:

We have 3 water tanks in total, approximately 350 liters (92 gallons) in total (picture of how our tanks are located can be found under About/The Boat ). Our idea is that we want to separate one of the tanks to be used to fill water when running the water maker, as a kind of production tank. The other two tanks will be service tanks. Whenever necessary the service tanks will be filled up with the newly made water from the production tank. This way if the water from the water maker should be contaminated in some way, it won’t contaminate the entire fresh water system. The water will also be kept in motion by having this system.

Our ideas for the holding tank is to weld our own tank that fits in one of the cabinets in the bathroom. We will pump from the toilet up and into the holding tank. It will be possible to empty the tank from deck and by gravity to the sea. In Sweden it is law that all boats with toilet needs a holding tank, and it is not allowed to empty them in the ocean within 12 nautical miles from the coast. Do far, we haven’t used our toilet yet, since the thru-hull is stuck and we don’t have a holding tank. But there is also a lot of places to empty holding tanks in Stockholm archipelago. When leaving Sweden this might be different, at least that’s what we read. We will probably have to empty at sea, since there are few places to empty the holding tanks properly. A holding tank seems like a good investment anyway, so that we don’t have to drop black water near the coasts, at beautiful anchorages or in harbors, and we will be able to empty it properly whenever possible.

This weekend we have other things planned, so no boatwork for us. But we will still continue thinking about how to solve the water system and for the holding tank. We are also trying to find a new furling genoa, but no luck so far on the second hand market.