Just a little note about the katadyn unit,
www.katadyn.com .
I have the powersurvivor 160. It runs off of DC, approx 20 amps. It consists of three main parts, being the pump unit and the membrane, and the prefilter.
The way mine is plumbed is that my saltwater washdown pump through hull is teed with the watermaker feeding off of the tee. This goes to the prefilter, which takes standard, home depot available water filters.
The waste water (brine) goes to a through hull above the water line.
The produced water goes through a 0-10GPH aftermarker flow meter I bought at
www.omega.com It goes to a three way valve which selects the water to either go to a hose for testing, or to whichever potable water tank I have online.
Running the unit is simple. You select the water to go to the test hose, and turn on the power. Wait 10-15 minutes then take a taste of the water from the hose to make sure the water is desalinized properly. Then you select the three way valve to have the water go to the water tank.
You can check the flow using the flowmeter.
To "pickle" the unit you take a couple of tablespoons of the katadyne "pickle powder" in a gallon jug of clean water, and use the little dip tube and three way valve at the front end of the prefilter to suck up the gallon of "pickle water". Thats it, simple.
In the box was pretty much everything you need besides hose to match my boats seacock, water tank, discharge through hull, and wire. It even came with a little TDS tester which I do not use because I can taste salty water like anybody else.
I called Katadyne once asking about an operating question I had and I got a very knowledgable person who spoke english as his native language, and lived in the USA very quickly.
This is a simple, effective watermaker without allot of bells, whistles and asociated BS I've seen on some other brands that appear you'd need a PHD to operate. There are no gauges, dials or knobs. As I indicated I added my own flow meter so I could tell if the gizmo was working.
With Katadyne being the largest manufacturer of watermakers in the world, parts are available quickly if and when you need them.
People say you can build a watermaker for less and thats true. I could design and build one if I took the time to figure everything out. The problem is that I want to play on my boat, not become a watermaker engineer, and screw around trial and error till I get it right, then proclaim how I saved allot of money.
There are some cool looking commercial watermakers out there. I did a D&B credit check on a couple of ones I was interested in and found they are REALLY little companies. I was hesitant to give them the kind of money a watermaker costs, and loose sleep at night wondering if they'll be there in 5 years when I need them for parts (just for the record Village Marine looks like a top notch solvent company).