Salt Water Tap

A few weeks ago I got the bright idea of installing a salt water tap in the galley sink. The goal is to save fresh water on long passages by washing dishes and other things with salt water (then rinsing with fresh). The problem was access to sea water. Yet another hole through the hull was out of the question. Someone suggested using the engine cooling water intake but someone else advised to avoid that because of the danger of the cooling system sucking up air if the salt water tap is left open. "The cooling system is sacrosanct." were his words.

So I decided to tap into the sink drain. Why not? Water drained from the sink is exchanged with the sea water whether the boat is moving or not. The worst that can happen is that some drain water is mixed in with some salt water when cleaning the dishes. We can live with that (we think).

For the cost of about $110 and 3 hours of work the tap has been installed and is working fine. One fellow sailor thought that the salt water pump would lower the water level of the drain hose and air would be sucked in. This has not happened. Attached is a photo showing where I've used a T-piece to connect the drain hose to a smaller salt water pump inlet hose. The other photo shows the three sink taps: pressure fresh water at the left, manual salt water in the middle, manual fresh water at the right. We will sail long passages with the electrical breaker of the fresh water pressure pump turned off.