Flushing out an important boat job

So I have avoided talking about our toilets because I didn’t want to delve too far into all the crap we have been putting up with (pun intended, unfortunately). But, we have finally got our selves almost set up properly so I am moving beyond the trauma of this part of our boat improvements. I also think it is good to cover the toilet fiascos because they truly are an important aspect of boating life.

We got our toilets going in Carriacou and could tell that they didn’t always work the way they were supposed to. There are 5 toilets on our boat. One in each head, in which there is one head for each berth or bedroom, including one for the guest or crew cabin. The crew cabin and little kids’ heads have hand-pump toilets and very short toilet bowls. Despite the hand pumping style, they work very well for the little kids. They manage to pump it fairly well (although sometimes I have to help Norah), but the toilet seat height is perfect for them. Also, when we had no power on our boat for a day in Annapolis (the first time), it was super handy having a couple toilets to use! The other three toilets are electric pump, salt water flushing toilets. You push buttons and they flush. The ones in the big kids bedrooms are a brand called Sani-Marin and we had a smaller Jabsco in our ‘master’ bathroom. The Jabsco in our room was not much bigger than the little kids toilet so it wasn’t a good fit for 189cm tall Kevin. The Sani-Marins are supposed to be very good toilets and they are a normal size. None of the toilets were original to the boat.

So, here were the problems. First, all of them were dirty looking despite a good scrubbing. Yuck. As time went on, we discovered that Halyna’s toilet only seemed to work some of the time. There were times when there appeared to be no power to the toilet and we couldn’t figure it out! The master toilet seemed to barely manage it’s job (house rule: always flush mid job). Owen’s toilet seemed to have not only struggle to flush everything away, but also leaked out the back if you plunged it, and seemed to be breeding flies! He made a game of hitting as many flies as he could. . .

So, we knew we were going to have to address the toilets at some point and planned to replace them when we could get new toilets to us. Problem was, if we wanted Sani-Marine, they are easiest to get in France and expensive and difficult to ship in or get to the US. So, we decided that we would probably just get top of the line Jabsco toilets. But the big Jabsco toilets are not just held in marine stores, they need to be ordered in. Therefore, it was going to have to be when we were in the US and staying in one port for a while. We planned therefore, to replace them when we stopped at the marina in Solomons.

Luckily, we quickly discovered that if we used the proper toilet bowl cleaner, available in North America and not in the small Carribean islands, then we could get a clean bowl! Yipee, at least they looked better. Also, we found out that Halyna’s toilet, strangly, was getting it’s power from the hallway light switch! What the heck?! So, it worked if the hallway light was on, but not if it was off. Electrician Kevin quickly fixed this problem once it was discovered, and Halyna’s toilet hasn’t had problems since.

Unfortuantely, our master toilet didn’t want to wait until Solomons to be take care of. In Beaufort, it put up a full protest and stopped working all together. That’s when the trauma started. We spent a very long evening taking the toilet system apart to discover that the waste removal hoses were more than 90% clogged. For some reason, this toilet had a small hose outlet so it had to upsize to a larger hose halfway to the holding tank. We found the small hose fully clogged. Being that it was night-time, we couldn’t go to the store and needed to address the toilet situation. So, Kevin unclogged the hose. Yep, you can imagine what that entailed. He had a good long shower after. Things seemed better and we happily went to bed.

But, then a few nights later, it happened again. Turns out the larger hose was also fully clogged. Why we didn’t clean that out the first night was probably because we just wanted to minimize the experience at the time. But, it didn’t work, so we spent another night declogging our larger waste hose. This time it was my turn. How I wished I was back home delivering babies, even with all the mess it entails.

That said, after all that work, our toilet worked much better. Actually, it really didn’t give us any more problems but we replaced it just because of it’s size.

Owen’s toilet however, then decided to cause more problems. We figured at this point that really he probably had the same thing going on in his toilet. Although I think the flies come from the leaking out the back and the fact that his toilet is on a thick white pedestal that has a gap between it and the bathroom floor. Admittedly, we didn’t want to spend another night declogging waste hoses, so instead we told Owen to avoid using his toilet for the solid jobs. But it still leaked and it frequently smelled bad! Consequently, he would close the bathroom door all the time. Poor kid. He was definitely going to be the second one to get a new toilet.

