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What's In Your Water Tank?In February 2003 the main water tank (132 gallons) on my 1979 Morgan Out Island developed a leak. I removed the wall exposing the tank and found numerous corrosion holes on the front of the tank. Water was leaking from behind the tank as well, so it was obvious that there were other leaks present. Deciding that just repairing the visible holes would not fix the problem, I removed the tank. What a chore. I had to cut two inches off the width of the tank in order to be able to remove the tank from the boat. Cutting the back side of the tank exposed the interior of the tank. It was disgusting. With the current theory that Aluminum is a cause of Alzheimer's, I have decided that I am going to replace the tank with either polypropylene or stainless steel. A new water tank was constructed of stainless steel and installed. The new tank was about 3 inches smaller in width than the old tank so it would fit through the companion way and hall. Other wise it fit like a glove. One note of interest - the old tank had four tabs that screwed into the boat, holding the tank in place. These had to be cut off to remove the tank. On the new tank the new tabs were 3" piano hinge that would fold up while getting the tank in and unfold to secure the tank - worked well. Where the old tank had foam insulation sprayed behind it, I removed all of it due to it having been wet - and smelly. I found 1.5" insulation at Lowe's and cut it to fit behind the tank to support and insulate the tank. Unfortunately I did not think to take any pictures until the tank was already in place. I hope to have a drawing of the new tank available in the future. Tanking the outside dimensions, I calculated that the new tank was 126 gallons - so taking away the thickness of the wall and the tank is probably in the 124 gallon range - a loss of 8 gallons - not bad.
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01/22/14 |
