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The Potable Water System
This is actually pretty darn straightforward. Island Eagle was built for the days before watermakers, and plus she had a bunch of space aft where the fish holds were going to go, and so they just filled the unused space with fresh water tanks. Two of the tanks were about 600 gallons, and two about 400. The tanks fed a strange old 32 volt pressure pump, which supplied the whole boat via 3/8" copper water lines. Hot water was supplied by a 25 gallon Sears electric hot water heater which sat roughly in the middle of the galley!
As with the electrical system, we decided that the best approach was to just replace everything. The two smaller tanks were closed off and used for the grey and black water systems. The two remaining tanks feed a complete new fresh water system plumbed in 3/4" PEX tubing, fed from a (very complex) manifold mounted behind the genset, entirely fabricated by Aaron, using expensive Swage-Lok fittings
to boot! But he had fun and it's going to last forever, so what the hey.
For pumps, we used the Jabsco Sensor-MAX VSD pumps, which we run at 24 volts. These are actually pretty good, although they are a bit noisy. We had one fail within the first year, which was replaced under warranty.
For the hot water heater, we installed a 20 gallon Force 10 (now Kuuma). Initially we just used electric heat, and also had it plumbed up to the heating system. However, we switched to running the hot water off the engine. That has worked perfectly. In practice, we are either underway for at least a few hours a day (which gives us plenty of hot water),
or we run the genset for a few hours a day (which gives us plenty of hot water), or we're plugged in at the dock ((which gives us plenty of hot water). The only real change that I contemplate is that at some point I want to add a solar hot water panel, but there is no rush for that.
One thing which has worked out very well is that we used two pumps, and the valving usually has one connected to each tank. This means that to switch tanks we just turn on the appropriate pump. In practice, this is way easier than fiddling around in the bilge when you want to switch tanks.
One area which has NOT worked out well is the the pump to transfer water between tanks. We used a Groco centrifugal pump, and the problem is that you need to go down in the shaft alley to set the valves to the desired direction, and then you need to remember to go down and turn the valves OFF after operation or else the gravity will just equalize the water levels. I plan on replacing this with a bidirectional wake board ballast pump and a solenoid, but that's a pretty low-priority work item.
Another minor but annoying issue is that the 3/4 inch PEX does deliver good flow and pressure, but it does mean that there is a lot of water to run before the hot gets to the showers, which are both about a 30 foot run from the hot water tank. 1/2 inch might make more sense.
One last comment: if I were doing this all over again, I'd definitely consider going with a 110 volt shallow well pressure pump (like this one) instead of the Sensor Max pumps. It would be nice to have a bit more shower pressure, and in practice we have plenty of 110 power all the time.
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