PDQ OWNERS FORUM

I am planning on adding a water maker to our Antares. I am looking for any feedback from Antares owners on recomendations and advise.

Jeff,

Most everyone with 36's are using Spectra Watermakers. Ignore the low volume output models. You want one that will make enough water in a couple of hours to at least make up for your daily usage. (We have a 35 gallon per day PUR unit. If we are being generous with water (7-8 gallons per day), we need to run it continually to make enough water). The watermakers tend to be noisy, and draw a lot of power, so if you can make a lot of water quickly, you will use less of your energy budget.

We also use a Spectra and have been very happy with its efficiency (power consumption vs. output) & quietness. Ours is a lower output model which takes 12 hours to completely fill our tanks from empty. Since it only consumes 6 Ah DC, we can run it off the batteries without running the generator.

Not sure if any of you are members of the liveaboard list, but if not, you may want to give it a try for a while. There is a lot of great discussion out there and they have addressed watermakers at great depth. I highly recommed the forum, lots of smart, experienced, full time cruisers (currently over 600 if I recall) to offer good advice on any boating topic. Just be prepared that it is a push list-serv system that post replies as they are received unlike this forum where you have to check for messages so there are often numerous email every day (or you can subscribe to the digest). If you are interested, send a "subscribe" request in the body of an email message to:

live-aboard-request@crux.astro.utoronto.ca

If it doesn't meet your needs you can always unsubscribe.

Sorry for the delay but I don't check this very often.
We have #4415 and installed the Spectra Newport 400 on our boat. It is rated at 400 gals. per day. We consistently make between 12-15 gals. per hour. It is relatively quiet and power consumption has not been a great issue. We would hightly recommend it.
Kenny