Bargebuilder

As has been mentioned, almost all second hand boats will have problems, in fact many brand new ones aren't perfect, but if you are handy and befriend YouTube, there aren't many jobs that you won't be able to tackle yourself. The two big and expensive issues that you do need to look into, as others have mentioned, are the hull thickness and the engine, as both may cost many, many thousands to put right. For someone new to boats, particularly steel ones, a survey is essential, but even more important is a full hull thickness survey and a report on the engine by a qualified marine engineer, as many surveyors definitely aren't engineers. As a live-aboard for four years, the first thing that I would look for would be insulation, as steel conducts heat very well making boats with little insulation both hot in the summer and much worse, cold and dripping with condensation in the winter. You would be lucky to get it in your price bracket (I assume), but nothing can beat spray foam for insulation and its ability to seal the steal from condensation if you can find it I hope the survey goes well for you and that you enjoy your new life afloat.

According to Jones Boatyard: "The Great Ouse and its tributaries, the Nene and the Middle Level are all fairly unique in allowing the use of sea toilets." So those who are happy to empty the contents of their loo into the waterways in these places are free to do so; no need for bins 💩!

You are probably aware of this, but just in case not: Although Tecma macerating loos are excellent and possibly the least likely of all boat toilets to block, they do, or at least did, have an Achilles heal. When a Tecma's evacuation pump spins but the full pan doesn't empty and just a few bubbles appear, it can be due to an air lock in the rubber 's' shaped waste discharge pipe at the point where it joins the macerator pump inlet. On early models, because I think they may have spotted the issue and corrected it, there is a tiny vent tube in the waste discharge pipe that vents the air so that when the bowl fills with water, the pump fully primes at the same time. If this tiny vent pipe blocks, the pump chamber doesn't fill properly with water, so the macerator disc spins in air and there is no suction at the bowl. The result is exactly as the original poster described. My one used to block fairly regularly and unblocking it was a 'toilet out' job and not pleasant. I removed the original vent tube and replaced it with one long enough to run behind the bathroom wall to a position above the loo but easily accessible. After I had done that, when it blocked I could pressurise the tube, pushing the blockage out and thus allowing the air to escape as it should. The toilet evacuated perfectly well with this tube in place, but if something wouldn't budge and the bowl began to fill, I would just block the end of the tiny tube with my finger and that would give a boost to the suction in the pan. Eventually, after the so called sanitary hoses began to pong yet again and I became bored with occasional blockages and constantly having to pump out, I made and installed a separating loo and life was much sweeter and easier after that.

That's a lot of words that you've put in my mouth. What I actually wrote was that the sort of people who break the rules concerning the misuse of Biffa type bins are likely to be the same people who will look for a way of avoiding a new rule banning separating toilets. Others here have implied the same. I've no idea how many such toilets are on the cut, but given how cheap they can be to make and that they have been free until now to empty, I suspect that many have made the change. The C&RT obviously agree, hence their change of stance. To my knowledge there are at least two, and possibly more, live-aboard YouTube vloggers who have installed and raved about the benefits of separators, which won't have slowed down the trend. This might be a difficult genie to persuade to go back into the bottle.

Separating loos are very simple and lightweight so in just a few minutes could be removed and replaced with a cassette toilet just for the duration of the inspection. We are talking about people who are happy to break the rules!

What do you predict they'll do when the ban on separating toilets doesn't work.

But sea toilets aren't banned, the use of them in many places is however. All a BSS inspector can do is to insist on a sea cock that is capable of isolating the toilet, nothing else. In practice no BSS inspector has ever even asked to have a look and wouldn't even know if we had a sea toilet or a composter or another option.

Even if a sanction were to be legal and possible, how would anyone know what was in the rubbish sack that was being put in a bin. Not even CCTV would help. Even if it were legal for the C&RT to force entry onto a boat, it would be easy to keep an Elsan on board to make it look as if the rules were being adhered to. It wouldn't be fair to those who compost their 'toilet' ashore to ban these loos completely.

I think you missed my point. How many, particularly continuous cruisers, who have ripped out whatever system they had in favour of a separating loo which is odour free, cost free to empty and a lot more pleasant than Elsans or pump-outs will change back? Much more likely that many will ignore the ban causing problems for the C&RT.

The C&RT certainly encouraged the proliferation of separating loos, simply by making it easy and cheap. To say that owners of these loos have to find an alternative could be described as naïve. But you had a tractor, I've only got a shovel!

Made in haste and regretted I'm sure, but having done so, they are risking fines from their waste carrier and pollution of their property if they don't soon identify an alternative.

Materials to be composted can heat up quite dramatically and quickly, even in small containers. Perhaps not enough to sterilise completely, but enough for the roses, if not for the runner beans. At home we have a huge compost heap, some 7 metres long by 1.2m X 1.2m: it takes me some hours of backbreaking work to turn it. My brother brings round a quarter full bin bag full of contributions to the heap occasionally an although this can only amount to 20 or so litres, very often it's steaming when he tips it out, so a 20l bucket of material on a boat should 'cook' and compost very nicely, but take a bit longer to finish. My compost heap in the garden reaches 60 centigrade in the middle, enough to scald your hand should you be foolish enough to plunge it in.

Firstly, let's admit that very few people even try to compost to completion, but there is no doubt that it's possible. There is a food source, the toilet waste and the sawdust plus kitchen waste too if you want to do it properly, moisture, oxygen and warmth. It needs to be mixed once a week at a minimum to prevent anaerobic decomposition which would produce the slime and smell that has been mentioned. The breakdown starts immediately, but really takes off when the bucket starts to fill as that's when things really and literally hot up. The containers in many proprietary so called composting loos are a bit small and so although some composting does happen, it's very little and further storage/mixing is required in bigger buckets over many months to get near a product that is a sweet smelling and crumbly soil additive. That's why, when the C&RT made its rash offer to take toilet waste, people not surprisingly jumped at it.

The situation may well be worse than that, but the C&RT are at least in part to blame. I'll bet there are lots of boaters who only made the change to separating loos because the C&RT offered a free and simple solution about what to do with the dessicated contents of their toilets.

Correct, the first step is dessication of the 'new deposit', then, once a little less sloppy and mixed with sawdust, composting really can't be stopped.

How refreshing to have a genuine question from someone who wants to understand. Composting requires moisture to occur, but somewhat less than there is in a 'fresh deposit', but the fan that creates a negative pressure within the toilet, creates air movement that aids evaporation and then removes it from the container. This negative pressure holds the answer to your second question, where does the gas or smell go. The fan that sucks the smell from the loo passes it through an activated charcoal filter if the outlet is remain inside the boat, or it can be vented to the outside where any smell quickly dissipates.

Composting is a process, not an end result. Given a mix of organic matter, moisture, warmth and air, it's almost impossible to stop it from composting. Of course composting toilets don't produce finished compost, but show me any manufacturer that says their product can. That doesn't mean that the process of composting doesn't start in the toilet, so the toilet is 'composting', but not to anything like completion. It is possible to build your own separating toilet for not much more than £100, the bit that does the actual separating being available for less than £50. Home built loos can have a much bigger receptacle, 20l or more, that not only lasts for many, many weeks, but the increased volume of material also makes the composting process more successful and complete.