How does the line go? If you don't eat you don't s##t, and if you don't s##t you die. Right?
We like eating. This means that a minimum of 5 times a day someone on the boat "uses the facilities". Far more than that actually, because unless you are very efficient at combining your number ones with your number twos (to make, as Arthur has recently worked out, a number 3 - his favourite) then there will be at least 2 or 3 other visits per day per person. Let's say 4 visits per day per person total. I reckon that is pretty conservative.
So, on Meander we have 5 people. That makes at least 20 toilet visits per day, 140 visits per week, 600 visits per month, or something more than 7,000 toilet flushes in the year we were planning to be away! "No s##t" I hear you say. Well, you learn something new every day.
So, before we departed and I was doing my pre-flight checks I took one look at the rusty macerator motor on the (single) toilet we have on board and thought to myself - no way, just not worth running the risk, so I spent about $150 and spent several rather unpleasant hours becoming more closely aqainted with the "head". Actually, I did far more than that. I also replaced all the piping, installed a holding tank and checked the wiring. None of this was fun, but I thought it would be far preferable to the alternative - dealing with other people's s##t once we were underway and all living aboard and needing to use the toilet 20 plus times per day.
I blessed this piece of foresight almost weekly - until yesterday.
Until yesterday everything worked well. The holding tank has been used EXTENSIVELY during our cruising of inland waterways and, although it does get a bit smelly at times, is worth its weight in gold when cruising with kids who just HAVE TO GO NOW!! - usually on approach to a dock or mooring, why, I have never figured out. The only problem is that the toilet has gradually flushed with less and less enthusiasm and googling this phenomenon leads us to believe that we need to soak the system in some hydrochloric acid to dissolve built up "scale" from the inside of the pipes.
Well, last night, when Lauren headed off to bed at about 10pm, her good night flush didn't work. The motor whirred, the contents went around in circles but didn't go away. Great. The day (night) of reckoning had arrived. I went to bed too, then realised (about midnight) that this was probably about the best shot I'd get at working on the beast as all users were asleep and the next "use" was probably about 7 hours away. So I got up and got on with it.
Fortunately (for you) my hands were too grubby to take more than 1 photo. This charming image shows the "hair ball" (plus other matter) that had accumulated on the macerator. Too many girls brushing their hair in the bathroom and dropping the loose bits down the toilet. This might work at home, but not on a boat. If you didn't eat it, don't flush it!
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| The dreaded hairball |
a) the toilet didn't actually flush much better than it did before, despite the hairball removal operation. Damn! Must be that scale after all.
b) the handle on the inlet "seacock" sheared off the valve, with the valve jammed closed = no water coming in to flush the toilet. Damn. Big Damn!
c) by morning, when it was first used "in anger" with a bucket of sea water to flush it, it wouldn't actually flush away at all due to scale that I'd broken free during my operation in the night moving through the system and blocking a pipe near the outlet.
Great. I step forward and 3 steps backwards. One of them quite large.
Well, the first order of "business" was to clear out the blocked outlet pipe. A 2 or 3 hours and a fair amount of disassembly and god-awful "water" all through the bathroom and that was achieved - although it still isn't flowing brilliantly, so we've still got to give the HCl a try. Apparently it is good stuff. We shall see. I think the low-point of that particular exercise was blowing through the outlet pipe to clear the blockage after attempting to "rod" it with a piece of plastic hose...
So, by lunchtime today, we were back to having a toilet that we could flush by pouring in a bucket of seawater and pumping as usual. That is a good start. Immediate emergency averted, "business" could continue as usual.
So, while the others went off to play on the beach, I had a wee snooze in the sun in the cockpit to make up for my interrupted night's sleep and valiant efforts of the morning.
I had decided that replacing a seacock is not a trivial operation. A seacock is what keeps the water out of the boat. We like the water to be on the outside, its what keeps the boat (our home) afloat. There are stories around of people replacing seacocks with the boat afloat. Apparently the procedure is to dive outside the boat and hammer a wooden bung into the through-hull fitting to keep most of the water out while the seacock is unscrewed and replaced. This sounds good in theory, but if something - anything - goes wrong then you have a very risky situation. Given that the valve that needs to be replaced could easily be 30 years old, and the through-hull fitting is definitely 30 years old then I reckon that there is a good chance that something goes wrong. Probably the most likely is that the 30 year old through-hull fitting shears off when pressure is applied to undo the seacock. That would be bad. Water in the boat for sure.
No, I decided that replacing that seacock is a job for dry land. And I suspect it will probably involve replacing the through-hull fitting at the same time. This will require lifting the boat out of the water and probably a day or two on the hard. I'm only guessing, but I reckon that around Pittwater you wouldn't see any change out of one boat unit ($1k). Seems like a shame as we'll have to bring Meander out when we get her back to Melbourne for new antifoul. Is there a way to avoid doing it twice...?
So, back to my snooze. It was quite a productive snooze actually, as I woke up realising that I already had what we needed on the boat, and 30 minutes later it was done!
Step 1: disconnect the outlet from the bathroom sink from its seacock (on the other side of the boat).
Step 2: disconnect the water inlet hose from the toilet.
Step 3: drag the spare length of hose up out of the bilge and connect the sink outlet seacock to the toilet intake, running the pipe under the bathrooom floor.
Presto! working toilet!
OK, we now have a bathroom sink that only drains to the bilge, but we can avoid using that. Definitely the lesser of two evils.
Now, I just have to make sure the hose still attached to the jammed toilet inlet seacock is blanked off securely and runs up above the waterline - just to be doubly sure it doesn't leak and flood the boat - and we have a solution that should see us back to Melbourne and our next scheduled haul-out.
Oh the joys of family cruising!
Now, back to lying in the sun...
UPDATE:
I got the HCl. About $8 for 1 litre from Bunnings. Worked a treat! I pulled apart one joint in the outlet, just after the anti-syphon bend, so that I could make sure that I filled all parts of the outlet tubing with acid. It fizzed and bubbled spectacularly! I left it there for maybe 30 minutes, then drained and gave it a second dose. Put the system back together and then gave the toilet a good old flushing - worked like a new one! This was definitely the problem, and definitely the cure. If you have a marine toilet that is not flushing out too well then give it a dose of HCl. Little effort, little cost, little time, and very little mess. Should have started with trying this for sure. Next time I'll know!
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