Water Use at Slip

[sailorboy1]

I am in a slip and have been for 2 months now. Have all the water I want "free", as in not metered. Yet I still run the facet slow, turn it off and on instead of leaving running, take short showers and even turn the water off and on for that (and we have lots of hot water as electric is $20/mo for as much as we want). I think it is so much a habit that it is in my muscle memory.

As info in knowing how big a water maker would be "useful" for us I tracked this wasteful water usage rate for over a month figuring that if we had the same amount of water while anchored as we use in a slip water life would be good. For the 2 of us the water usage was still only 10.5 gal/day.

So the question - do you other cruisers who are used to being water conscious find that you still limit you water usage while in a slip with "free" water?

[BlackHeron]

We are usually anchor-out cruisers but are at a marina now for the 'rona. We are now wasting water at the egregious rate of about 40 gallons a each week through the boat's tank -about double our usual rate when anchored.

We do not have a watermaker.

This doesn't include the water I used washing the hull, the deck, and the cockpit directly from the hose, or washing the dinghy and a few other cleaning chores taken on while we have access to water in the slip.

It also doesn't include the water I used cleaning and flushing the water tank. We used a flushing treatment and flushed it a whole bunch of times to get all the cleaning chemicals out of the tank afterwards. It had been over two years since we did that task.

We are rinsing dishes off with tank water instead of sea water from the other tap because the water here in this marina is disgusting and smells pretty bad. That's rhe bulk of the water we are using above normal. All of the jobs I would usually use raw water for I am now using fresh and not being nearly as careful.

We have all foot pumps inside so every gallon has to be hand or foot-pumped, raw or freash and it isn't a fast process. So one can only be so lazy with wasting water before it actually becomes more work.

[a64pilot]

We have had the watermaker pretty much from day 1 and I think for that reason we use 150 gls a week, or twice what you do.
I think much of it is in washing dishes because dishes are washed after each meal and she uses the sink like she always has, and the few times I have tried to say something about reducing water use have been met with, well you wash the dishes then.
Often one sink half is filled to soak dishes overnight.

But I think you just use what your used to using, but I suspect that number will slowly increase over time.
We shower in the cockpit as the whole inside of the head is teak, and we use a hand shower so water is turned on and off, having said that she has long hair and it takes a lot of water to get the soap out, then of course the conditioner.

We have never used raw water for anything and with a watermaker, won’t so long as it’s working

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I am in a slip and have been for 2 months now. Have all the water I want "free", as in not metered. Yet I still run the facet slow, turn it off and on instead of leaving running, take short showers and even turn the water off and on for that (and we have lots of hot water as electric is $20/mo for as much as we want). I think it is so much a habit that it is in my muscle memory.

As info in knowing how big a water maker would be "useful" for us I tracked this wasteful water usage rate for over a month figuring that if we had the same amount of water while anchored as we use in a slip water life would be good. For the 2 of us the water usage was still only 10.5 gal/day.

So the question - do you other cruisers who are used to being water conscious find that you still limit you water usage while in a slip with "free" water?

In our marina berth our water is not free, but pretty cheap.

We use it freely, including daily showers aboard, running hot and cold water, and cook and wash up aboard almost daily. In port our water use is about 125 gallons per week not including 20 liters of drinking water (because we finally got tired of the taste of the dock water), so 130 gallons per week.

That's 18 gallons per day.

At sea or anchor we still use running hot and cold water, and take showers etc. However we use salt water (pressure salt water) for dishes except for rinsing and on the stainless steel silverware. Showers are every three days, and taken quickly. We run the very small watermaker daily enough for drinking water and ice cubes, and maybe a little for the tank, about a gallon and a half per day. Our 145 gallon tankage lasts 30 days.

That's 5-6 gallons per day including the watermaker water.

This gets us across any ocean and we do not either carry water jugs on deck or ever jerry jug water from shore. We find a dock with water.

I'd like a watermaker capable of 8 gallons per hour, then we could be almost independent, but since we are not crossing oceans anymore, our current set up is fine.

BTW, we have an excellent water catchment system. 2" of rain will fill our 145 gallons of tanks. If it is rainy season we love the free water and it TASTES great!

