Cruising Forums

mico · 07-13-2010, 04:02 AM

Greetings from the tropics.

Just saw the delivery guy off with a signed docket and a lower back sprain and am now looking at a second hand 40E Katadyn watermaker sitting on my studio floor.

It looks brand new although I know its actually 16 months old, but the membrane has been pickled and I'm assured it works a treat.

The question is now where to put it, as my original thought of the knife and fork draw just clearly is not going to work!

From what I read, they are not the quietest things about so I am thinking about down inside a stern locker. Well actually on the bulkhead on the engine and exhaust side of the locker. I can access this pretty easily from the other locker which I can climb down into and move about on a small platform above the cuttless bearing and stern tube.

That will give me a direct line to tap into the water intake for the engine; I can run another line down into the spare tank with a plumbed elbow into the sink for testing; and the salt water output can run straight down into the line that feeds our loo as the saltwater intake. The idea being is that we close this off with a valve at the loo and holding tank so the salty outflow from the Katadyn will just run down the pipe and out via gravity.

We've never owned a watermaker but have always looked on enviously to those who did, and have enjoyed their goodwill in taking pity on us when we have paddled over with empty drums in hand and whimpering lower lips.

I'm reading heaps about them but nothing says anything about heat.

You see, even with ventilation, our stern hold and lockers are open to the back of the engine. It can get rather warm back there if we have been motoring for a while.

Can anyone shed any light how this might affect the watermaker before I start chopping and cutting and running piping?

I understand that if the watermaker is not run for more than 3 days you need to run a biocide through the membrane. We can do that from the locker up top if I run a small feeder hose through but do we also have to run the biocide through the filter as well? This is the filter that runs between the seawater intake and the watermaker. If so I might need to rethink placement.

All views, thoughts and comments most welcome

fair winds

Mico

redbopeep · 07-13-2010, 02:46 PM

sorry, can't speak to this issue for you but...

I've always had the best luck by directly contacting a manufacturer about the particular product. You might wish to call them and ask for tech support, a sales "engineer", or similar... OR email them with your model info and ask the question. If you call, typically you can get a quick answer whereas email can take a while.

Katadyn North America Inc.

6325 Sandburg Road

Minneapolis, MN 55427

U.S.A.

Tel +1 800 755 6701

Fax +1 763 746 3540

My link

mico · 07-14-2010, 09:04 AM

I've always had the best luck by directly contacting a manufacturer about the particular product. You might wish to call them and ask for tech support, a sales "engineer", or similar... OR email them with your model info and ask the question. If you call, typically you can get a quick answer whereas email can take a while.

Thanks for that but I had spoken to both the Australian distributors and the US and they said the opposite to each other.

Generally it's been my experience that sadly, the level of product knowledge and experience is plummeting right across the board as far as staffing. The 'old salts' go out the door to be replaced by the salary discount of youth. No one in their right mind would ask for advice from any chandlery up this way. A shop slogan 'friendly advice' usually means the completely confused salesperson is smiling when they tell you that they have no idea what the hell you are talking about.

Best advice we have always received is from other yachties who have already taken the dark journey and emerged out the other side. We spent months afloat trying to hook up a weather fax following an instruction manual that was written by the editor of the encyclopedia Britanica. It took a weathered salt to climb aboard Mico at Chesterfield Reef midway between Oz and New Caledonia and without batting an eyelid picked up our manual and asked me to show him the bilge. There was me thinking that perhaps it had something to do with grounding to a thru hull when he simply dropped the manual in

He just smiled and assured us that the manual wasn't worth the paper it was written on and then hooked us up in about 15min.

Oh you just have to love technology

but if anyone has any experience with these units - we'd love to hear from you.

Fair winds.

redbopeep · 07-14-2010, 06:04 PM

I would never suggest that you get the info from a chandler. Sorry if you got that impression. I provided a link to the manufacturer in the USA for a reason.

Forget the distributors, go straight to the manufacturer company (US) and get their spec on the product. There's nothing "old salt" required here, rather it's a matter of getting the proper info from the proper place: skip the sales staff, go to the engineering staff (which may include sales engineers, though) and get the info you need about the range of operating temperatures for the product (both water temperature and engine room temperature). This info will be in writing and it should be no big deal to get it direct from the mfr.

Cruisers are a wealth of information about the real-world conditions that your watermaker can work in. But, if you use that information without having the manufacturers spec for reference, you can be blind-sided by some detail you needed but didn't get from the helpful cruisers.

Sadly, an entirely different issue-- boating electronics does seem to have awful instruction manuals but a bit of software/electronics is a very different animal than a mechanical system which is what you're dealing with in a watermaker.

Hopefully someone will come along with direct experience with your watermaker or similar. I'd still heavily suggest that you dig out the spec from the mfr.

Regards,

mico · 07-15-2010, 03:40 AM

[QUOTE=redbopeep' date='15 July 2010 - 03:58 AM;1279130671]

I would never suggest that you get the info from a chandler. Sorry if you got that impression. I provided a link to the manufacturer in the USA for a reason.

No problem Redbopeep

- appreciate your help. The sales staff thing just happens to be a particular rant for me at present, for as a marketer I'm just going crazy with the short sightedness of some businesses taking the cheap option by employing kids who have no product knowledge whatsoever.

They spend a small fortune to market their business and lose it all on the sales floor. Everything is dumbing dumbing dumbing down

redbopeep · 07-15-2010, 06:14 AM

I have issues with "sales" folks as well. It's not just the young ones that are problematic though--the older grey hairs are pretty slick talkers who may convince you they know what's going on when they don't. Skip the sales folks and go for the tech support ones.

MMNETSEA · 07-15-2010, 08:02 AM

Hi Mico,

Let's see if we can get hold of our Cruising Mod 'Trim" I seem to remember him installing the same brand of RO components.

Richard

PS.... sent him an email via HF radio winlink - he is somewhere in the South Pacific driving off naked ladies who are swimming out to his boat. Might take some time for him to address your probs.

Richard

mico · 07-15-2010, 09:08 AM

PS.... sent him an email via HF radio winlink - he is somewhere in the South Pacific driving off naked ladies who are swimming out to his boat. Might take some time for him to address your probs.

Richard

[/quote]

Driving off naked ladies swimming out to his boat?

Well I wont hold my breath about hearing back from him in a hurry. In circumstances like that, sitting at the nav desk checking my emails is the last thing I'd want to be doing

owwww!

Just got a clip around the ear from the boss lady - didn't know she was looking over my shoulder

fair winds