We’re putting a Schenker Zen 100 watermaker on our 550. I’ve never had an energy recovery watermaker before, and don’t know how they react to ingesting air. My old piston watermaker would growl when it ingested air, but just kept on making water. What are people’s experience with making water underway?
We have the Zen100 on Moonbird (500SE) and use underway all the time. No issues so far with air ingestion even in rougher sea states.
1 Like
Since the intake water strainers are so hard to get off at times, and Knysna put them in the most obscure and inaccessible location, we would put them on loosely. We didn’t realize that this allowed small amounts of air to get into the lines. Didn’t harm the water maker, but destroy 3 water pumps over time at $800 a piece. Once we tightened the strainers much tighter, we’ve not had the issue anymore…but PTSD keeps us from running them in rougher waters when we don’t need to.
We also make water underway - but we do try to keep it to calmer days, we have had no issues.
One thing for your snagging list during handover is to check that the trough-hull scoop for the watermaker is facing forwards per the installation instructions. Ours was initially set sideways.
As Don says the vane pumps (procon) do not like air or being run with the sea-cock closed.
One other thing to be very careful about with any of the energy recovery watermakers is which pickling compound you use. Only use the Schenker product.
The plastics inside the energy recovery system are badly affected (surfaces are destroyed) by Sodium Metabisulfite. If you have any old pickling compound from another watermaker do not use it!
2 Likes