Providence

Collective Soul - Shine

Things happen, whether good or bad, and you just don't have any real control over any of it.  You might think you do but then something comes along to show you just how wrong you are.  We're getting close to our push-off date and we have a list of expensive things that we want to get for the boat.  We worked out a budget for all our known expenses through next March and we figured we're OK, we can do this.  Then something came up and our budget was blown out of the water, we're living paycheck to paycheck and all our big projects are put on hold until next winter.  Now I'm wondering how we're going to manage all this and still keep to our schedule for departure.  It's not making me feel too confident.  May have to switch to plan B.  So we're making do with what we can, taking on small projects and biding our time until things get better.  Then last weekend came along.

I was working on the mainsail preventer making measurements for some backing plates.  A friend on the dock stopped by and we started talking.  He told me about this guy he met the day before who was preparing his boat for a trip to the Mediterranean next June.  He was stripping out a lot of gear that the previous owner had installed.  I heard something about a water maker that was being tossed.  Excuse me?  I hustled over to this guys boat and started making a nuisance of myself.  I mentioned that I had designed my own water maker and was looking for an AC motor to drive the high pressure pump.  He looked at me kinda sideways and said to follow him over to his shed.  When we got there he pulled open the door and pointed to a motor sitting on the floor beneath a ton of other stuff.  I got down there and looked over the info plate.  This was exactly what I needed and it looked like it was in very good condition.  I asked him how much he wanted for it and he says "take it, it's yours".  Cool!  He then started pulling out all kinds of stuff and before I knew it there was an entire water maker system in a pile on the gravel.  The guy said I should take the whole thing because there might be more stuff in there that I could use.  Uhm, OK.

He then says to me "do you need a 6-man life raft"?  Well gee, we were thinking we only wanted a 4-man raft because it's cheaper and about twenty pounds lighter.  How much?  "It's free, just get it outa here".  Are you sure?  I mean, this stuff could be worth some money.  He says "old used gear isn't worth much, especially life rafts".  OK, well let me help you out then.  I unburdened the guy of all this old junk.

I loaded everything up and hauled it back to our shed.  I looked the water maker over and wrote down some identifying info, part numbers and serial numbers.  Back at the boat I looked it up and found the system was made by Sea Recovery, model # SRC 600 AM.  This thing makes 25 gallons per hour and draws 32 amps while running.  If I substituted the Iwaki fish tank pump for the feed pump in the system it would drop the power requirements to about 25 amps which is perfect for our situation.  Cool!

This is not a new water maker.  It's probably at least ten years old.  Just looking at it though I can see that it's in very good condition and the dude told me it ran fine when he had the boat surveyed three years ago.  What I plan to do is get a service kit and go through and rebuild everything in the system.  I think I'll dump the three proprietary membranes and replace them with the ones I had planned to use in my original system, Filmtec SW30-2540.  These are available anywhere in the world and are fairly reasonably priced.  The SRC came with pre-filters and housings and a bag full of spares.  These are the exact same filters I was going to use so that's a bonus.  The SRC control panel has two flow gauges, a flow control valve and two pressure gauges.  I had already bought some of this stuff but these appear to be in good condition so maybe I'll clean them up and hoard them for spares or sell them on eBay or something.  It has control relays for automatic operation.  I was going to do a similar set-up in my original system.  There's nothing special about old crusty relays though so I'll probably just replace these with new ones for a fresh start.  There's also a large, heavy, sealed box that serves as the system controller.  It has "on" and "off" buttons and a string of LED's that I suppose are the TDS (total dissolved solids) display.  I already have a TDS controller that actuates relays for system control that I was going to use in my original system.  Mine has a nice digital display and is something I'd really like to use.  Maybe, just maybe, my cool-man TDS controller can find a place in there.  I may have to open up this control box and see what makes it tick.

The pile of parts also included valves, tubing for low pressure water and some high pressure hoses.  All the fittings are stainless steel and everything looks to be in very good condition.  Once I go through everything, clean it up and replace seals and motor brushes I'll try running it without the membranes in place.  I don't want to use this thing in the Chesapeake Bay because it's brackish water, diluted salt water, and not what this system will be made for, not to mention the fact that the algae would kill the system.  I also don't want to run my brand new membranes through crappy water and then have to pickle them for six months.  I'll just hook it up to verify that everything works properly and have the water dump overboard, then flush it all out with fresh water.

My original plan was going to cost about $4,000.  I think we'll now be able to put together a complete water maker for about $1200, the cost of two new membranes and housings.  This would be for a system that produces 40 gallons per hour.  That's a lot of water for just two people but I want a system that would quickly top off our water tank and be done.  Maybe run it once a week.  Since this operates on AC voltage it means we'll hafta run the genset when we want to make water.  By going with two 40" membranes instead of one we can make 40 gph and cut our power requirements in half as well as reduce the amount of diesel fuel we burn.  If we could keep the run time short and/or reduce the system's power requirements just a bit more we could possibly run this thing off the inverter and batteries alone.  With solar and wind power for back-up we could be very efficient.  Green even.  We'll hafta see how this thing goes.

I feel pretty fortunate.  Bad things do happen, one step back.  But then just as I'm adapting to that my overall situation improves, two steps forward.  Maybe more.  What originally looked bad has turned around and made room for something even better to work out for us.  Of course, who knows what's around the next corner?  That's OK, life is a trip and we're enjoying the ride.