Ice makers in the saloon

[season]

In previous threads I have read that most do not consider their fresh water on board as "potable". If you do not use the water from the fresh water tank for drinking or cooking where do you get the water for the ice maker?

 

[MikeP]

We use the water tank water with no issues at all but since it's the only water we use, it "turns over" quite frequently. Haven't had an issue in the entire 9 years we have owned the boat.

However, one solution is to replace the oem iceamaker with one of the portable ones that you add the water. That way you can use bottled water for the ice maker.

I purchased one of those a few years ago, not to replace tank water per se, but I was hoping they could produce clear ice. That experiment didn't work out so after fooling with it for a month or two, we went back to using tank water/galley refrigerator for ice-making. I had sold the oem Uline ice maker when I bought the portable so the portable is still in place but we never use it.

 

[Vincentc]

Ice maker vs ice machine

As I see it, ice cubes are for mixing drinks and good ice helps make good drinks. Ice makers do not make good ice. In our home we have an ice machine which flows water over a freezer plate and discharges waste water. Ice machines like this require stability and are not suitable for our boat.

When our boat ice maker quit working I replaced it with a similar sized 2 cf cest freezer which cost $200. We take ice from the home ice machine, put it in gallon zip lock bags and store them in the chest freezer for drink ice. We also store block ice in the freezer for cooling beer in ice chests.

This works well for us.

Merry Christmas

 

[rsmith]

FWIW. MikeP lives in Mexico most of the year and has apparently acclimated to bad water and montezumas revenge! JK JK
We all know that the perfect groth medium for bacteria is a warm dark moist place. Just because the water is turned over dosent mean the bacteria dosent grow. Consider that the top of the tank drips with condensation as the water level drops. Many people drink the tank water but I don't.

 

[Fanfare]

We drink the boat tank water when on board. Here's how:

We will get to Ft. Lauderdale in just about a month and start checking all systems and preparing for our usual cruise to the Bahamas. When I put the boat away last April I filled the water tanks. I do this for two reasons, to make her as heavy as possible in case of hurricanes, and also for my friend who watches over her to have an emergency supply of water caused by that hurricane. A few years ago a hurricane left that part of FtL without power for a week. My generator supplied the neighbors via extension cords with power for their refrigerators and a few lights. So now they owe me and I can probably get away with a wild party or two before they call the cops.

FtL municipal water seems to be quite heavily chlorinated to start with. However, on arrival I will dump all the old tank water and refill by hose. I buy a new bottle of sodium hypochlorite bleach and start the tank fill by adding a cup of it as I start the water. After about 100 gallons I am starting to fill the mid tank, so I add another cup. The last cup goes into the aft tank as I finish. Then I pull the old carbon water filter, replace the housing without a new filter, and run water through all taps, sinks, showers and ice maker until I smell chlorine at each place. Then I let this sit for ten minutes, and repeat. Then I run most of this water through all the taps until my bottom tank starts reading low. About here I refill the tanks, clean out the housing from the activated carbon water filter, put in the new carbon filter, and clean the quartz tube in my ultraviolet water purifier. This builds up a yellowish scum during the months it is turned off. Throw out the newly made ice from the icemaker and we are good to go.

In the USA we generally use local dock water, using my hose from the tap. I always let it run a minute or two until it gets cold so it will be fresh. I ALWAYS taste the hose water before I put it in the tank fill. I learned this years ago in the Bahamas. We have had a watermaker for about the last 25 years or so, and once we leave the US we make all our water. It has been several years since I last did this, but I used the watermaker test strips to check for chlorine all around the Bahamas. Even in Nassau I found no evidence of chlorine. Long ago we were lucky to find any water in some places. I would pour in the Chlorox and we drank it. Now that we have our grandchildren along with us I don't take these chances. The watermaker puts the water in the tank, then it runs through a coarse screen strainer, through the water pressure pump, through the activated carbon taste/color filter, then through the 110v ultraviolet sterilizer and on to the taps. The watermaker's pores are too small for bacteria, and the UV should take care of any viruses, I hope.

