Starship Enterprise

After the completion of my Great Water Project, Tim said my sink area looks like the Starship Enterprise. We now have (left to right) a dish soap dispenser, a double-filtered drinking water dispenser, a pressure water faucet (that we almost never use), and a filtered foot pump faucet. All of this required rebuilding the Shurflo water pump with a rebuild kit since the part replaced by the rebuild kit had flaking paint on it that got into the pump guts and tore the very delicate rubber gasket that's inside. This gasket, like all other things marine, is weirdly designed with only half of the width of it being supported by the flange of the pump, and the other half of it hanging out in the interior space of the pump where it is subject to being torn. A slightly longish trip to the West Marine in Annapolis (ummmm nobody told me there were multiple West Marines in Annapolis so of course I went to the wrong one...) I got the kit installed and put back together with success. A quick test and the pump kicked on, pressured and kicked off. Feeling pretty smug, off we went for a delicious dinner at my nephew's house and a good night's sleep on our return. I woke up at 6:20 to the water pressure pump, which I had neglected to turn off. Damn. I spent a few minutes on various forums trying to decide what to do and the symptom most closely related to mine (running and not turning off), was air in the system due to a leak. I looked below the sink and yes, there was a small leak. I tightened up an errant hose clamp on one of the water lines, opened up all the faucets and turned the pump on. After a few sputters the tone of the pump changed and water came out full force. Close the faucets, pump kicks off. While these discoveries may be painfully obvious to some of you (yes, Bill I was thinking of you), I'm a Shurflo novice so bear with me.

Last week I installed the double filter faucet system for the drinking water into the foot pump line, only to discover that the foot pump couldn't handle the high pressure, low volume filter setup. I moved that filter into the cold water line for the pressure pump faucet and purchased one of those low pressure, high volume inline filters that you use on the hose when you fill your tanks outside. I installed it in the out line of the foot pump so now we have filtered water on the foot pump just in case we lose the electricity and can't use the drinking faucet.




Redundancy, folks

Since I was on a roll, I also made a few modifications to my homemade dish drainer / silverware drainer so it would sit lower in the sink for more stability.  All in all it was a pretty productive 2 days. Now it's on to sewing various covers for all the stuff we've added above decks.