Saturday, January 25, 2014

Sanitation, or the "Big Necessity"

I have been enjoying a paperback titled The Big Necessity, by Rose George, which frankly discusses much of what our culture deems unmentionable. So, I will continue in her vein and not suffer euphemisms.
When I set up the boat's plumbing system, Eric Pfeifer from Dockside Marine in Carabelle, designed it so that outflow could either go directly to the sea or go to a small holding tank (necessary to be legal in coastal or inland waters), which in turn could be pumped out directly to the sea or by a marina 'sanitation pump'. All of this was controlled by two three-way valves and a slew of 1 1/2" flexible sanitation hose going every which way under the boat's floorboards. Eric also suggested that I could use the direct outflow for a "pisser" even in the coastal area, and he thought that maybe since the toilet had a macerator that disintegrated the shit into fine soup, I could use it for a "shitter" as well.
Eric explained to me the curiosity of the sanitation law was that it was legal to piss over the side anywhere in the world, and likewise, it was legal to shit in a bucket and dump that over the side as well, regardless of coastal or deep water.
Mostly, though, while living in Apalachicola, I used the marina toilet for shitting and did use the head as a pisser.
On the trip down the Inter-Coastal Waterway (ICW), I did not want to pollute the narrow waters and anchorages, so I switched to the holding tank. We filled it right to the brim once and had to get it pumped out at a marina. Here at the Fort Myers Yacht Basin, I have my own pump-out station right on the dock and I can pump out whatever contents of the holding tank whenever I want in just a few minutes.
After a while, though, I began to notice that a bit of a sewage smell, what we would call a "pissy smell," emanating from the floorboards. Investigating, I noticed several small leaks in some of the many hose connections. I added hose clamps, but the smell persisted. So, I put "Re-do sanitation system" on my list and got to it yesterday.
I refit all the hoses and added hose clamps, heated some hoses, lubricated fittings with Vaseline (registered trademark), and tightened everything securely.
Here is a photo of the holding tank at the top, the three-way valve on the left, the discharge pump on the right, and the water tank at the bottom:

I am pretty proud of the job and so far, there is no sign of any kind of smell!
Another view showing the twisted spaghetti nature of the system. Believe me, I have stared at all those hoses going all which ways, trying to see how it works. Suffice to say that it works fine.


1 comment:

  1. Hard to imagine how the spaghetti looking tubes of your plumbing system could actually work…so congratulations on making sense of it all and having no leaks. Good work.

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