The smell was not bad, but you could kind of notice it. Having been on dozens of boats, I thought it was normal to have a slight “head” odor. The survey revealed what appeared to be a stuck y-valve, and a small sanitary hose leak at a fitting. I thought “simple enough to fix over a weekend.” After a few days of living on the boat, the project was bumped to priority #1 on The List. It started out as just trying to replace a small 24 inch section of hose, but ended up being a complete replacement of the holding tank, all the sanitary lines, the vent line and chrome termination, and while we were at it, we re-built the Raratan head as well.
Increase in scope #1: When the time arrived to replace a small section of hose under the sink in the head where the suspected leak was, it was becoming clear it wouldn’t be so straightforward. Trying to man-handle a piece of that 1.5 inch stiff white sanitation hose into position under the sink was next to impossible. It boggles the mind to think how they fit all that hose under the sink back at the factory. Well, might as well replace all the hose while I’m at it. That Shields Poly-X hose at $24/ft is starting to sound really appealing. Despite the high price tag, I highly recommend it for it's ease of handling and lifetime warranty against odors. This project would have been twice as hard if I had used the cheap white hose.
Before:
Increase in scope #2: Oh yeah, that Whale Gusher pump under the sink used for pumping out the holding tank, well that really stinks too. The smell had permeated the neoprene billows. I proceeded to remove the pump to see about cleaning it or re-building it. Wait, do I even need this pump? It would make things much simpler to demolish it, along with the 8 feet of hose. It would be easy enough to add one back in later if I decided I really needed one. Out it came! This provided an added benefit. The empty 3.5 inch hole where the pump was mounted now provides some decent ventilation to the restroom.
Increase in scope #3: This is where I almost threw in the towel and hired somebody. The pump-out connections on the original tank where at the bottom backside of the tank. How was I supposed to remove the hoses without spilling sewage everywhere? It would be so much easier to remove the tank with the hoses attached and throw the whole mess in the dump – which is exactly what I did. Those hoses had been saturated with smell because they continuously had sewage in them all these years.
Awaiting the landfill:
A fork in the road: With the holding tank out, do we even want to stick in another one? What about a composting head? What about a Lectrasan unit? After hours and hours of research over a couple of weeks, we almost went the composting head route. The Lectrasan was appealing, but there is a big push to have those types of units outlawed in the Puget Sound. In the end, we decided to put back in a holding tank system. We’ve heard composting heads can have bug and odor issues, and we wanted to maintain the boat’s original systems as much as possible – not take any chances. Time to call the tank manufacturer Ronco. With a couple of consultations over the phone, and some other research, I ordered a new tank with some improvements over the original design. I had all of the fitting placed on the top of the tank. This allows for easy access, and also prevents sanitation hoses from having standing effluent in them, causing permeation odors. The pump-out fitting has a schedule 80 PVC dip-tube extending to the bottom of the tank. I also ordered it in white. This allows a visual as to how full the tank is.
New tank:
Ever have the in-laws over without a functioning restroom? Hey, when is that head project going to be done??
Increase in scope #4: This deep into it, we decided to go all out. We, replaced the vent hose and transom termination, y-valve, replaced the sink drain, replaced the head intake and added a strainer, and capped off the manual pump-out through hull. We also re-built the head itself. That took about two hours, but could probably be done in an hour having once done it. Finally, an entirely new system without anyone else’s “effluent” in it anywhere.
Rebuilding the Raratan head:
The project was finally completed, and it seems to work good. No smells. I hope not to touch it again for quite some time.
Done: