Watermakers–Ya gotta have Faith…
on January 23, 2011 at 01:09I’m deep into my research about water makers, having met with Spectra, Hydrovane, and Village Marine yesterday at the Seattle Boat Show. I’ve also had extensive conversations with CruiseRO. You can see all the makesmodels and specifications of the units I’ve been looking at in my Watermaker Comparison spreadsheet.
The main debate I’m having with myself is DC or AC based systems. A DC based system has to run much longer to make an equivalent amount of water to an AC based system, but you can run it any time without starting a genset. An AC based system would mean running the Honda EU2000 generator anytime we want to make water including on longer passages.
This is feeling more and more like one of those faith or belief based decisions, as opposed to one that’s entirely gallonamp-hour based. One the one hand with a DC based system we have the opportunity to leverage alternative fuels (sun, wind, etc). With the Generator we’re always committed to burning gas, LPG or Natural gas. We also would be committed to managing the generator and running it on long passages (> 1week).
I’m really torn on this one… I’m hoping there’s something I’m not seeing and that you all might have some additional insight to help me make my decision.
Great spreadsheet. Thanks for sharing!!
We have the Spectra Catalina 300 with the MPC 5000 controller. Pros: super easy to use, freshwater flush cycle makes it simple to leave when we’re not at the boat. Cons: Loud, and at 12.5GPH, it’s going to take about 15 hours to fill the tank and it’s LOUD. It is true that you can make the DC from wind or sun or whatever, but an AC generator can make the same amount of water in 6 hours (at least the CruiseRO 30GPH can). If you’re using <30gal per day, you can run it a whole lot less often. I have a Honda EU2k I got for BM last year and maintenance is almost nil. Oil changes about every 20 hours of run time, <1 quart per change. Very quiet genset.
I guess the key questions are: Can you make enough DC power from non-bad sources? and Is there anything else you could use the genset for at the same time, thereby using less fossil fuels overall?
I decided to go the DC route, but in a way that also let’s me max out on volume if i went with the Spectra cape horn Xtreme.
As for the Honda generator route… that makes a lot of sense at anchor, but in many anchorages you don’t want to make water there, it’s preferable to go outside the reef. In situations like that and on an ocean passage I don’t want to be trying to run the generator on passage.