Water Tank - temporary bypass tank

[Llamedos]

Someone may find idea this useful if they have an integral water tank and plan on doing some maintenance work eg cleaning and re coating.

 

My boat's now laid up for winter but before closing up I decided to drain the water tank and put a couple of coats of tank paint on. Having no running water for a week was not an option for my wife and I wasn't too keen on the idea either, so I gave it some thought and rigged up a bypass tank on the pontoon outside using a 5 gallon plastic can. I connected this arrangement to the pick up pipe in the tank using a washing machine drain hose clamped on with a jubilee clip.  This hose was attached, in turn to some regular 'garden' hose which went into the can strategically positioned outside of the kitchen window so I could keep an eye on the level. The can I then kept topped up periodically from the tap on the pontoon, basically every time I walked past it. It all worked surprisingly well. I could easily have a shower every morning using about half of the water in the can. My wife with her long hair needed rather more, so this required me to station myself outside and 'man' the tap, monitoring and topping up the can as her shower progressed! A few funny looks from fellow moorers but I'm used to that 🤣.

 

You obviously need to be moored on a marina with a dedicated tap on your pontoon for this to work but it enabled me to get the work done with the minimum of inconvenience.

Edited December 1 by Llamedos
Typo

[Mike Hurley]

If it works then its good.

[David Mack]

Yes a useful improvisation. My only concern would be that if you are using this for drinking water, you really should be using potable water grade hose.

[jonathanA]

What a great idea. So obvious really. In mycase I think I'd just connect the hose from the container into the pipework after the integral tank shut off, push fit connections so easy to do. 

Would mean a pipe through a window or something  unlike your connection all outside 

[Llamedos]

54 minutes ago, jonathanA said:

What a great idea. So obvious really. In mycase I think I'd just connect the hose from the container into the pipework after the integral tank shut off, push fit connections so easy to do. 

Would mean a pipe through a window or something  unlike your connection all outside 

Yes I was going down that route myself, but as you say it would have meant connections inside the boat and open windows/doors. Then I measured the pick up pipe and realised a washing machine drain hose would be a perfect fit so decided to go down that route instead.