One of the first projects that I realized I would have to do on the boat was to somehow deal with the marine toilet (aka the “head”). For those of you who don’t know, yer basic manual marine toilet works by the operator using a hand pump to bring sea water into the bowl, doing his/her business, then pumping again to flush the water into a holding tank or overboard (overboard where legal, e.g. in the ocean). Well, one of my first acts as captain of SKOOKUM was to clog the head. Way to go me!!
It was my intent suit up, face mask up, glove up and to simply take the pump apart, remove the obstruction, and replace membranes and gaskets as needed. However, as the head was 25 years old, I had no idea where I would find the parts and I wasn’t convinced that they were available. So, instead I decided to just replace the head with an updated Jabsco. One significant benefit being that Jabsco parts are readily available and another being that, hey, It’s a brand new head.
First, to the right is a picture of the old head. Gross, I know! I’m the one who had to use a saber saw to cut the damn thing out. That was not pleasant at all.
Far worse though was replacing the old hose that connects the head to the selector valve that directs the effluent either into the holding tank or overboard. The hose itself can be pretty spendy, think on the order of ~$8-10 per foot. So, I wanted to make sure that I got the exactly correct size. My solution was to remove the old hose and bring it with me to West Marine. I bought the head from them, so I figured that the least they could do was to help me make sure I had the right hose, right? Granted, I don’t think I was too popular walking into the store with my poop tube in hand, “excuse me sir, can you help me get a replacement for this thing… I know, I’m sorry, just plug your nose and I’ll get it out of here as soon as possible.” Below are a few pictures of the brand new white hose. The first is of the hose coming out of the selector valve. This bit of the plumbing is in a locker directly behind where you sit when you use the head.
The next image is of the hose coming out of the locker and over to the head, the base of the head can be seen on the right side of the picture.
Finally, here is where the hose connects onto the head. The other blue and black hose is the water inlet hose, which I also replaced. Much less of a story there though since that hose only moves sea water. Check out those new stainless steel hose clamps!
Below is shown where the water inlet hose goes to a through hull fitting to take in the sea water. (This is what it looks like underneath the platform that the head sits on.) This is going to be the source of another project at some point.
And here is the finished product!! Shiny, new, clean.
To circle back, the reason I say that the through hull fitting and sea water intake hose are going to be the source of a new project is because it’s almost impossible to get to the space below the head. If the boat were ever taking on water through the fitting or hose, I’d have to frantically pry the head off the fiberglass platform that it sits on now, which would destroy the new head and the platform. A better solution would be to figure out a way to make things accessible now, like some kind of door that I could open and/or I might just rebuild the platform somehow. I’m still contemplating how to work this issue out.
I know, this posting was another recap. New things are ongoing, so if you've been following my posts on Facebook (which have comprised the subject matter of these recaps) and if you're starting to wonder if anything new is ever going to happen, just keep reading. I will begin to post new things once I've caught the blog up.
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