Raw Water Intake for Sink, How Necessary?

[avd155]

Hi Everyone,

Before I go too much into my thinking, I'll ask the question:

How necessary is a raw water pump for rinsing dishes in the sink for a long term cruiser?

Here's my situation and hopefully it will help your response:
I've got to fairly long lengths to make my boat as simple and require the least amount of maintenance possible, so I'm debating the necessity of raw water for a the sink. Since I plan to to do extended cruising, it seems to make sense to add it in order to save water when rinsing dishes, but in order to get this nicety, it means that I have to add a dedicated seacock just for raw water as well as the pump and lines to get the water to the faucet.

I almost feel like a bucket and a rope could serve the same purpose as a raw water seacock in a much more compact and simple package. What are your thoughts? Am I just over thinking the complexity of this and I will regret not adding raw water later?

In other news, I've finished putting in all my structural bulkheads as well as completed my hull-to-deck joint and I'm finishing up the exterior glasswork before I prime in a month or so. Things are moving along! Here's a photo of the bulkheads (and as usual, check the blog for updates to the project):

[s/v Faith]

I just recently decided not to plumb one in.

I will regret that. I know I will.

When you are at anchor, and it is raining... and you are cozy. The pot has the drying remnants of your soup... and you know you don't want use the water you just paid $1 a gallon for to rinse out your pot.....

Yes, then I will regret it.

I will say that the 'hang it over the side and let the fish clean it' method works well at anchor... would not try it underway. ;)

It is nice to have. For me, it became a departure from KISS that I was not willing to accept.

.... but I know that there will be a time I regret that.

[Tim]

Add a tee fitting to your engine raw water intake line somewhere downstream of the raw water strainer. This avoids the need for another through hull, if that's keeping you up nights (and a dedicated intake in this instance is probably unnecessary anyway, given the size and probable layout of your boat). The related plumbing is very simple: a hose, a pump (foot pump, preferably), and a simple faucet. Teeing in downstream of the filter not only ensures weed-free water at your sink, but also eliminates a potential weed clog point in the engine intake.

I'd call a convenient salt water supply invaluable in any small boat with limited water supply and wouldn't do without one myself. I use it constantly for dishwashing.

Sometimes the desire for ultimate simplicity works against you. Simple is good, but not at the expense of everyday utility and convenience. A bucket would get old in a real hurry unless you're into the Swiss Family Robinson thing. I'll pass.

[Figment]

That tee will also be a handy place to introduce antifreeze solution to your system come winterization time.

[Rachel]

I can't remember if your Bristol 27 is the version with an inboard engine or an outboard-in-a-well. If the inboard, then as folks have mentioned, you could potentially tee off the intake. If the outboard (if I recall correctly that's what you have), then you don't have an intake, so...

Here are my thoughts:

1) I can understand your desire to keep it simple, and another seacock just for something so "small" as a raw-water intake for the galley sink does seem to go against that. On the other hand, once it's in, it's in; and if you install it yourself, you *know* it's done right and is a very unlikely failure point as long as you use good hose and clamps and don't just ignore it for 20 years. Also, it's basically a one-time expense; that is, it's not very demanding of maintenance time and money.

On the other hand, now you probably have another foot pump to buy, service and keep spares for, another sink spout, and etc. So it's not quite as simple as just a seacock. Also, you now have saltwater in your nice shiny sink, and stainless can become "stain more" as the "evil" saltwater is suddenly in your galley ;)

2) Using a bucket and a rope does work, but as was mentioned, when you are down below in a cold rain, or there's a sea running and you have all you can do to keep braced as it is while you do the dishes, you are very likely to want to pump precious freshwater instead of dangling over the rail to scoop up some saltwater. Of course if you're sitting out in the cockpit anyway, on a nice evening, then it's no problem.

3) A possible intermediate solution is the garden sprayer. I can't envision a cruising boat without one (with fresh water in it: showers, rinsing feet after coming from the dinghy, "power-washing" various things, etc.), and perhaps you could fill that with saltwater and lead the hose below (or have a second sprayer below, or...?)

4) Also, it somewhat depends on where you plan to cruise. If, say, you are in the Chesapeake, or tend to be in large harbors, the saltwater is less appealing.

So in the end I think it's a personal choice. I had a saltwater spout with its own footpump on the first boat I cruised on, and used it sometimes but not that often. The second time around there was no saltwater setup in the galley, and I didn't really miss it (I don't know if everyone would do this, but I would have rinsed in freshwater anyway). For stubborn pots, or when we were really trying to conserve, we did take the dishes out to the cockpit and use the garden sprayer/salt water/bucket, but not that often.