As we approached Solomons we ordered two new delux flush Jabsco toilets to the marina. We were so excited. They arrived on time and we rushed to get them. They were broken! The bowls were both in pieces and the boxes were in rough shape. The company had not packaged them well for the delivery. Thankfully, they agreed to give us our money back. We declined ordering new ones right away though because they didn’t have any more in stock and it would be months before they could get them to us and we planned to moved on. On the positive note, they didn’t want the broken toilets back, so we took the parts of the toilet that were fine, like the pump, toilet seat and hoses and added them to our spare parts bins. On we travelled.

Our next location with a marina and a longer stop was Port Washington. So, we tried again. Kevin ordered them ahead of us from another store and looked forward to recieving them when we were there. We received word that they had arrived when we were on route to Kevin’s sister’s farm. So we had to wait all weekend to get them. When we got them. One was broken to three pieces. . .but the other one was in one piece! The company agreed to pay us back for the broken one, but they wanted to get re-imbursed by the carrier company, so they asked us to keep the broken toilet until further notice! We held onto it for over a month. A toilet takes up a lot of space on a boat our size, especially when we already have too much stuff.

We arrived in Newport with one new toilet on our deck and one broken toilet on our deck. We were provisioned to go across the ocean and planned to get rid of the broken toilet just before we left. We had ordered a second toilet to Defender, the marine shop in Conneticut that we were able to drive to and pick up ourselves. Two days before our planned trip to Defender (we were waiting for the toilet to arrive to the warehouse) Owen’s toilet decided it was done completely.

It was daytime and we thought we knew what the problem was. It was probably because of a fully clogged waste hose as before and it needed to be addressed sooner than the drive to Defender for which we had a car rental booked. Of course, this meant we had to spend another several hours doing another shitty declogging job. Only this time it was even worse (if that is even possible) and would declog with our usual tactic. At least it was during the day! Kevin though if we soaked it for awhile perhaps it would clear. But soaking it didn’t make a difference. That’s when we finally got a little smarter about the whole thing and went to the store and bought new hoses. We replaced Owen’s hose with a new one and while we were at it, replaced Halyna’s as well to avoid having the same thing happen again. Owen’s toilet worked again and we were so convinced that this was the only problem, that we told Defender we no longer needed the toilet. We drove there as planned a few days later to buy other things but didn’t buy the toilet. Of course, you can probably predict what that meant. The toilet started giving us problems again two days after our Defender trip. It isn’t as bad as it was, but it is still unreliable. Turns out the flushing mechanism and pump just don’t have enough power. Plus, there are still flies and it leaks if you plung it.

Kevin and I installed the first new toilet (along with new hoses) in our room and it is so much better than we thought it would be. Not only is it a proper height, but it has so much power! Who knew how much happiness a proper toilet could bring! Of course, now we feel guilty that Owen still has to struggle (or rather avoid) his toilet. However, we don’t want to go through another delivery fiasco or the process of renting a car and driving to pick up the toilet. Especially since we still have another toilet on our deck. It’s broken, but perhaps not too much?? Upon reflection, the toilet that was delivered in pieces, was only in 3 large pieces and none of those pieces broke through the bowl. With a little research, we have discovered that you can repair porceline with the use of epoxy and fast hardening plumbers putty. The toilet otherwise has all the right working parts and will end up just like ours. So, we epoxied the three big pieces together and are worked to put that toilet to use (bonus that it no longer costs us anything).

I am actually pretty impressed how well the toilet came back together. After using the epoxy, the putty was used to fill in any gaps and then the whole thing was sanded down to smooth lines. Then, we used porceline paint to hide the repair job. Good as new?! We will see. The paint colour isn’t a perfect match so we have to try another one.

More recently, the pump for our toilet stopped working at 11pm. Luckily this was a relatively easy fix because we have several spare pumps on board. However, we used a temporary washdown pump because it was the easiest solution. We will put in the proper pump when we put in Owen’s toilet.

Our plan is to install the toilet with new hoses and directly to the floor so that there is no longer a fly breeding zone. However, the process of installation is more complicated than one would think, because the previous installation of Owen’s toilet tied his toilet into our pump rather than giving him a dedicated pump. Therefore, we have to run some extra wires and hoses and install a new pump for him (as well as replace ours), as well as the toilet. For this reasons, we have spent the last one and a half months with the pieced-together toilet on our deck waiting to be installed (so, maybe we aren’t quite over the trauma of our toilet fiascos). However, when we are done, we will have 5 working toilets and no more nasty problems (although we still haven’t tested our crew cabin toilet so really there is always a chance). And then, we can confidently flush this part of the boat jobs away.