Increasing our fresh water supply

[jetzi]

I have learned since living aboard that while there are lots of limited resources, there is always one main one that is the limiting factor or weakest link that we have to be especially conservative with. I thought it would be electricity or our two toilet cassettes, but it turns out that for us, our water tank limits us the most.

 

I measured our tank by timing how long it took to fill a 5 litre bottle and how long to fill the tank. I estimate the tank to be about 500 litres, while the last surveyor estimated it at 600. We find the water lasts us a maximum of two weeks, which is very tight as we move every second weekend and take on supplies.

 

We are conservative to the point of mild discomfort. We shower every other day with a splash of water, turning the water off before soaping ourselves up and then rinsing. Cleaning the bathroom and mopping the floor we do at the water point while we wait for the tank to fill. Dishes we also do with minimal water. We brush our teeth with a cup of water and use wet wipes and hand sanitiser for our hands whenever possible (but sometimes we need water to get the coal dust off!) We also fill six 5-litre bottles at the water point for drinking water which we keep under the sink.

 

We lived in Cape Town during the water crisis. We were limited to 50 litres per person per day which was tough - but still added up to 1400 for the equivalent two weeks, almost three times what we are living with now. We saved every drop of grey water from showers and dishes for flushing the toilet and watering plants, but of course that doesn't really apply on a boat with a cassette toilet and no plants, and an endless supply of grey water from the canal, should we need it.

 

We had a leak in our water pump which we have replaced. Our kitchen tap drips some but we do catch this water with a bottle - we catch about 5 litres every 2 days from this. There is also always a bit of dribble after turning off a tap, I think this is just a consequence of the low pressure system. We also turn the mains tap off at night and whenever we leave the boat. We had a dream of getting a washing machine and even a dishwasher but that seems totally impossible now - we just take our laundry to the laundromat.

 

Is 500 litres an unusually small tank? Do you find that water is a big problem for living aboard? Do you have any more water saving tips that we aren't thinking of? I feel like we are doing what we can to minimise demand. Ultimately I think we are going to have to find a way to increase the supply somehow. I have a few ideas:

 

1. Putting a water butt on the fore deck as a reserve. I saw one rectangular 300 litre tank which was 950x750x580 in dimensions, which would take up a lot of the space. It also seems foolish to have the weight of the water raised that high above the waterline for stability reasons. Our floor is 500mm below the level of the fore deck, which is 200mm above the waterline, meaning our floor level is 30cm below the waterline. Incidentally the space between the floor and the hull is about 90mm, giving us a total draught of about 400mm /16".

 

2. Although I'm sure this would be an expensive option, getting a secondary stainless steel tank made to fit where the steps coming down from the bow doors are. This would encroach on our interior space a bit. A tank the width of our boat (1750mm), the height of the fore deck and 600mm deep would give us another 500 litres. I could have it custom made to have a step cut out of it, which would obviously reduce the capacity a bit. I'd be concerned that adding another half a ton near to the bow could adversely affect the trim of the boat which obviously designed with the 500 litre integrated water tank in mind. Perhaps it would make sense to have a secondary water tank at the stern?

 

3. Purifying canal water somehow?! Wouldn't have to be very pure for use for washing right? It would have to be a low energy system, I'm not sure what's available but it could be a good solution if it's feasible.

 

4. Catching rain water and putting it into the tank. We would have to install gutters and things to make a catchment area, and I'm not sure about the purity of the water, especially inside cities.

 

5. Something else??

 

Despite this we love every second of boat life! This is not meant to be a complaint or in any way pessimistic. I'm just trying to find ways to improve this limiting factor. Any suggestions would be helpful (or chastisement for not easily managing to survive on 18 litres a day each!)

[Athy]

500 litres is over 100 gallons, which sounds like a larger than average tank.

 

Buy some plastic containers and fill them when you have filled the tank. The 5-gallon size is the best compromise between good capacity and excessive weight. Then when you tank gets low, you pour the contents of the containers into it.

 

Of course, you now have to think about where to store the containers....

[Jen-in-Wellies]

The dripping kitchen tap doesn't have to be like that and can be fixed. Modern ones have a removable valve inside. Take it to a plumbers merchant for a replacement. There are various types depending on the handle spindle. I get no drips from my boat taps at all.

Jen

[bizzard]

100 gals is about average for a narrowboat tank. An big open top tank on the roof to catch rain like some old caravans used to have and gravity fed to the inside taps ect. Fix the taps, new washers if old type taps, they've probably gone hard with age.