Just for background info, I was cruising double-handed, and we had 75 gallons of tankage, plus some jerry jugs. So, say about 40 gallons per person in water stowage. We were not making super-long passages, so the longest we were out without any possible access to fresh water was about 25 days. We could have stretched it longer if we had wanted to, but not weeks longer. Even "inshore" we would routinely go a few weeks between fills.

There were a couple of times we wanted to stay out in remote anchorages longer but were running low on water, and each time there was a fancier cruising boat with a large water-maker who offered to give us enough water to fill our tanks, which was nice. Of course that wouldn't work halfway across the Pacific, but even in semi-remote anchorages, if there are other boats around, chances are that these days they have a water-maker. Of course it's rather un-seamanlike to count on that, but it did sometimes work as a convenience factor when we would otherwise have had to make a trip to a port where we could take on water.

I guess in the end there's no "one" answer (as usual) (and yes, it's all connected ;), but I always enjoy reading the various thoughts and opinions on the forum.

Rachel

[avd155]

Great inputs all around. For some reason, I had it in my mind that it wasn't a good idea to add a T in the raw water line for the engine, not sure why I had thought that though, so Tim's idea to...

Add a tee fitting to your engine raw water intake line somewhere downstream of the raw water strainer.

...is a good one! I'll have to dig through some of the Glassiando articles and look for some images of how the plumbing would look. If anyone has images of how this looks please feel free to share.

The one thing I didn't quite understand was when Tim said that

but also eliminates a potential weed clog point in the engine intake.

Why, exactly, does this eliminate a clog point for weeds? I'm sure there's an easy answer to that, I just can't think of it off the top of my head.

Also, Rachel, you asked...

I can't remember if your Bristol 27 is the version with an inboard engine or an outboard-in-a-well. If the inboard, then as folks have mentioned, you could potentially tee off the intake.

The answer is that I will be installing a Beta 14 (in fact, it arrived a few weeks ago), so I will have the engine intake available.

After reading some of the good input here, adding a T after the raw water strainer for the engine raw water intake seems like a good idea. Plus, there is an added bonus to all this is that my design has my sink and raw water intake for the engine only a few feet from one another, so the plumbing will be fairly straight forward.

[Rachel]

Okay, I'm not Tim, but I think he means not that adding a "tee" is a detriment to clogs in and of itself; but rather that - assuming you are adding one - that adding it "after" the raw water strainer as opposed to "before" the raw-water strainer means that it won't be an additional source of clogs. In other words, anything coming in that might have been able to clog in the new "tee" area, will already have been taken out of the picture by the raw-water strainer.

This assumes that you have a raw-water strainer inside the boat, and not simply a grate on the outside (many believe the former is preferable - and without any strainer outside - as you are more likely to be able to access clogs underway).

Rachel

[KITTIEanME]

I don't post very often but here is my two cents worth as it somewhat related. I came off my raw water intake ( gated valve ) on my Bigger Boat to supply my AC unit. I also felt that in an emergency I could loosen the connection and use the intake and the engine for an emergengy bilge pump as this line was filtered for the AC. I never used the AC at anchor only off marina power.
TOM

[Tim]

Okay, I'm not Tim, but I think he means not that adding a "tee" is a detriment to clogs in and of itself; but rather that - assuming you are adding one - that adding it "after" the raw water strainer as opposed to "before" the raw-water strainer means that it won't be an additional source of clogs. In other words, anything coming in that might have been able to clog in the new "tee" area, will already have been taken out of the picture by the raw-water strainer.

This assumes that you have a raw-water strainer inside the boat, and not simply a grate on the outside (many believe the former is preferable - and without any strainer outside - as you are more likely to be able to access clogs underway).

Yup.

And I was assuming you'd have an internal raw water strainer.

[Tim]

Here's one example.

You can just see the bottom edge of the bronze raw water strainer at the top left of the photo. The salt water supply to the galley sink leads aft from the tee fitting.

(The hose running through the bulkhead is an icebox drain and unrelated to this post.)

[Quetzalsailor]

Looks too easy to not do. (Tee off an existing clean intake).

The whole discussion of growth in intakes, and drains for that matter is a worthy one. I've had to bring my homeowner's snake down and clean the head sink drain. I suppose it's not deep, dark enough to not attract growth. I had a really tough wad of growth in the engine intake in the Morgan. It was so effective that not only did the engine overheat but when I took the hose off the throughhull, the boat made no effort to sink.

I think it's appropriate, where possible, to not use an ell immediately after the throughhull/seacock. Hard to rod out an ell. (My head sink drain has a plumbed 1/8th turn on the seacock before the head intake and converting to hose for the connection up to the sink. My confection; the original was a welded copper fitting(!), to cope with the small space within the head cabinetwork. Three of my other seacocks have ells because they're too high under the sole. Ahh, well.)