Often people are amazed when I say we've lived without basic facilities for so long, but somehow a job is never easy on a boat and plenty of other things come up along the way meaning a week long job can take months. Here's one such example: 11 months after moving onto Tilly we finally had running drinkable water...
When we bought Tilly, she had three, two hundred litre Plastimo flexible water tanks fitted inside the space which was the original tank. The original tank was simply the ferro-cement hull and a steel lid. Apparently the flexible bladders had worked well for the previous owner, unfortunately for us during our first trip out (which was also on day 1 of the 450 nautical mile trip we undertook to bring Tilly down from where we found her to our marina home in the South of England) they split. Leaving us with ~400 litres of water just sloshing around, essentially in the bilge. The first sign was that the water tasted very odd. Luckily we had provisioned for such an event and had around 40 litres of mineral water on board... but that's a whole other story!
Even after we had Tilly safely installed in her new marina home we tried and tried again with the water bladders. If you've never seen one - here's what ours looked like:
The construction is a plastic welded seam bag inside a heavy duty canvas bag. The canvas bag protects and holds the plastic water bladder, various straps made from heavy duty webbing and across the bag to prevent bursting whilst overfilling.
Being a frugal family and if I'm honest more than slightly daunted by the task of fitting solid tanks, we initially made several different attempts to repair (after much research on how to repair water bladders) both the plastic and the outer bags, re-fitting and securing the bags, every attempt lasted a short while but always ended in disaster, even whilst just on a mooring and no trips out. Bilges full of water and resorting to filling water bottles from the marina water points for drinking water and tank water used only for washing and dishes.
Finally, after 9 months or more of living without easy access to drinkable running water we took the plunge. The motivator was the offer of a free (or very cheap) solid plastic water tank which was surplus to requirements from a neighbouring boat. Excited at the prospect we prepared the area - the tanks in Tilly are located under the hallway in the front half of the boat, and under the kids room. The task wasn't small, the floor came up, the walls came down, the lid made of 8mm steel was angle grinded to produce a larger hole for the tank (loosing at least one angle grinder in the process). A day or two of hard work.
Now it was time to bring the tank in. In, from outside the boat. In less than an hour... we'd have our dream - running drinkable water. At least that's what we thought for all of the 10 minutes (and then the agonising few more hours) it took to realise that the water tanks simply wouldn't fit through the hatch, or any other opening or possible 'modification'. In that afternoon our dreams were shattered and the time had come to get the tape measure out, plan the job properly and buy custom made tanks.
The first step - quotes:
We provided these drawings in our requests for quote and waited for the quotes to come in:
As with any marine job, all the quotes seem to fit into three categories:
1. The extraordinarily expensive quotes, often sold as 'top of the range' but in our experience this simply means a similar or sometimes the exact same product but with bigger profits (for them).
2. The, we don't understand your requirements and probably didn't read your request at all, quotes.
3. The knowledgeable, sensible, appears to fulfil all your requirements quotes. These also usually end up being the most reasonably priced. Reasonably doesn't not always equal cheapest.
We had previously agonised over these types of decisions, but have come to realise that often the gut feel related to the person you are dealing with on the other end of the line, regardless of other factors should be the most important factor in your decision. When we've ignored our gut feeling it has always gone wrong.
This time we went with that gut feeling and commissioned Goodwin Plastics to make our tanks. Jason was pleasant, efficient and helpful. Around two weeks after we placed the final order (half of the original lead time quoted) the tanks arrived. Perfect.
Here's one of our tanks (the smaller one) in build:
The tanks arrived in late October and then due to work, kids and life we didn't get round to fitting them until Jan 2015
Fitting the tanks:
Here's the space all cleaned up and prepared to slot the tanks in:
When we bought Tilly, she had three, two hundred litre Plastimo flexible water tanks fitted inside the space which was the original tank. The original tank was simply the ferro-cement hull and a steel lid. Apparently the flexible bladders had worked well for the previous owner, unfortunately for us during our first trip out (which was also on day 1 of the 450 nautical mile trip we undertook to bring Tilly down from where we found her to our marina home in the South of England) they split. Leaving us with ~400 litres of water just sloshing around, essentially in the bilge. The first sign was that the water tasted very odd. Luckily we had provisioned for such an event and had around 40 litres of mineral water on board... but that's a whole other story!