Lastly I only make water in larger bodies of clean seawater. So Hopetown Harbour, with its many moored boats, no sewage pump outs and small tidal volume is not a place I make water. Probably overkill, but there you are.

We hold about 280 gallons of water and I usually consider making water at about half full. In a Bahamian marina with clean seawater I only make water at night because if a boat comes in or leaves they will kick up enough sand to clog my filters. My watermaker indicates it makes water with about 115 parts per million total dissolved solids, which is so soft that it takes about twice as much water to get the soap off me in the shower. And that is trying to save water by turning off the shower while I soap up. While I remind guests about trying to save water they really only get good at it about the time they leave. This does mean that they are likely to be invited to return again!

 

[GJH]

In our home we have an ice machine which flows water over a freezer plate and discharges waste water. Ice machines like this require stability and are not suitable for our boat.

.

We have a Scotsman ice machine on our aft deck that fits this description, makes lots of very nice clear ice. Preferable to the standard frozen "ice maker" ice produced by the galley Sub Zero. Vincent I don't understand your "not suitable" comment. I don't know how old ours is, may be OEM for all I know. We just replaced the pump and a couple of nozzles; first service in the 6 1/2 years we have had the boat. There is a separate filter for it in addition to the filter coming off the tank, as there is also for the Sub Zero.

Like Mike, our tank water is of good quality, no compunction cooking, making coffee, brushing teeth, even drinking if we run low on bottled water (my wife drinks this only, on or off the boat). We used to have, courtesy of the PO, a two part "whole house" filter system, but I took it out to install our WaterCounter and frankly can't tell much difference. I think the fact that we lived on the boat full time and used it year around helped keep thing fresh. About once every year or two, I used to add some extra chlorine bleach to a tank fill up, let it sit unused for a few days, then flush it out. I have no idea if this has helped any, but like I said our tank water is not offensive at all.

 

[jim rosenthal]

As I've written before, I am not a fan of drinking tank water. I think it is fine for showering and washing dishes.

Part of this is the fact that, as pointed out above, bacteria etc grow in tank water. Another part is the fact that you have to chlorinate the tank water to make it safer.Chlorine introduces risks of its own IMHO.

I'd think better of it if we had something available to disinfect tank water which wasn't so toxic. Maybe hydrogen peroxide. I'll do some looking around and report back.

 

[Vincentc]

George,
Good to hear an ice machine is an option on a boat.
My comment re suitability comes from my understanding that an ice machine needs to be level. The Jenn-Air manual states,
" It is important for the ice maker to be level in order to work properly."

I could make the machine level at the dock, but underway changes things.

I also thought that the amount of water wasted by a machine would create issues for use on a boat.

In any case, it comes down to quality and convenience.

Regards,

 

[MikeP]

George - Those Scotsman ice makers sound perfect but all the models I saw on their site seem too large for our boat from what I can see. What model do you have?

Re tank water…

I always winterize the boat with the water tanks "empty." Of course there is still water below the pickup fitting. I put about a gallon of pink in the tank(s). For re-commisioning, I fill the tanks, adding about 2 cups of Clorox. I have joked with Dr Jim, that when showering on that first tank, my eyes burn from the chlorine. He has suggested that perhaps I'm using a bit too much Clorox… I let the fridge's ice maker make ice/emptying the basket when it get's near full. I usually don't use the ice from that first tank…but sometimes I do; it adds a whiff of chlorine to the rum. (Kids, don't do this at home.)

Anyway, from then on I just refill with the dock hose - no clorox - and use the water normally for everything. As George's wife does, my wife drinks bottled water just about everywhere but she has no compunction re the boat tank water for everything else, including ice, coffee, cooking, etc. We have had people stay on the boat from various parts of the US and the UK and no one has ever had an issue with the water.

I know the point was made that perhaps because we live in Mexico, we are somehow inoculated against water issues. But I promise, that is not the case. I have visited Ireland three times and had Montezuma's revenge (or is it "Cuhullin's revenge?) every time. Occasionally, I get it when coming back to the US and then again when I return to Mexico. So I think a lot of it is just a matter of a person's system being used to the area's normal bacteria.

I certainly don't claim to know anything technical about any of this - I can only report what has worked fine for us over the years. Maybe we'll develop some exotic disease from the clorox…heck, I don't know.

 

[Fanfare]

A side benefit of the Clorox flush seems to be unusually white teeth!

 

[doc g]

for clear ice cubes for drinks use distilled water......Pat

 

[bostonhatteras]

for clear ice cubes for drinks use distilled water......Pat

Doesn't distilled water taste awful? Ive been told you shouldn't drink it because it pulls minerals out of your body. Albeit ice cubes are a small addition to the amount you drink but Im all about making my vodka tonic taste good!

More on topic, I have never had any issue with tank water. It is used for washing yourself or dishes mainly, head, occasionally for boiling food and never for drinking. I have opened the tank via the gauge bung a few times and to the naked eye it certainly appears clean. I do the bleach sterilization once per year and have a culligan whole house (vessel) filter just after the water pump. we utilize the tank continuously so the water turns over quickly and do run the dock hose for sometime before filling the tank to get it fresh. Poland spring accompanies us on every outing for drinking water.

 

[MikeP]

"for clear ice cubes for drinks use distilled water...…Pat"

Tried that along with every other "method" to get clear ice, including distilled and double-boiling it. Doesn't work. The only method that works is with an ice maker designed to do that.

 

[Genesis]

You can make it in the freezer too, but it takes some work. It's not the water -- it's how fast you freeze the water. You need to freeze it SLOWLY, which (in a freezer that is well-below the freezing point) means using a large mass of water with submerged molds in it. Then you cut the molds out of the block and free the cubes from them.

 

[Angela]

Doesn't distilled water taste awful?

No. It's the preferred water for coffee connoisseur. I need to have distilled water on hand for the batteries, so I usually just use that in my coffee maker when I'm not using tap water. I drink distilled water over ice sometimes. It taste just like any other bottled water.

 

[bostonhatteras]

No. It's the preferred water for coffee connoisseur. I need to have distilled water on hand for the batteries, so I usually just use that in my coffee maker when I'm not using tap water. I drink distilled water over ice sometimes. It taste just like any other bottled water.

Just to confirm what I thought I knew. Did a search on health dangers of drinking distilled water. ingested on a regular basis, it does lead to mineral deficiency and that in turn can cause some serious health issues. What regular basis means in terms of quantity I don't know. I suppose for coffee it would pull more of the flavor/compounds out of the coffee because of the waters absence of minerals. This would then make it become no longer distilled due to the imparting of minerals from the coffee. interesting stuff. mixing distilled water with other liquids or powders/solids then must significantly decrease any health danger.

 

[GJH]

Mike, my Scotsman is a DCE 33. 15" wide and around 33 tall.

Vincent it sits on a platform that evens it out vs the crown of the boat. My boat is stabilized so doesn't roll much. Yes, it runs through some water, and when we were living on moorings I only turned it on for special occasions. Plus is over the MSR and is a bit noisy at night as it cycles. It will hold ice for a day or two once turned off. This type of machine does not freeze the ice once made, which keeps it clear. Also, the method of making the ice takes a lot of the minerals out of the water, which get flushed out the end of the cycle.

I am a scotch on the rocks type in addition to mixed drinks, and I really like this ice and we've got lots of compliments from guests. Our boat has had the tendency to be the gathering place, lots of great memories of various parties and dinners up and down the east coast at mooring fields, anchorages and marinas.

 

[TopHattandTails]

The Scotsman ice makers are the "only" ice maker for serious ice officianado's!

 

[Vincentc]

The Scotsman ice makers are the "only" ice maker for serious ice officianado's!

Why is that?

I do not claim to be an Ice Aficionado but I know what I like in a cold drink, and based upon some experience, I suggest that block ice from the ice house chipped to size with an ice pick, would be the the ultimate ice choice.

In my experience, an Old Fashioned at Galatoire's served with chipped block ice raises frozen water to it highest form.




A close second is our Old Fashioned chilled with ice from our home ice machine and enjoyed on the aft deck.

Merry Christmas