With help from a roaming SPECTRA technician, we had our watermaker CLARK pump rebuilt. This is the device that uses some of the water pressure which has passed the membrane to amplify the pressure on the incoming side of the membrane. It is a complicated thing, but it also helps reducing power consumption...
The rebuild took longer than expected, a couple extra parts had to be shipped to Curacao. But now we are happy to report, we are making 16 gallons of water per hour with 20A @14V, which is better than as-new specification.
With the extra water, we decided to change our heads (=toilets) to fresh water. When salt water and urine mix, it produces calcium scale that builds up in the lines, fixtures and holding tank.
This is when boaters say, don't flush toilet paper! And then there are tricks like flushing vinegar, or at times muriatic acid, to prevent or remove that scale.
We don't want to live on a third world type of boat where we have to collect our TP. The whole plumbing is done in 1-1/2" and this ought to be able to flush some reasonable amount of TP thru. I believe, the stuck TP happens when the pipe is already clogged to a large percentage, and TP by itself does not cause the problem. Using fresh water instead of saltwater will avoid the buildup of scale.
To simplify plumbing, and avoid a risk of polluting our freshwater tanks, we didn't connect our freshwater line directly to the head. But instead, we mounted a bidet sprayer close by. Besides the targeted flushing with the sprayer, it also helps cutting down on the use of toilet paper.
Enough info now :-)