Even after we had Tilly safely installed in her new marina home we tried and tried again with the water bladders. If you've never seen one - here's what ours looked like:
The construction is a plastic welded seam bag inside a heavy duty canvas bag. The canvas bag protects and holds the plastic water bladder, various straps made from heavy duty webbing and across the bag to prevent bursting whilst overfilling.
Being a frugal family and if I'm honest more than slightly daunted by the task of fitting solid tanks, we initially made several different attempts to repair (after much research on how to repair water bladders) both the plastic and the outer bags, re-fitting and securing the bags, every attempt lasted a short while but always ended in disaster, even whilst just on a mooring and no trips out. Bilges full of water and resorting to filling water bottles from the marina water points for drinking water and tank water used only for washing and dishes.
Finally, after 9 months or more of living without easy access to drinkable running water we took the plunge. The motivator was the offer of a free (or very cheap) solid plastic water tank which was surplus to requirements from a neighbouring boat. Excited at the prospect we prepared the area - the tanks in Tilly are located under the hallway in the front half of the boat, and under the kids room. The task wasn't small, the floor came up, the walls came down, the lid made of 8mm steel was angle grinded to produce a larger hole for the tank (loosing at least one angle grinder in the process). A day or two of hard work.
Now it was time to bring the tank in. In, from outside the boat. In less than an hour... we'd have our dream - running drinkable water. At least that's what we thought for all of the 10 minutes (and then the agonising few more hours) it took to realise that the water tanks simply wouldn't fit through the hatch, or any other opening or possible 'modification'. In that afternoon our dreams were shattered and the time had come to get the tape measure out, plan the job properly and buy custom made tanks.
The first step - quotes:
We provided these drawings in our requests for quote and waited for the quotes to come in:
As with any marine job, all the quotes seem to fit into three categories:
1. The extraordinarily expensive quotes, often sold as 'top of the range' but in our experience this simply means a similar or sometimes the exact same product but with bigger profits (for them).
2. The, we don't understand your requirements and probably didn't read your request at all, quotes.
3. The knowledgeable, sensible, appears to fulfil all your requirements quotes. These also usually end up being the most reasonably priced. Reasonably doesn't not always equal cheapest.
We had previously agonised over these types of decisions, but have come to realise that often the gut feel related to the person you are dealing with on the other end of the line, regardless of other factors should be the most important factor in your decision. When we've ignored our gut feeling it has always gone wrong.
This time we went with that gut feeling and commissioned Goodwin Plastics to make our tanks. Jason was pleasant, efficient and helpful. Around two weeks after we placed the final order (half of the original lead time quoted) the tanks arrived. Perfect.
Here's one of our tanks (the smaller one) in build:
The tanks arrived in late October and then due to work, kids and life we didn't get round to fitting them until Jan 2015
Fitting the tanks:
Here's the space all cleaned up and prepared to slot the tanks in:
The space was then lined with PIR insulation boards, some expanding foam underneath and the tanks fitted on top, the tanks were encased on the sides and underneath with expanding foam.
To hold the tanks down and ensure little to no movement, wooden planks were fitted above and across the tanks inside/underneath the lips of the remaining 8mm steel lid.
Plumbing:
The tanks are plumbed in with one filler fitting on the deck with a 1.5 inch filling pipe and Y-fitting inside the boat, near the tanks, filling both tanks independently. Each tank has its own 1/4 inch breather pipe which runs up the forward mast, remaining inside the boat - this is around 1 foot above the deck filling point. The water from the tanks to the water pump is through a 1/2 inch straw fitting on each tank which each go to their own ball valve enabling us to switch either tank on or off independently, and therefore draw from one or the other or both. We have no water gauge on the tanks so this set-up means when at sea we have a good indicator when one tank is empty and we have switched to the other. At dock we can draw from both.
The outcome:
pictures to follow
12 months on and the tanks are still doing their job! Long may they continue. It's nice to be able to turn the tap on and drink water!
Only a small snagging issue, we had asked for inspection hatches to be fitted which are plastic with a metal screw fitting in the centre. With hindsight they are too small to really clean the tanks and inspection is probably not needed often. I'm not sure they are really necessary. When fitting the tanks we didn't want to over tighten and break the hatches. Over time we noticed the pressure from filling the tanks started to push the hatches up and allow some water out of the top. We tightened the screws and the leak has been fixed. It hasn't come back, so hopefully it was us not tightened the hatch well enough. If not, we will either have to regularly tighten or seal the inspection hatches. As with everything on a boat, things can loosen overtime and with movement so it's just another task to add to the maintenance list.