Reviving the Fresh Water Plumbing

Fresh Water System on the LF38

The LF38 originally comes with 104 gallon capacity of fresh water.  The tankage is divided into three tanks: 2 settee  tanks each with 32 gallon capacity and a 39 gallon capacity tank in the V-berth.

At present, the Johanna Rose on has the two settee tanks totaling 64 gallons of fresh water capacity.  The V-berth tank was earlier removed  with plans to use the additional V-berth space for much need storage.  The old V-berth tank is in storage so that it can be restored if future needs warrant it.  But before doing so, the V-berth tank, which was found to have a crack along the side, would need to be repaired (see water tank repair).

Except for the water tanks and two faucets, the rest of the fresh water system was completely removed by a previous owner.  The only remnants were the small sections of 3/8" polybutyle tubing coming from the water tanks.

Laying out a plumbing plan.

Installing a New Pressurized Water System

The photo to the right illustrates the first stage plan for the new pressurized water system.  The system was fabricated from 1/2" Pex tubing($2.98 per 10' pipe), 1/2" PVC and 1/2" pipe components.  Using 1/2" was not necessary as the tank output line is 3/8", but 1/2" is common and using it makes finding components easy and very affordable. The Pex tube was easily cut using a utility knife, but a square cut is needed for the Flair-It connectors.

Running Pex water lines to the galley cabinet.

A 3/8" to 1/2" Flair-It connector(pink label) was used to connect the 3/8" polybutyle tank tube to 1/2" Pex tube.  From there the Pex tube was redirected using Flair-It elbows to bring the water pipe into the galley cabinet.   In the cabinet, the Pex was connected to a combiner manifold using a Flair-It connector with a Male 1/2" pipe thread end.  The combiner manifold was made from threaded PVC components and included two ball valves, one for each tank input.  The output barb of the manifold was connected via a reinforced 1/2" hose to a Jabsco PumpGuard (water strainer) and then onto a distribution tee (in the layout photo, the order of the last two are reversed).  The distribution tee is used to provided water to the water pressure pump and to provide water to the galley foot pump.

Water tank combiner manifold.

PumpGuard filter with water distribution
to the galley foot pump (down) and pressure
pump input (up).

Jabsco 31395-0092 Marine ParMax 2.9
Water System Pump
(2.9-GPM, 50-PSI, 12-Volt)
purchased from Wholesale Marine.

The original galley foot pump which still
works fine (Whale Gusher Galley Mk3).

The output of the water pressure pump was then brought to a second distribution tee.  One output of the pressurized distribution tee fed the cold water supply of the galley sink.  The sink connections were made using standard 1/2" threaded flexible plumbing sink hose.   A connection to the hot side of the faucet was made and capped off at the hose end to eliminate cold water back-up leakage.  The second feed from the pressurized distribution tee was connected to a Pex line which fed cold water to the head sink.

Pressurized distribution tee feeding the cold
water supply of the galley sink and the cold
water supply of the head sink.

A view of the galley sink connectors.

The connection made to the head sink is
via a Flair-It swivel 1/2" FPT adapter.

When upgrading this system with hot water, the feed to the hot water tank will be provided by tapping into the head cold water supply line. New hot water Pex water lines will be run at that time.