Water, Water Everywhere – A Practical New Approach to Fresh Water Afloat
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
Water, Water Everywhere – A Practical New Approach to Fresh Water Afloat
One of the less glamorous realities of living aboard a boat is managing fresh water.
For many narrowboat and inland-cruiser owners, the amount of water available is dictated by the capacity of the onboard tank and the location of the next recognised water point. Once the tank begins to run low, the boat eventually has to move on.
For occasional leisure users this may be little more than an inconvenience. For continuous cruisers and liveaboards, however, the need to replenish water can influence where they moor, when they move and how freely they use showers, washing machines and other domestic equipment.
That is why systems such as Water Freedom are worth looking at carefully.
Water Freedom takes a fundamentally different approach to the conventional marine “watermaker”. Rather than desalinating seawater, it is designed to draw freshwater from canals, rivers, lakes, streams, rainwater, wells and boreholes and pass it through a series of treatment stages before transferring the treated water into the vessel’s freshwater tank.
The key distinction – filtration is not desalination
This is the most important point when comparing Water Freedom with other marine water-making equipment.
Seawater watermakers solve a shortage-of-freshwater problem.
Inland filtration systems solve a contamination-of-available-freshwater problem.
Those are not the same thing.
A yacht operating offshore may be surrounded by millions of litres of water, but it is salt water. A conventional marine watermaker therefore uses high-pressure reverse osmosis to remove salt and produce freshwater.
A narrowboat on the Grand Union Canal, Trent, Ouse, Thames or other inland waterway faces almost the opposite problem. It is already surrounded by freshwater. The difficulty is that the water may contain suspended solids, hydrocarbons, agricultural chemicals, microorganisms and other contaminants.
It therefore makes little sense to compare the two technologies purely by output.
They have been designed for different environments.
How does Water Freedom work?
Water Freedom uses a pump to draw source water and force it through a series of filters intended to remove sediment, hydrocarbons, pesticides, heavy metals and other contaminants. An ultraviolet sterilisation stage can also be incorporated before the water reaches the vessel’s tank.
Current manufacturer figures quote approximately 10–12 litres per minute for the standard system and around 20 litres per minute for the UltraMegaFlow version. On that basis, a 400-litre tank could theoretically be replenished in roughly 20–40 minutes depending on the installation and filter condition.
That is a substantial output in inland-boating terms.
Rather than travelling to a service point simply because the tank is running low, an owner may be able to replenish the tank periodically while moored, where local conditions and regulations permit.
For a liveaboard, this could make a considerable difference.
Washing machines, dishwashers, longer showers and more normal domestic water use become much easier to manage when every litre consumed does not move the boat closer to its next compulsory water stop.
But there are important limitations
No filtration system should encourage complacency about the quality of the source water.
Canals and rivers can be exposed to sewage contamination, fuel and oil, agricultural run-off and a wide range of other pollutants. Intake location, maintenance, filter condition and the cleanliness of the boat’s freshwater tank and plumbing remain important.
Water Freedom itself makes an important qualification.
The company states that, for legal and insurance reasons, it cannot guarantee that the output water is safe to drink. Where owners do intend to drink it, Water Freedom recommends an additional 0.05-micron undersink filter together with a further polishing stage.
From a marine surveyor’s point of view, that is a sensible distinction.
There is a difference between water treated for general domestic use and water whose potability has been positively established.
Owners intending to consume treated surface water should follow the manufacturer’s recommendations carefully and may also wish to consider periodic laboratory testing.
Maintenance is equally important. Water Freedom currently advises that its sediment filters may require replacement every one to three months, depending upon the quality of the source water and level of use, while the other treatment filters are generally replaced on an annual basis.
How does it compare with other systems?
WM Aquatec
Of the alternatives on the market, WM Aquatec is probably the closest technical comparison.
Its systems are designed to treat freshwater sources including lakes and rivers and combine filtration with UV-C LED disinfection. Its UV-aid+ system, for example, can be configured with a submersible pump for direct abstraction from external freshwater sources and offers a quoted maximum flow rate of 8 litres per minute.
That makes it a genuine inland or off-grid water-treatment solution rather than a seawater desalination system.
General Ecology Seagull
The General Ecology Seagull range occupies a somewhat different position again.
It is primarily a point-of-use purification system designed to improve drinking-water quality at an individual tap.
It can therefore be very useful aboard a boat, but it should not really be considered a direct high-volume competitor to a system intended to refill a complete 300, 400 or 500-litre onboard tank.
Indeed, the two approaches could be complementary: bulk filtration for tank replenishment followed by final point-of-use treatment at the galley.
Rainman
Rainman produces excellent reverse-osmosis watermakers, but they solve the offshore problem rather than the inland one.
Rainman systems draw seawater, remove sediment and then force the water through reverse-osmosis membranes at high pressure to separate freshwater from salt. Depending on model, portable systems currently produce from around 26 litres per hour to more than 150 litres per hour.
For an offshore yacht this can be transformational.
For a narrowboat surrounded by freshwater, it is addressing a problem that largely does not exist.
Sea-going reverse-osmosis systems generally
The same principle applies to many other established marine watermakers.
They may be sophisticated, highly reliable and entirely appropriate aboard sailing yachts and motor cruisers operating at sea, but they should not automatically be regarded as direct competitors to freshwater-treatment systems designed for rivers and canals.
The engineering challenge is simply different.
Why this matters for inland boat owners
For me, that is what makes Water Freedom interesting.
It is not simply another marine watermaker.
It is a system designed around the practical realities of inland boating.
The attraction is not merely cleaner water. It is the potential reduction in dependence upon water points.
For a liveaboard or continuous cruiser, that could mean fewer unnecessary movements, more freedom to remain at a preferred mooring and a considerably more relaxed approach to everyday water consumption.
Modern inland boats are already becoming increasingly self-sufficient. Solar charging, lithium batteries, high-capacity inverters, improved heating systems and sophisticated electrical management are now commonplace.
Water treatment is arguably the next logical step.
Provided such systems are correctly installed, properly maintained and used with a clear understanding of their limitations, they could become one of the most useful additions to the modern liveaboard boat.
Because for the inland boater, the problem has never really been a shortage of water.
It has been finding a practical and reliable way of making use of the water that is already all around us.
Midlands Boat Surveys has no commercial connection with the manufacturers discussed above. This article is intended as an independent overview of the technologies and should not be taken as a guarantee of water potability or as a substitute for manufacturer installation and maintenance guidance.
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