New Water Maker taking shape

Ever since Parker Hannifin bought out Village Marine water makers we have been faced with ever increasing prices for the "proprietary" membranes - all the while the quality of the membranes has continued to decline and warranty has dropped from three years to one. After realizing that I was going to have to pay $600 for a new set of membranes I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and buy a commercial off the shelf pressure vessel and go with a standard Dow Filmtec membrane - the new pressure vessel and membrane cost less than just the replacement Village Marine "proprietary" membranes alone. As part of this process, since we have spare DC capacity on the boat, we decided to go ahead and purchase a new higher volume pressure pump and motor so that we could increase our water production capability from 8GPH to 13GPH.

We received our new EchoTec high pressure water pump and motor from Customs on Wednesday (29 December 2010). The St Lucian Customs guy was a jerk - just had to humor him. We were able to get everything without paying duty but did have to pay a broker to move the parts from FedEx to Rodney Bay Marina.

As soon as I got the pump out of the crate I verified that my existing high pressure hose from the pump to the pressure vessel/membrane would work (it does) so the rest of the installation should go well.

Yesterday morning after breakfast of pumpkin pie and coffee, Lesley and I started installing the new pump and motor. Turned out that the dimensions for the new pump and motor on the EchoTec website were wrong - the assembly is actually smaller than spec'd so it fit where the old pump assembly had been making installation a WHOLE lot easier. The DC motor was a little bit longer and the drive gear on the new pump was on the opposite side taking up just a bit more access area where I normally store engine spares. The plastic tub that I used for the spares would not clear the pump drive gear so bought two smaller tubs!



I had already run the new heavier gauge
wire (#2) for the new pump/motor but had not yet installed the terminal lug ends, motor relay, and power posts. Completed that and pulled out the old #6 wire and then pulled in a new #16 control wire from the power panel down to the motor relay. Still need to fabricate a cover for the relay and power posts.



After reconnecting the plumbing we started the new pump up and everything worked great. Flow rate was set at 8GPH (existing membrane recommended flow rate) and noted that the pressure was only about 600psi - should be great next season when we complete the replacement of the remaining Village Marine Tech "Proprietary parts".