As you might have guessed from the title of
this post, we have been victims of the inevitable ‘toilet trouble’
syndrome. If you have a queasy
disposition I would recommend that you give this particular blog post a miss!
With both mechanical and electric toilets
on a boat, there is always something that can go wrong – usually it’s fairly
straightforward and the cause is flushing something obstructive. The general rule for a boat toilet is not to
flush anything other than what went through you first! Some boats prefer you not to flush toilet
paper (which means collecting it in a little bin near the toilet and disposing
on land on a regular basis otherwise the smell becomes rather noxious), but we
try to use eco-friendly paper and as little paper as possible. Our ensuite toilet is electric which means
that it comes with a macerator (like a small blender with blades ) that chops
everything up to a slurry for easier disposal overboard. The manually-pumped toilets do not have this
(at least ours don’t) and so what goes into the toilet basically comes out more
or less the same way.
For this reason, as well as hygienic
purposes, we use holding tanks when we are anchored in a bay or near a
beach. The toilet contents are pumped
into this tank which can be emptied when we move on and are well out at sea. This is achieved using a valve which is
either off or on. So far, we have not
had any problem with our toilets, but while anchored in Serifos we did notice
that our holding tank appeared to be overflowing.
I won’t go into the details of what we
observed , but suffice it to say we needed to get it sorted ASAP. Yes, luckily
we have two other toilets on board Bisou and so the situation was not critical,
but Tad does not like to have anything on the boat which is not functioning at
100%. So we spent several hours flushing
out the holding tank (normally a no-no in an anchorage, but we only had one or
two other boats which were nowhere near us and the wind was blowing strongly
enough offshore that the beach was in no danger of our pollution), and trying
to understand what the problem was. In
the end we found that our holding tank valve was not working properly (jammed
open) and that there seems to be some sort of obstruction in the pipe between
the holding tank and the outlet to the sea.
Obstructions in the form of calcium deposits are fairly common in boat
toilets, and while we have not experienced this previously, some of our friends
have. Tad was reluctant to take the
valve apart until we have a new one to replace it and did not want to take the
pipe from the holding tank apart until we were sure that it was well cleaned
out! In any case, we were able, through
thorough flushing and cleaning with a special toilet cleaner, to render the
offending appliance useable for the time-being.
Living the dream!
The story is not yet over! On reaching Crete, and being safely tied up
in a marina, it was time to take the troublesome toilet apart to find out what
the problem was. We had thoroughly (we
thought) flushed the holding tank out at sea and were now in a position to take
a good look at what was going on. The
answer was pretty gross – thinking that a good clean was all the tank needed,
on taking things apart, it became clear very quickly that every single pipe,
fitting and anything involved with the toilet from the bowl to the through-hull
was clogged with calcium deposits and assorted cling-ons. Like the clogged arteries of a person who has
just suffered a major heart attack, poor Bisou’s owner’s toilet was suffering a
‘toilet attack’! Now if you have ever
tried to remove a thick coating of calcium scale from the inside of an
inaccessible tank or plastic pipe, you will sympathise. We soaked the things in vinegar with partical
success; we then resorted to hydrochloric acid (14%) which you can buy for 50
cents in the supermarkets in Greece! The
fizzing away of the acid on the calcium was encouraging, but it took several
doses and then chiseling away at the remainder.
This ended up being a job that took several days and then another day to
put everything back together and make sure nothing leaked. The interesting thing that we did discover
was that the valve which goes through the hull was never set properly. By this I mean that the handle was attached
in such a way that the valve never opened or closed completely – this meant
that we were never thoroughly flushing the contents of the holding tank and so
crap (literally) was accumulating for the past 2 ½ years in spite of regular
flushing. The other fact we discovered
was that apparently when urine is mixed with seawater, the calcium is deposited
so that while things are sitting in the tank, calcium can form.
The net result of the whole exercise was
that we understood the necessity of using large amounts of water to flush the
toilet regularly (Tad fixed the valve, by the way and it’s now working
properly: open and closed), as well as regular cleansing with vinegar (soaking
overnight or longer) and hydrochloric acid if necessary. Apparently there is a product in Turkey which
is also good for this sort of problem.
Another solution is to use fresh water to flush your toilet but this
would be a luxury and only possible with a good water-maker and regular making
of water (both of which we have and do).
Fingers crossed that this is the last of our toilet troubles!
Not our pipe but ours looked very similar - much dirtier however!!
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