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From: Rick Kennerly (no email)
Date: Mon Feb 04 2002 - 06:02:55 EST
=Does anyone onlist use a water catchment system onboard? ....SU
=
We do, but only collect rain water well offshore or downwind from
non-industrial islands. And we always fit one of those RV store filters
that has garden hose fittings on each end to the catchment system anyway.
About drinking water, however, it seems to me that there are two different
things to look at here.
First of all, the tanks and how they're treated. They should be cleaned
every year and even if you do have good access, they should be "shock"
treated with a healthy dose of chlorine (assuming the tanks are not made of
a reactive material, or any of the water treatments recommended for your
tanks) and left to stand for 24 hours. Be sure to circulate the shock
treatment through all your hoses, too. Then the tanks and hoses should be
flushed several times. You'll need to filter all the water going in on
every fill, even when you're flushing the tanks as you clean them.
Drinking water is clearly a case of GIGO, garbage in, garbage out, but the
fact is you'll never get your holding systems really sterile, so you need to
slightly over chlorinate (or otherwise treat with iodine, purification
tablets, etc.) the water you hold.
The second part is how you filter the water at the sink. We use a double
filtration system, similar to the way most of us treat our diesel. The
first is an in-line RV store filter (always cheaper than boat store) that
removes coarse particles, chlorine, and has a silver mesh which kills
bacteria that "stand" in the stagnant water inside the filter between uses.
The next filter is a PUR filter, which is even finer and takes care of those
non-bacteria organisms travel books are always warning us about.
This makes for somewhat slower flow at the sink, which is a pain when
drawing cooking water. For that, we have a foot pump with another of the RV
filters in-line, which is good enough for water you're going to boil anyway.
Rick
----------------------------------------------------------
Rick the Mouseherder - nh2f
Westsail 32 Xapic, Hull #438
Cabo San Juan, Puerto Rico
A small boat and a suitcase full of money
beats a 40 footer tied to the Bank.
Visit our Westsail 32 Xapic
http://www.mouseherder.com/xapic
The Westsail Owners Assn. Homepage
http://www.westsail.org
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