[NB Lola]

I suppose the key is regularity of visiting water points.  As has been said, two or three 5 gallon containers would help.  You can get water purification systems but I don’t know how well the cope with ditch water.

[Athy]

2 minutes ago, NB Lola said:

You can get water purification systems but I don’t know how well they cope with ditch water.

So, they might not purify water which isn't pure? They sound like money well spent.

[mrsmelly]

Ours have all been about the size yours is except one which was much bigger. We never ever stay in one place two weeks anyway. The tank last us max one week with daily showers etc etc but we tend to top up every couple of days as it means much quicker fill up times. When we worked we still moved at the very least every week for a couple of days so the tank always lasted. I suppose the moral of the story is boats move thats why they are pointed at one end so you can get to water points. 

Edited November 24, 2018 by mrsmelly
numpty

[LadyG]

8 minutes ago, bizzard said:

100 gals is about average for a narrowboat tank. An big open top tank on the roof to catch rain like some old caravans used to have and gravity fed to the inside taps ect. Fix the taps, new washers if old type taps, they've probably gone hard with age.

wb Bizzard, we was worried!

[Athy]

4 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

I suppose the moral of the story is boats move that's why they are pointed at one end.

 

[Jess--]

22 minutes ago, NB Lola said:

You can get water purification systems but I don’t know how well the cope with ditch water.

 

19 minutes ago, Athy said:

So, they might not purify water which isn't pure? They sound like money well spent.

I think they would work for a while before clogging up with the amount of sediment making them expensive to run because of short filter lifespan

 

I do know some on here only use the tank water for washing, anything for food / drink they use bottled water

Edited November 24, 2018 by Jess--

[NB Lola]

Check out 

 

[Onewheeler]

I fitted a water meter this year to keep an eye on consumption. Actually, I fitted one to our UK narrowboat and one to our shared boat on the mainland waterways, the latter having no ready means of determining the tank level. Two of us average about 35 L per day, which includes two showers each per day, washing up and general odds and ends. Our NB has a tank volume of a bit over 300 L and our other boat about 800 L.

 

A shower averages less than 5 L, and the missus uses less than me as she's smaller. The big consumption on the mainland boat is the washing machine at 75 L.

 

Suggest putting a meter in. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it!

 

The one I fitted following another thread was this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bradas-digital-water-meter-grey/dp/B007WMHZQ6/ref=mp_s_a_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1543057857&sr=8-13&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=water+meter

 

Connected it on the feed to the pump with hose fittings.

 

Martin

[jetzi]

31 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

boats move thats why they are pointed at one end so you can get to water points.

Seems like the overwhelming advice is to fill up every week instead of every second week. Of course that would double our capacity in a sense, and whenever we do move we fill up, but I'd like to not have to rely so heavily on water points.

 

I think I need to explore adding a second tank. Are the weight issues doing this significant? Should I try to distribute the weight fore and aft?

 

Any ideas how much a custom built 500 litre stainless steel tank would cost, and where I'd go to have this made?

 

38 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

The dripping kitchen tap doesn't have to be like that and can be fixed.

 

37 minutes ago, bizzard said:

Fix the taps, new washers if old type taps, they've probably gone hard with age. 

I definitely intend to fix the kitchen tap, but as we're catching and using the water it's not a big impact on our consumption.

 

7 minutes ago, NB Lola said:

Check out 

 

I'll check this out, thanks so much. I did come across this article and this other one about cycling the shower water over yourself so you can have longer showers! I'll look into filtering grey/canal water but I feel like that is the most far fetched of the solutions.

 

8 minutes ago, Onewheeler said:

Suggest putting a meter in. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it!

 

The one I fitted following another thread was this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bradas-digital-water-meter-grey/dp/B007WMHZQ6/ref=mp_s_a_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1543057857&sr=8-13&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=water+meter

 

Connected it on the feed to the pump with hose fittings.

This is good advice. At the moment I'm measuring the water level in the tank with a bit of wooden dowel that I dip in and see how wet it gets! As well as a meter I'd like to have some kind of device that would give an accurate reading of the amount of water left in the tanks, perhaps it could be done with a pressure guage. Thanks for the links, I'll check them out!

[MtB]

I'm most puzzled about what's happening to all your water. I live alone and have 350 litres which lasts me about two weeks too. But I'm not frugal with it. I just live normally. Shower each day, do the washing up etc. Drink a fair amount of tea.... 

