Lack of Tankage Solution?

Just my weird thought for the day. (OK, for the hour, anyway. I have a lot of weird thoughts.) About the chronic lack of tankage of our smaller Ericsons.

I see a similar-sized boat, a little farther down my dock is for sale. They claim 70 gallons fresh water tankage! Where does it all fit?
:thinker: Anyhow, during my initial refit, I ditched the PO's water and holding tanks which didn't really fit, in favor of bladder tanks. The holding tank is empty most of the time - just flat on the bottom of the locker that it's in. It occurs to me that a second fresh-water bladder tank might go in the same space as the holding tank. If you were headed three miles out, the freshwater could displace the holding. If you were so close to shore that you need the holding tank, you probably don't need the extra water tank.

It's so elegant, there must be a fatal flaw here somewhere.

Why do people need tankage? I'm serious, I don't understand it. Is it to take showers in our tiny heads? I doubt it's for drinking, and how much cooking water do we need?

To me, 32-packs of water bottles from Costco makes the elegant solution. The bottles pack anywhere, are handy for drink or wash, and the crew knows how many they are allotted per day.

A seawater pump at the sink washes dishes.

Obviously I'm missing something basic here in the way people like to use their boats.

For the original question, I've been on a couple of boats with bag holding tanks, and odor seemed to permeate out of them. I'm not sure I'd want my drinking water taking on ANY of that odor.

Our boat is reported to hold 80 gallons of water (three tanks). We have not done any long distance passages, but we can easily go a week living aboard without trying to conserve at all. I'd estimate from most to least the following:

1. Washing dishes (don't want to use marina salt water for that)
2. Cooking (boiling water, washing produce, cooking noodles, etc...)
3. Washing hands
4. Drinking (usually try to drink beer while on the boat, but only if it's after noon)
5. Shower (we hardly use it, keeps the boat less dank using shore-side facilities)

I just bought a water meter that I'm going to install so I can keep closer track of water use, and not run out unexpectedly.

Mark

toddster said:

Just my weird thought for the day. (OK, for the hour, anyway. I have a lot of weird thoughts.) About the chronic lack of tankage of our smaller Ericsons.

I see a similar-sized boat, a little farther down my dock is for sale. They claim 70 gallons fresh water tankage! Where does it all fit?
:thinker: Anyhow, during my initial refit, I ditched the PO's water and holding tanks which didn't really fit, in favor of bladder tanks. The holding tank is empty most of the time - just flat on the bottom of the locker that it's in. It occurs to me that a second fresh-water bladder tank might go in the same space as the holding tank. If you were headed three miles out, the freshwater could displace the holding. If you were so close to shore that you need the holding tank, you probably don't need the extra water tank.

It's so elegant, there must be a fatal flaw here somewhere.

Click to expand...

I suspect that when you look at the whole "support system" for a bladder tank you will see that it might not be practical to plan to have one tank expand into the space being slowly vacated by the other. And this does not even touch on the issue of the proximity of the two types of contents.
Storage spaces on a boat are seldom flat or square, and the enclosed space commonly rolls and pitches. The folks that I know with bladder tanks lined their hull with something like carpet, and then used fabric strapping to "cradle" the bladder in place & hold it down.
And then, while it's possible to dispose of waste on a interrupted schedule, the need to refill the drinking water tank is a lot more demanding. i.e. you can pump the H.T. overboard if you have to due having no pump-outs available or being in legal-discharge waters.

FWIW, I believe that any good rotomolded tank will Not permeate odors. The hoses, connections, pumps, and any other ancillary parts are a whole 'nother matter.

As for the size of your tanks, sometimes you can find, with searching, a stock tank in the large Ronco catalog that will fit your "unusual boat shaped" space a lot better and thereby increase the tankage a lot. Or..... have a custom tank built. I first replaced our stock 23 gallon settee water tank with a well-fitted ss tank that holds 38 gallons.
I did "cheat" and replace our stock rectangular holding tank with a little larger one, but we have more bulk space to allot this than is possible on a smaller boat.

Other have raised different questions about how much drinking water is enough and how to best carry it. While I have been on many deliveries where we drank bottled water, I really prefer to have "pure" water on our boat just like we take for granted at home. We are, admittedly, resigned to scrubbing out our main tanks several times a year.
Different ships have different priorities.


Gotta say, 70 gallons sounds pretty darned good! We have 38 in the main tank and 23 in the secondary tank.... when we run one tank dry, time to switch the manifold valve..... and think about where to water up next.

Cheers,
Loren

We use our water tanks often. We do a lot of overnights aboard our boat and use the water for dishes, coffee. Even when in a marina I prefer to use our onboard shower (my wife does not and always uses the facilities). We also use the fresh water to flush most of the time.

Has anyone tried using the area behind the settee backs to fit flexible tanks? I haven't even cut mine open yet so I'm not entirely sure how much room there is between the hull and the settee back but maybe enough for a small tank?
I only have 12gals of water on my E27 and I would also like more.

Haiku said:

Has anyone tried using the area behind the settee backs to fit flexible tanks? I haven't even cut mine open yet so I'm not entirely sure how much room there is between the hull and the settee back but maybe enough for a small tank?
I only have 12gals of water on my E27 and I would also like more.

Click to expand...

I have considered cutting large enough access openings to enable storage behind the settee backs too, but I don't think I would want any tankage above the waterline for stability reasons.

Tanks

On my 73' E-27 I was able to get two twenty gallon rigid tanks, one for water and one for waste, in the aft portion of the area under the V-berth. Where is you twelve gallon tank located? The 73's original waste tank was a five gallon located under the forward portion of the quarter berth.

In my 27, the rigid water tank was located under the aft portion of the V-berth. I then installed a 22gal holding tank where the water tank was and moved the water tank in front of the holding tank.

I'm not worried about having a tank above the water line as I don't think more than maybe 10gal of water would be able to fit, not enough I don't think to make much of a difference.