Do you drink that stuff?

It seems that most boaters don't drink the water from their water tanks unless they live-aboard full time.

When we fill the tanks with water from a dock in the USA, the water properties are pretty good, but the hose can be a source of contamination. 70 gallons of water aboard sitting in the tanks for several weeks has the ability to go bad! But if we're filling the tanks with water that is not up to USA standards, then the old garbage in - garbage out concept comes to mind.

So we're tackling the issue in three steps.

1. Clean the tanks, that's simple (not easy, but simple), we just have to empty the tanks and power wash the insides and then flush out all of the water hoses between the tanks and the faucets.
2. Install an internal water filter for a dedicated drinking water faucet by the galley sink. We've purchased a double filter with UV treatment for that. It's pretty big! That'll be an interesting install.
3. Add a water filter to the fill system. Currently the fill system just uses whatever hose is at the dock which gets stuffed down the water fill point on the deck (amid ships and stern fill ports). We've purchased a single high volume filter with adapters to fit practically any type of hose that we expect to meet. The plan is that we'll connect the dock hose to the filter and it has a fixed hose that will get stuffed down the fill port on the deck.

So, here's what I have done so far...

The complete filter system is mounted below the galley counter between the Sink and the Freezer (that's additional foam on the right to help keep the fridge cold.)

The filters can be removed by reaching in through the lower door of the galley draw unit. If I need to replace the UV lamp, it's pretty easy to extract it but does require that I remove the draw unit completely.

The plumbing is compression fittings between the spigot (shown in the photo in the top left hand corner) and the filter system outlet (right front of the lamp unit)
The inlet to the lamp unit is on the left and connects to the output of the Carbon filter (left blue container) which is connected to the sediment filter (right blue container) and then to the water supply T'd into the the Pump output. The UV lamp is going to be powered via the Water Pressure power supply and switched via the pump pressure switch, so the lamp will be on when the pump is running.

The new 'drinking' water spigot is mounted in the starboard corner of the sink, it was easy to drill a pilot hole with a 1/8" bit, followed by a 1/2" bit.

Pretty easy to attach the securing nuts from below, I did have to drill out the corner of the counter slightly to allow the nut and spring washer to get all the way up the spigot pipe and seat against the lower side of the sink.

Looks good. I used a hole cutter and multi vibro saw to cut out the corner of sink cover board. I have it at home to clean up the edges of the new cuts and apply a couple varnish coats.

I figure the wire run from the DC panel to the pump is less than 12 feet so I'm going to replace the existing wire with a larger AWG as the pump and filter may take 8 amps when running. And I'm going to use my new label machine to label all ends so that I'm heading in the right direction working on the boat's electrical system.

Should have it all done on Friday.

Stay tuned.