[MtB]

3 minutes ago, ivan&alice said:

As well as a meter I'd like to have some kind of device that would give an accurate reading of the amount of water left in the tanks,

 

You already have such a device. Its called 'your brain'. Once you've installed the water meter above to determine the true size of your tank, you zero it each time you fill the tank, then glance at it from time to time and subtract the displayed value from your known tank volume. 

 

E.G. mine reads 71 litres used right now. I have a 350 litre tank so I have left in the tank ... errr.... errr....... 

 

[Jen-in-Wellies]

7 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

I'm most puzzled about what's happening to all your water. I live alone and have 350 litres which lasts me about two weeks too. But I'm not frugal with it. I just live normally. Shower each day, do the washing up etc. Drink a fair amount of tea.... 

Might be worth the topic originators taking a look in the bilge under the floor at the stern end of the cabin. That is where it can end up if there is a leak. A surprising amount can be there before you start noticing your feet are getting wet! If it is an older style boat with a through bilge, then it will just be pump d overboard by the engine room bilge pump and you'll be none the wiser.

 

Jen

Edited November 24, 2018 by Jen-in-Wellies

[MtB]

1 minute ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Might be worth the topic originators taking a look in the bilge under the floor at the stern end of the cabin. That is where it can end up if there is a leak. A surprising amount can be there before you start noticing your feet are getting wet!

 

Jen

 

And even more pertinently, there might be a bilge pump in there too, shipping it all over the side periodically.

 

And invisibly to the OP.

[Onewheeler]

11 minutes ago, ivan&alice said:

 

 

 

This is good advice. At the moment I'm measuring the water level in the tank with a bit of wooden dowel that I dip in and see how wet it gets! As well as a meter I'd like to have some kind of device that would give an accurate reading of the amount of water left in the tanks, perhaps it could be done with a pressure guage. Thanks for the links, I'll check them out!

The nice thing about the meter I used is that you can adequately measure how much each activity uses, and change habits if necessary. It's a different requirement from knowing if the tank needs filling. A dipstick is fine for that if feasible.

[jetzi]

56 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

You already have such a device. Its called 'your brain'. Once you've installed the water meter above to determine the true size of your tank, you zero it each time you fill the tank, then glance at it from time to time and subtract the displayed value from your known tank volume. 

 

E.G. mine reads 71 litres used right now. I have a 350 litre tank so I have left in the tank ... errr.... errr.......  

 

For some reason I thought this wouldn't work if you topped up your tank from empty, but of course this is fine if you always fill it and always zero it! Duh...

 

I can appreciate that being able to accurately measure how much a shower for example uses would be a boon.
 

56 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

I'm most puzzled about what's happening to all your water. I live alone and have 350 litres which lasts me about two weeks too. But I'm not frugal with it. I just live normally. Shower each day, do the washing up etc. Drink a fair amount of tea.... 

We're probably just not as frugal with it as we think! To be fair that is an extra 100 litres per person which is 40% more than us.

 

55 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Might be worth the topic originators taking a look in the bilge under the floor at the stern end of the cabin. That is where it can end up if there is a leak. A surprising amount can be there before you start noticing your feet are getting wet!

 

Jen

Yeah, that was what we were worried about too. There's no bilge pump in the main hull but I've recently installed one in the engine bay which is quite a lot more convenient than manually bailing after heavy rains. At one point there was a centimetre of water in the cabin blige at the stern end where I've taken up the floor in one corner, but I've since bailed it out and soaked up the rest with nappies. There is still a tiny bit filling up but being that the inside walls of the hull are a little damp I think it's just condensation. The other place I can see the hull from the inside is behind the kitchen cupboards and it's also a teeny bit damp along the starboard seam. There is a worrying bit of orange surface rust on the inside of the hull where it gets damp, so at some point we're probably going to have to take up all the floors and walls under the gunwales and paint it with bilge paint. I'm not sure how critical this is - I'm hoping that it can wait until we do the major works (blacking, survey etc) in March-April.

Edited November 24, 2018 by ivan&alice
Fixed misquote

[Jen-in-Wellies]

Is there a steel bulkhead, all the way to the baseplate and between the hull sides, between the engine room and cabin?

 

Once you fix the dripping tap, if you get the pump running for a few seconds every so often, then you have a leak somewhere in the pressurised system. The only exception is a cooling and contracting calorifier, which can sometimes drop the pressure enough. You can also have a leak from the pump itself, or in the pipework back to the tank, or the tank itself and this won't cause the pump to run, so no clues.

