Electric toilet modification

The TMC and Jabsco which are the same animal fail for little else than the maceration seperation plate.

The expense and the shipping when NOT in USA is the same as new,

As all the thing is, is an impeller that puts water in I am considering just removing the rubber bladed impellor that brings water and just use an inline with 2 switches --one is flush and one is evacuate.

Of course 2 switches could need more intelligence but nothing more than a chimpanzee could muster.

Any one else struggles with toilets.

I like my TMC electric pumps --10 years old and still work ok and DONT leak. But this simple mod could put back purchase for many years more.

 

Fresh water flush toilets never fail. Any boat above 50ft should go FW and avoid the stink and hassle of handling sea water.

 

"Fresh water flush toilets never fail. Any boat above 50ft should go FW and avoid the stink and hassle of handling sea water."....agree they are the only way to go, but they will fail eventually.

The very best toilets that I have seen over the years are the Tecma (Thetford)...they have a 75mm outlet/macerator, and that I am sure Michael would appreciate operating commercially.........

Frosty, I can post direct to you anything little like this for bugger all mate. Just email me when you need anything, I buy trade or better, postage for small items is only about $10 here, so feel free anytime mate.

 

Actana Is what Ive been using for the past 20 years. They are household toilets for basement ..flush up.... installations.

Tecma is well regarded and used on all the Italian built yachts

 

I like the Lavac which uses a diaphragm type bilge pump and a sealing lid and the pump draws water in through the partial vacuum and evacuates at the same time.
So far it's never failed or blocked. But guests seem to have trouble reading the instructions and don't flush it properly or don't get a proper seal and don't draw water in.

I often thought it would be easy to add a standard flush with a pump in and a macerating pump out that both run with a switch depressed the effect would be the same and it could be on a 5 second timer. But the lavac bowls are a bit small.

On the bigger boat I'm just considering fitting at least one standard toilet with a household type cistern and simply flushing with 4.5 liters of salt water into the holding tank. I've been aboard smaller boats where these setups worked surprisingly well .

 

...yep, many fishing boats have standard flush toilets, float switch controlled same as the house type.

The Lavac is a very good setup, but still uses the 1 1/2" hand pump, no macerator really, but yes it is good. Bias Marine are the agents for them here.

 

I sailed on a 50 footer with a standard house toilet. It worked like a charm. I was donated a nice stainless steel bowl made for public toilets with vandals in mind. Having seen one broken bowl in rough weather I like the idea of the stainless one. Could be tigged for a slightly different outlet too.

 

A house toilet is an easy install as long as your above water line and heeling water line with a flush capacity.

Its a doddle on most above 50 footers. But is it --lets have some details .

A house toilet is 100mm

So although you know how to sit on it what is the plumbing of it. Do you have 100mm to the water side how does if flush. No mascerator??? easier said that done.

 

When I was a teenager I worked on an old eighty foot tugboat built (I think) in 1938. It had a house toilet. A 4"ish pipe dropped down about two feet made a 90 deg. turn and went strait out the side about 2" above the water line. It always worked but it was important to remember to shut the valve off if the port side of the boat was windward. When the waves hit the sh*t pipe it would shoot a massive spurt of hopefully just water.

 

Frosty,

The outlet is 100, but you reduce it to 75 via a standard PVC downpie type fitting and yes it goes straight over the side, we never fitted any sort of valve to it and had no problems, though the toilet was very high from the waterline, about 1.5 metres.
No macerator or anything else, basically illegal today, but depends where you are of course. You could easily send it to a holding tank, fitted with a 1 1/2" macertor pump out, and then all would be kosher again.
I designed and built these for BLA when I was working for them.
http://bla.com.au/default/holding-tank-120l.html?___SID=U
As you can see there are many inlets/outlets, but best of all the threads are all 1 1/2' BSW so all the standard hose and macerators screw straight in.
You could easily adapt the toilet inlet to this tank style.

 

That's what I bought for my boat. Got it brand new off another nutcase err boat builder down at Port Huon whose partner had decided she wanted a bigger bowl or something.

Like you I've thought of motorising/macerating it. ATM I just plan on dumping into a holding tank that can discharge straight out the bottom if I leave the ball valve open.

PDW

 

Peter
You might want to modify the holding tank so you can drop chlorine into it for some of the treated discharge only zones around Australia (and the world). Recirculating the macerating pumpout for a few minutes at a time over 40 minutes with chlorine added makes it treated effluent, so I've been told.

 

Frosty
It's below the WL so it needs a pump anyway, I'd be inclined to feed it through a macerator from a "surge" tank and either discharge directly overboard or treat and into a holding tank.

I like the idea of a composting head too, have you ever seen those installed? Not sure how well they work in practice with 7 people aboard.

 

I cant see a normal residential toilet working on a small craft. The drain slope to the holding tank would be to shallow .

If space permits, You could mount the toilet ontop of the tank and simply drop your load into the tank.

Also complicating the drain slope of a residential toielet instalation is the manditory one way duckbill valve in the tiolet to tank discharge line that keeps tank smell from invading the boat.

 

My boat is a large craft really !

But depends on the room under the installation and as I said I've used one on a 50 footer that was a good installation.