For Good Measure

Trading a dipstick for a digital meter takes the guesswork out of water use.

Issue 139: July/Aug 2021

Our family’s Alberg 35 has a pair of freshwater tanks that total about 50 gallons. Unfortunately, we have no easy way to gauge our consumption. Running out of water is always a surprise. Our only remedy is to regularly pull up a hatch in the cabin sole, open each tank, and insert a dipstick.

Combine this situation with an aging memory, and the result has been too many occasions to say, “Oops, I guess we did already use up the other tank! Did anyone bring any bottled water?”

It became apparent that we—I—needed some way to keep track of how much water we used.

Browsing through Amazon. com one evening, I stumbled across an inexpensive solution to our ineffective guessing game: a garden hose water meter. It cost only about $20, so I purchased two. Because these meters are designed to go between a spigot and a garden hose, I made a quick trip to the hardware store to pick up some adapters that would let me connect the meters to the PEX piping in my boat.

I placed one of the meters on the output of the pressure accumulator, which is just downstream of the main pressure water pump. Whenever I fill the tanks, I hit one of the buttons on the meter to reset it to zero. Then as we go sailing, we simply check the meter each morning to see how much water we’ve used.

Because I know how much water was in the tanks when we started, a simple exercise in subtraction tells me if I should be switching tanks soon, or if I should be looking for a potable water source. I can easily access the meter by lifting a section of galley countertop.

The meter requires a single CR2032 battery (supplied) that will last well over a sailing season.

To conserve battery life, the meter only displays usage while water is flowing and for a few minutes afterwards. The top number on the display is the amount of water used since the meter last “woke up” and the bottom number is the total amount of water used since the meter’s last reset.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that the display is in liters. While the meter can be configured to show gallons, it’s unclear whether it is displaying U.S. or imperial gallons, so I simply set it to display liters to remove any possible ambiguity (1 imperial gallon equals 1.2 U.S. gallons).

What did I do with the second meter? I use it to measure how much water I add to the tanks when I fill them. So long as the meters are close (what goes in is roughly equal to what went out), then I can remain confident that the meters can be trusted.

After several seasons this meter has proven its worth. Not only does it enable us to keep tabs on our water supply, it also helped diagnose a problem when the water pump began sucking air after fewer than 10 gallons had been drawn from one of the tanks. Turns out a pinhole leak about halfway down the pickup tube was preventing us from using all the water available.

In fact, I’m so happy with the meter that I’ve come up with a use for a third one that I’m considering buying and installing in the head, at the shower head, so my family can see in real time how much water they’re using as they bathe. Might help them appreciate the value of a short Navy shower.

Tom Alley has been a ham radio operator (NT2S) for over four decades. He and his family sail a 1965 Alberg 35 sloop, Tomfoolery, and are active racers and cruisers with the Finger Lakes Yacht Club in Watkins Glen, New York. When he’s not sailing, thinking about sailing, or tinkering with his boat, Tom is either scuba diving, hanging out with fellow amateur radio operators, or (as a last resort) working as an engineer to support his sailing addiction and, if there’s any money left over, send his kids to college.

 

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