Monday, October 17, 2016

The water maker is up and running!

It took a few weeks to get there, but Quijote can finally desalinate water.  The fun started by rewiring an unused circuit breaker to provide power.  Curiously the previous owner disconnected the power wires and left the ends free for me to try and find.  A more cynical mind would wonder if he wanted me to be able to test the water maker before buying the boat.

The next obstacle was to try and figure out the source of sea water.   I started pulling floorboards and found a sea strainer and through-hull valve under screwed down floorboards.  I would classify that under the shoddy installation department.  If the hose was severed and water started gushing in, I might have found myself ankle deep in water, not knowing where the water was coming from.  Every other through-hull has an access port that can be lifted from the floor.

I replaced the sea strainer and moved it into the engine room with all the other components of the system.  I also started work on an access port through the floorboard.

With that it was time to start troubleshooting.  I installed new filters and fired it up.  It was encouraging to hear the pump come on and see things proceeding properly, but it was no surprise to then find it generating errors.  First it told me the filters need to be checked even though they were new.  That problem turned out to be bad pressure sensors.  Then it started shutting down with a salinity probe failure, so I replaced the salinity probe.

With that, the system seems to work.  Granted it's working in Lake Union where the salinity of the water is about 70ppm.  Less than 750ppm is classified as "fresh," while puget sound is in the tens of thousands of ppm.  It'll be interesting to try it in real salt water when I get the boat out in Puget Sound, but at least everything is behaving without generating errors.

Two cheers for Quijote! We'll cheer once more when we get a cup of fresh water from Puget Sound.  To that end, I installed a sample valve that will let me sample the water before diverting it to the water tanks.

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