www.iFourWinns.com

The water on the boat is not contaminated or anything, but doesn't taste wonderful either. I bought a Brita filter to hook onto the Galley Faucet, but the thread adapter ring kit it came with didn't fit the one on our boat. Well, the threads fit, but the adapter simply wasn't deep enough to work properly.

Thought about either replacing the faucet with another one from the big box stores, or perhaps just adding an "inline" filter to the fresh water pump.

I think the inline filter would be easier to do if I can find an inline filter with the correct diameter and fittings.

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2007 Four Winns Vista 358

Drive the Talon to an RV store and get an inline one. Much cheaper and easier to find than at a marine store.
Ours has a FlowPur inline filter installed at the factory, like one of these.

http://www.flowpur.com/html/rv_filters.html

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One of 4 Previous (Sold) Boats:
2000 Four Winns 268 Vista

Current Boat: 2004 Chaparral 235 ssi cuddy

We always drink bottled water while on the boat but installing a water filter for the ice machine to avoid that greyish-yellow ice might be a good idea. I won't even put that stuff in the cooler to cool the beer!

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Current Boat: 2000 Four Winns 298 Vista
Previous Boat: 2000 Carver 406MY

I put a household water filter down in the engine compartment. I tapped into the cold water supply from the shore water hookup. I fill the boat from the shore connection so the filter acts to filter everything on the way into the boat. Normally the water has to be added from the bow filler, so this wouldn't work for everybody.

With the factory plumbing setup I'd probably put the filter inside of the galley, near the back of the refrigerator. It wouldn't be as convenient to access but it'd be at the first point after the fresh water pump so all water would be treated. For filter changes you'd be able to get to it by sliding out the cabinet drawers in the galley. But to install it the first time you'd have to pull out the fridge. Not a huge task though. I suppose you could just as easily put in a smaller tap-filter on just the cold line to the galley spigot. There's probably enough room for either option.

The way the plumbing works is through 15mm tubing and Whale brand fittings. There's typically a Whale 15mm-to-NPT fitting for each fixture or plumbing device, usually 1/2" threaded. So the process to connect a filter to your water system would be to find a suitable location. Then decide what elbows, extensions and fittings would be necessary to get it connected. Then either cut the existing tubing or disconnect from some existing connection. Re-route through your filter and then back to the water system (or in-line to a tap). It'd likely be no more that $75 in parts (fittings, extra tubing and filter).

When mounting anything in a boat if you don't have a secure place to screw it down then it's typical to get a piece of marine plywood or PVC 'Starboard' and glue it down somewhere. Then screw your fasteners into that (making sure the screws don't go all the way through it, of course!). That's how the water pump itself is mounted up in the bow area under the berth. Just a square piece of plywood glued to the inside of the hull with the pump screwed to it. So for a filter, once you find an accessible place to mount it just epoxy a board into place and mount the filter there.

As for my shore water filling trick, I created a loop of tubing that goes around the water pump. I then put a shut-off valve up under the top of the drawer under the forward berth. So I can reach under the lip of the drawer, turn on the valve and let it run "long enough" to refill the tank. Thus it's a manual process and I have to watch closely to make sure I shut the valve off before the tank gets overfilled. Otherwise it tends to BULGE a fair bit as the water pressure from the shore connection is more than the overflow vent line can handle. Not a big deal, really, as the tank is flexible enough to handle it. But it's not the sort of hookup the factory would put in for normal use. I'm guessing whoever owns the boat after use might never discover its there, or wonder WTF? The same thing could be said for a filter buried in an out of sight location.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Screw it. I will stick with drinking bottled water and having greyish-yellow ice. Thanks Bill.

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Current Boat: 2000 Four Winns 298 Vista
Previous Boat: 2000 Carver 406MY

Cruisin Home provided this info on my post about a water problem I was having:

"We use our hot water heater quite a bit but always shut it down when not at boat. We find that we dont get the odor I think primarily by:

1) using a water filter on the hose line that fills water tank (Camco brand: RV section)
2) By always pouring in a water freshener chemical (Camco Brand: can be found in Marine or RV sections) whenever we fill tank
3) doing a good flush and clean at beginning of season (3 times from full water tank to empty, first two with 2 cups chlorine bleach)"

Might work for you.

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2006 348 Vista
"some days you're the bug and some days you're the windshield"

What do you watch?

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Tom
Cape Coral

'99 Four Winns 258 Vista
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bowcam
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cape-coral-marine-radio VHF
http://67.207.143.181/vlf9.m3u VLF: Lightning, spherics

I can either watch the tank level sensor lights in the head or the actual level in the tank. I can do that by pulling out the drawer and resting a flashlight face-down onto the tank. That illuminates the tank well enough to be able to see the water level as it climbs. Otherwise I keep a sharp eye out at the vent line. But this is problematic in that it still overfills the tank with enough pressure to make it bulge a bit. Not a dangerous situation as it's just a polyethylene tank and can expand quite a bit. But it does have metal straps across it and I'd imagine those would bend if I let it get too stuffed.

Most of the time I just eye up the head tank level lights. Once it skips past the half-way light I usually just stop there. That's often enough water to handle our needs for weekend trips.

If I really wanted to be careful about it I could also open the bow fresh water filler fitting. That would allow the water to flow up and out there (onto the top deck) in addition to the vent line. That would totally prevent any tank expansion. Otherwise the only way around it would be to either install a larger vent line or limit the incoming flow rate to what the existing vent could handle. This would mean longer fill times.

Other than some sort of electronic valve I can't think of any way to have it work automatically.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

There's an idea. One could substitute your pump bypass ball valve with a solenoid valve so the fill function could be remoted, perhaps at the tank level indicator position. With some, admittedly non-trivial, sophistication it could be self-limiting, closing or disallowing opening the valve when the full mark is met.

On venting, I found that my fresh water tank, a wedge-shaped container in the bow under the V-berth, trapped a large air bubble - so it was never truly full when the fill fitting overflowed. I added a small vent hose to the top of the tank and brought it up and through the anchor locker bulkhead to a screened vent. That added about four gallons of useful capacity.

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Tom
Cape Coral

'99 Four Winns 258 Vista
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bowcam
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cape-coral-marine-radio VHF
http://67.207.143.181/vlf9.m3u VLF: Lightning, spherics

Yep, an electronic valve would work, but at the expense and hassle of installing it and the wires to everything. That and the tank level sensors aren't accurate enough for me to trust them to do the job. If i were to do it I'd go for a manually triggered refill request and have it use the level sensor to detect when to shut off. That way it wouldn't be triggering itself automatically. But for know the ball valve does the job well enough.

Good point about the vent line position. On the 348 they've got it in a better location. No loss of capacity due to air bubble.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista