Sailboat Refit – Accumulator Tank

Now that we’re living on the boat full time we’ve started to actually test and use the systems on it. One of the most important is the potable water, which we use for drinking, showering, flushing the toilet, etc. Ours is setup with a single small water pump with a built in pressure sensor that just turns on the pump when the pressure gets low. The problem with this is that every time we use even a tiny amount of water the pump will kick on and then cycle on and off as it senses water pressure. This results in a really uneven flow from the faucets, a ton of noise, and low water pressure. We thought it would be fine, but after using it for 2 days… it’s super irritating.

Hence… our $50 accumulator tank! The tank is located after the pump and stores, in our case, 2 gallons of water with a pressurized bladder at the top. When we use water now, the pressurized tank supplies it until it’s depleted and then the pump can turn on and run constantly until the tank is refilled and the pressure is achieved. This fixes the pump cycling issue, which wears out water pumps fast! It also resulted in fantastic and smooth water pressure! The install took a few hours, most of which was spent trying to Macgyver together a mounting bracket out of parts laying around the boat because I really hate going to the store.

After getting the tank mounted and plumbed in (Just a tee and like 6″ of hose. Easy!) I spent another hour reorganizing all of the spare parts. I have a full water filter replacement, filter elements, and a brand new spare water pump. I had all of that stuff in the bottom of the locker in a bucket, but I would really hate for it to get ruined. So I sacrificed some more zip ties to the organization gods and attached the high value stuff to the bulkhead up and out of the way of water leaks. It looks really nice in there! I even mounted a small air hand pump to recharge the accumulator tank bladder!