[rslifkin]

At our home marina we don't worry too much about water use. Outside of washing the boat, we use a bit more than when we're out, but still less than we'd use at the house. Water is cheap in this area, so I don't worry about it. Even if we used as much as at home and we're doing laundry on the boat, we're probably talking about $50-60 worth of water for the whole boating season.

[ttex]

We are using about 80 gallons a week. This is quite a drop from living in a house but we have only been liveaboard for a few months and have never had to conserve due to living on anchor. Yet.

We have a 6 gallon electric water heater that came with the boat and I will confess that we waste a lot of water cleaning dishes still. I am terrified of soap being on my dishes. It is kinda my phobia. Must....learn....better.

[BlackHeron]

We have a spray bottle that has a really good mister nozzle that we fill 50/50 with vinegar/water and spray down everything after it comes out of the rinse pan. That santitizes and removes any soap residues rhe rinse missed.

We found a couple of plastic shoe storage boxes at the container store that both fit perfectly into the galley sink so we have a 2-basin system for washing and rinsing. A third basin for sanitize rinse would be nice, but the mister bottle does well enough and saves a lot of water.

We can wash all the dishes for the day with well under a gallon of water.

Do not spray vinegar water on Tervis plastic insulated mugs. It turns the clear plastic all foggy. We learned that the hard way. Luckily Tervis has a lifetime guarantee. We exchanged them all in St. Augustine at their factory outlet last December, but we weren't careful or forgot once or twice, and now we have to do it again this winter when we go south.

[Mike OReilly]

I have a flow meter so know how much I use very accurately. We tend to almost double our water usage while tied to a dock. It goes from 2 gallons/day to nearly four. The main reason four our added usage is because we don't use raw water for initial dish washing.

Whether at anchor or at dock we tend to use water consciously. It's habit I suppose.

[sailjumanji]

We use marina showers, and typically dock means restaurants nearby - so both of those mean less boat water used. OTOH, i tend to wash the boat at the dock, plus flush out the two outboards plus the dinghy motor.

[IslandInfedel]

35G every 1.5wks or so, but I am far from a home body and prefer to use the large showers on the hard

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

So the question - do you other cruisers who are used to being water conscious find that you still limit you water usage while in a slip with "free" water?

the question

[zboss]

In a slip with our old boat we did watch our water usage even though it was unmetered but that is because I was lazy and didn't want to have to go back and fill the tanks every 3 or 4 days.

Now that we have a new boat with a dockside water inlet we take showers and use water like we are in a hotel. We don't turn off the water when showering and we use all the water we want when doing dishes.

Obviously, when we find ourselves in anchorage that we cannot use the watermaker we will be much more conservative again. A little less conservative if in an anchorage where we can use the watermaker.

[gamayun]

First world problems. This will sound judgemental, but I don't understand the amount of water wasted because it's free. I fill my tank about every 3 weeks (~60 gallons), but use the marina for showering. Away from the marina I use saltwater for showering and dishwashing so much less freshwater use overall. I remember a friend freaking out because his water use at home was something like 30 gallons a day and he couldn't fathom how people survived on a 2-week passage. I also think people use too much soap on everything, which encourages mold on bedding/towels and excess nitrates in the water. The manufacturers would prefer we waste even more....

[redhead]

Our answer is yes we do limit our water usage at the dock, but not for the reason of cost. We have tankage for a stupidly large amount of water (1980's thinking) which at times I'm grateful for and other times not.

But I learned water conservation on much smaller boats and it's just the way we do things on the boat. If you do it (water conservation) the same way every time, then you don't have to think about it and change from "land usage" to "underway usage". I confess to having a washer/dryer on board, but it only uses an average of 8.5 gallons for a wash.

Last year I was in the ladies room at a restaurant and another woman and I were washing our hands at the basin. She asked me "So what kind of boat do you have?" Whaaaaa? She told me the way I turned the water off while I was lathering up told her she was standing next to another sailor!

[sail sfbay]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

..............So the question - do you other cruisers who are used to being water conscious find that you still limit you water usage while in a slip with "free" water?

I connect the shore water directly to my Hunter 46 (as I did for my 56 ft Spindrift motor yacht) so I do not cycle the water pump. and fill the water tanks. But we are conservative water consumers.