Boat odors are most annoying. Especially boat head odors. After doing all the odor elimination tricks and following Peggie the Headmistress’ advice to the T, we gave up and called in the pros.
Only to find out that when the original owner replaced the 40 gallon fiberglass holding tank, he took a shortcut and used an off the shelf 20 gallons WATER tank (thinner walls than a waste tank) from West Marine. And spliced several of the sanitation hoses which is a major no-no. Ugh.
Plus the Raritan Sea Era head statistics show that it uses a GALLON of water to clear a flush. A GALLON? The holding tank is only 20 gallons — what were they thinking? Lest you think this is all much ado about nothing, try counting how many times you flush your toilet during the course of a day — and night. Each time flushed is 1 gallon. You get 20 chances. That’s it. Oh, and don’t forget, your significant other might want to flush occasionally. 🙂 OK, so the picture becomes clearer …
So … we decided to bite the bullet and rather than wasting valuable fun time finding an operational pump out facility every 2-3 days, we’re replacing the 20 gallon tank with a custom tank.
In addition we’re replacing the Raritan Sea Era head with a VacuFlush head that only uses a scant PINT of water per flush instead of a gallon.
And while we’re at it, we might as well have the new head plumbed for fresh water instead of sea water and replace all those spliced sanitation hoses.
Since we did all our own plumbing aboard Winterlude, including rebuilding then replacing the head, replacing all the hoses, and more, we agreed NO MORE PLUMBING for us! The decision increases the price tag, but the end result will be NO SMELL and hundreds of flushes before we have to visit a pump-out. And we don’t get our hands dirty… 🙂
Now we wait … a custom tank takes 3 -4 weeks. 10 days down…
I installed a 50 gallon Nauta diesel flex tank on Hotspur, my 33 foot Hallberg Mistral. It is billed as non-permeable, but after 20 years it is starting to stink and so should be replaced. There is nothing worse than walking onto a boat and smelling the head!
Yuk! But sounds like your fix will create awesomeness!
Curious if you guys considered a composting head?
Thanks for the great stories!!
Hi Kathlyn! We did not consider a composting head, but we have lots of friends that swear by them. Carolyn at The Boat Galley has done a series of posts specifically on Composting Heads. Here’s one, scroll to the bottom of the article and there are more! Cheers! Jan
I am so, so happy we have a couple.posting head! Not that it’s a perfect solution, still, but we have been very happy with it, generally. And the boat never smells like “you-know-what”!