Jen

[jetzi]

Just now, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Is there a steel bulkhead, all the way to the baseplate and between the hull sides, between the engine room and cabin?

 

Once you fix the dripping tap, if you get the pump running for a few seconds every so often, then you have a leak somewhere in the pressurised system. The only exception is a cooling and contracting calorifier, which can sometimes drop the pressure enough. You can also have a leak from the pump itself, or in the pipework back to the tank, or the tank itself and this won't cause the pump to run, so no clues.

Jen

Yes - the engine bilge is completely isolated from the cabin bilge by a bulkhead that goes from the height of the aft cruiser deck to the floor and walls. There is at least one hole connecting the bilges at floor level on the port side (we tend to list slightly to port), but it has been well plugged with sillicone by the previous owner. He mentioned it to me in the context of the boat safety certificate, saying we might need to unplug it - I am not sure what the requirements are, but I presume this is to connect the cabin bilge to the engine bilge and hence the main bilge pump. However we get quite a bit of water ingress into the engine compartment when it rains as the hatch over the engine is just a big steel lid with no seal. So I appreciate that he didn't want that water flowing under the cabin.

 

The pump does run every say 10 minutes with all the taps off, we figured it was the dripping kitchen tap that was causing the drop in pressure. We do also have a calorifier that might be causing some of the pressure drop.

 

Unfortunately there is no access hatch into the freshwater tank so I'm not able to inspect it. We were recommended to cut such a hatch in the fore deck to get in and clean it.

[MtB]

19 minutes ago, ivan&alice said:

The pump does run every say 10 minutes with all the taps off,

 

My accumulator charges with about 1 litre of water each time my pump cycles (about once a day). So if you have an accumulator like mne this suggests about one litre of water every ten minutes is being withdrawn from your tank, in addition to all your normal domestic use. That's six litres an hour, 144 litres a day. 2,000 litres a fortnight!

 

SO I suspect you don't have a working accumulator, but even so, that one pump-run every ten minutes will still be the result of a substantial leak somewhere. Try an experiment for a two weeks. Fill the tank then turn the pump OFF. Turn the pump ON only when you are actually drawing water for shower, washing up etc. After two weeks you'd expect the tank to be empty, yes? I bet it isn't and you'll be able to continue for for much longer before eventually running out. If correct, this will illustrate you really do have a water leak somewhere. And vice versa obviously. 

[Boater Sam]

34 minutes ago, ivan&alice said:

 

 

The pump does run every say 10 minutes with all the taps off, we figured it was the dripping kitchen tap that was causing the drop in pressure. We do also have a calorifier that might be causing some of the pressure drop.

 

Unfortunately there is no access hatch into the freshwater tank so I'm not able to inspect it. We were recommended to cut such a hatch in the fore deck to get in and clean it.

 Unless the non return valves in the pump are shot, you have a leak somewhere. Your pump should never run unless you draw water or your calorifier is cooling down.

Check the PRV on the calorifier and where it discharges.

 

You have a stainless tank?  If so how can you cut an inspection hole, and why would you want to? The stainless tank in the bow wastes a lot of space around it, with a tank that is just the whole bow it  would hold a lot more, ours holds 1500 litres so weight is not a significant problem, it does lift the stern a bit but the boat swims better with the bow weighed down anyway.

If it is stainless why not drink it? We have done for 20 years out of a bitumen painted bow tank and we are healthy ( but daft ).

[MtB]

10 minutes ago, Boater Sam said:

If it is stainless why not drink it? We have done for 20 years out of a bitumen painted bow tank and we are healthy ( but daft ).

 

On the other hand that nice Mr Fincher drinks his tank water too, and look at him now!!

[Jen-in-Wellies]

38 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

My accumulator charges with about 1 litre of water each time my pump cycles (about once a day). So if you have an accumulator like mne this suggests about one litre of water every ten minutes is being withdrawn from your tank, in addition to all your normal domestic use. That's six litres an hour, 144 litres a day. 2,000 litres a fortnight!

 

SO I suspect you don't have a working accumulator, but even so, that one pump-run every ten minutes will still be the result of a substantial leak somewhere. Try an experiment for a two weeks. Fill the tank then turn the pump OFF. Turn the pump ON only when you are actually drawing water for shower, washing up etc. After two weeks you'd expect the tank to be empty, yes? I bet it isn't and you'll be able to continue for for much longer before eventually running out. If correct, this will illustrate you really do have a water leak somewhere. And vice versa obviously. 

But they have a dripping kitchen tap. Until that is fixed it is unknown if they have a leak.