By mistake the salt water input was connected to the pressurized fresh water network instead to the thru hull. Also (correctly) a spiral transparent hose was used, which would be perfect for the practicaly non pressurized sea water.
b)The high pressure pump pumping salt water to the reverse osmosis membranes.

c)The membranes which are fed by the pump and are connected to the control unit.

d)The control unit which has two functions : to start and stop the high pressure pump motors (220VAC or 24VDC) and to supervise the produced fresh water and if the water is of poor quality to throw it away (in the anchor locker) or if the water is of good quality to send it to the fresh water tanks. A third auxiliary function is to start a automatic washing cycle by triggering a solenoid valve on the filter.

The control unit was by factory mistake connected to the sea water cock instead to the fresh water tank.

By these two BIG mistakes :
a) the desalator practicaly purified fresh water and throwed it to the sea wasting water instead of producing. After seeing the tanks emptying instead of filling I had to read everything about desalator and follow several pipes in the bow of the boat. Finally after 4-5 hours I discovered the problem and found a way to solve it. It was about time because we were completely out of water.

b) The boiler stayed without water and was distroyed. We stayed without hot water for several days until we replaced the heating element.

 

 

Also we let the desalator run for hours to fill the empty tanks. It worked perfectly and produced about 50 lt/hour.
c)Unfortunately  we used the transparent spiral pipe to connect the pressurized fresh water to the filter, since this was available at the time. During the night this pipe burst and all the fresh water that we had produced (800lt) was emptied in the front skippers cabin making all our skippers clothes and bed wet.

 

we have the same Dessalator, but the 100 L/h version and it is true what Alain states about the pump, in order to keep a constant pressure onm the feeding line. One bigger problem on the way the unit is installed on the 630 is that the suction valve is very far in the front (under the unit in the bow locker) and when you start surfing big waves the feeding line will take on lots of air and the unit will shut down due to unexistant pressure.  We learnt this the hardway whn we wanted to fill our first empty tank, half way over the atlantic with huge swell it was impossible. So what did we do?  we took a garden hose, connected it to one of the outlets of the aircondition pump, and on the other side directly to the dessalator entrance. Now we switched on the airconditioning and had all a nice cool and dry nap while producing heaps of water.

 

Downside was that the crew started to spill the water by showering several times a day just to get the airco back on!!

 

Regards

 

, .

 

The problem with the 630 is that while surfing in big waves, the bow comes out of the water and the intake sucks air, so the pressure drops. On the picture you see HANSE 630#11 surfing on a wave en route to the canary islands.

 

regards,

 

the one on the picture is GANDUL (Hanse 630 # 11) . As we made the picture from the cockpit, shows that we were a few metres in front and this after 600 nm out of Lagos. Both boats were really doing almost the same speed for days.

 

regards,

 

I have some pictures of the desalator connection problems and the hose failure:

Our swimming pool.

 

The guilty hose

 

 

Trying to empty 600 liters of fresh water (which took some hours to produce).

 

 

I also edited the first post in this series (added pictures).

Look here:

 

 

Seems not to work.

 

here is a link with ome pivs of thedehler 43cws watch page 6 of 7

 

http://www.boat.de/bluenautic/files/BN257.pdf - http://www.boat.de/bluenautic/files/BN257.pdf

Karl Dehler is a nice guy.

Having said that these were not my clothes that became wet,wet wet. And some of them dried to one size smaller.

 

I found the cause of some pipe bursting problems: The fresh water pump pressure regulator was of very poor quality and the pressure increased some time to unacceptable levels until one pipe broke, then the pressure (of course) dropped and the fresh water ended up in the bilge.

After we replaced almost all the fresh water pipes with better quality ones we found the faulty pressure switch and replaced both the pump and the switch. The new pump is a Jabsco double pump with integrated pressure vessel and cut off switch( 31670 dual max-28lt/min). In case small water quantity is needed only one of the two pumps start. When the demand increases (or the first pump fails to pump) the second pump starts.