I have inherited a electrical head that at the moment doesn't work.
Unless I can get it working my feeling are to revert to a manual one.
Your opinions will be appreciated.

Bundeenabuoy said..
I have inherited a electrical head that at the moment doesn't work.
Unless I can get it working my feeling are to revert to a manual one.
Your opinions will be appreciated.

I have no opinion but I recently had to fix a jabsco manual one. I need to replace a seal but when I took the hose off the inlet the barb broke so I had to replace the whole pump. I also had to buy some hinges for the seat. I almost could have bought a whole new toilet for the price of the parts!

Manual is good enough for me. A recent $60 service kit was the only cost over 5 years and I only needed one seal out of it (pump handle), so not very onerous from a maintenance point of view.

My opinion, lecky dunny is the only way to go and I believe the only LEGAL way to go.

Legislation requires that a direct discharge toilet in open waters has a mascerator. The only mascerator that a manual dunny has is that silly rubber reed valve type thing that restricts the flow and makes it HARDER to pump out.

The cheapest TMC lecky dunny you can buy from WWs for less than $300 has a two bladed s/s chopper that mascerates before anything leaves the bowl and a plastic cover over the motor to protect it from your misdirected pee.

If you fit the dammend thing up with clear reinforced hose on the discharge side you can actually observe when the brown stuff has gone and it is ready for the white stuff (toilet paper).

Does everbody here actually know how to operate a marine dunny............??????????????????

You dump then you pump. You wipe then you pump, if necessary, a couple of times over.

I hazard a bet that I have unclogged and repaired more marine dunnys, both manual and electric, than anybody on this forum.

Anybody who believes that a manual dunny is more "natural" or "traditional" than a electrical one needs their head read.

Is that an authoritive end of topic post?? Get legal or get stupid.

Bundeenabuoy said..
I have inherited a electrical head that at the moment doesn't work.
Unless I can get it working my feeling are to revert to a manual one.
Your opinions will be appreciated.

I've got the exact same dilemma, I'm considering going straight to the Porta-Potti, as I've had on previous yachts and it's worked fairly well.

I have a TMC Electric that is older than 10 years and has never given me problems. The manual loo i had on my previous yacht was horrible, never could get it to work properly even after a rebuild kit.

Ilenart said..

cisco said..

Ilenart said..
I believe having an electric toilet on a yacht is an unnecessary complication.

What?? Like electric lights, radios, GPSs and chart plotters??

Difference is that electric lights, radios GPS's etc are reliable, I have found that electric toilets are not. Plus with anything electric you need a backup. What do you do when your electric toilet stops working? What do you tell your wife and kids to use in a crowded anchorage when your electric toilet stops working?

You have what I have, a Marine head plus porta potty. The porta fits nicely between the v berths. However, even on a large scale at sewage treatment plants, macerators can be troublesome. They have automatic reversing and trips when something hard comes through. The minimum for a boat would be to have a circuit breaker mounted in an easy to get to place.

Ilenart said..
What do you do when your electric toilet stops working? What do you tell your wife and kids to use in a crowded anchorage when your electric toilet stops working?

Come on mate. Get real. If you are in a crowded anchorage you are probably not far from home.

What do you do when your manual toilet cloggs up??

On board you carry a 10 litre paint bucket with a clip lid and a bottle of toilet chemical or a porta potti which are the only things legal to use in protected waters anyway if you do not have a holding tank.

Your lights fail. You have a few torches and a kerosene lamp.

Your radios fail. You carry a hand held VHF and your mobile phone and a signaling mirror.

Your GPS and chartplotter fail. You carry charts, parallel rule, hand bearing compass, dividers and pencils.

Your wife and kids complain. You tell them to put up and shut up because you have more important things to do such as get the vessel safely back home.

If you do not know these basics, you should not be out on the water.

Have you got anything else??

I replaced my 2 manual toilets with electrical. Both manual needed new seals/service kit. The electric ones have worked without any issues, press the button and your dump is gone. Don't think there is much that needs servicing, I wouldn't go back to manual.

I have friends who cruise with a composting toilet and they would never go back to electric or manual. I couldn't afford to buy one so I'm building my own. I made a mold for the urine diverter and cast it in glass. I used 3ltr milk bottles for collection, a 20ltr bucket for solids with stainless mixing mechanism and small 24/7 fan to vent overboard. All this fits into cabinet with a standard toilet seat on top. A bit of trial and error to get everything to fit and get dimensions right but the next one which I'm building for a friends boat should be just ok.
George

aus005 said..
Electric is the only way to go

Yep - buy quality, maintain it regularly and all problems will pass....

Datawiz said..

and all problems will pass....

I saw what you did there Gary.....

A new TMC electric toilet is about as good as they get and they are made in Taiwan, not China.

I will hazard a guess that Jabsco have farmed out their manufacturing to China.

China is refusing our goods. We should return the favour by refusing their goods (bads).

Maybe an impeller for the flushing pump in case somebody burns it out by not opening the water inlet.

We have a composting head and while it was expensive I will still say that after owing the boat for 2 years that it has been the best thing I have ever bought for the boat.

If you have a toilet and you use it in an anchorage anywhere near other boats you can be prosecuted. Secondly, myself and my kids swim around my boat so if you use a head without a holding tank closer than 3nm from shore then you are irresponsible, and a f*ckwit

2bish said..
Just one consideration to throw in here is the current draw from electric toilets. Mine is somewhere close to 15 amps when flushing. Not a problem if you have a good house bank and charging, but it's worth noting. With our setup, it's something I have to manage carefully on longer trips and it sometimes means having to motor for a while (to charge) when I'd rather be sailing...

Hi, when you do the maths an electric toilet may draw 15 amps, but for a very short period so the power used is very little in the scheme of things.