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C&RT say don't empty your compost toilet in our bins.


Alan de Enfield

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16 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

I was sceptical about the possibility of real composting in a bin on a boat but it seems like it is possible but it does take a certain amount of dedication.

 

There still is the issue of what is done with the actually composted waste, great if you have a proper garden, otherwise what do you do with it

Add it to a farmers field? He will welcome proper compost to replace washed away soil, he might appreciate the tomatoes as well 🤣

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2 hours ago, Bargebuilder said:

but what capacity have your two tanks, as GRPs aren't often blessed with big tanks, making expensive trips to the pump-out station frequent?

 

We are 'blessed' with fairly big tankage :

 

Fuel = 2800 litres

Potable water = 1000 litres

Black water = 300 litres

Grey water = 300 litres

 

We never spend enough time on non-discharge waters to fill either tank, and the 300 litres (each) is an estimate based on the fact it only seems to get about half-full in a week to ten days.

 

Grey water is allowed to be pumped out into the marina so we do a pump out* roughly weekly and it gets flushed out thru the tidal lock everytime it is cycled.

 

** We have onboard pump-out thru a manifold - just select which tank we want to empty, open the sea cock and away it goes

 

 

Edit for double post due to poor signal..

 

 

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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3 hours ago, Bargebuilder said:

 

  wouldn't it be better to get the boaters to take their offerings to central collection points? Maybe composting hubs could be made at current CRT sanitary stations: there are 220 of them, they are easily and efficiently accessible by road and we are all used to using them.

 

 

They would lose their mooring spots while they were away

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2 hours ago, Steilsteven said:

It used to be ( and probably still is ) that any boat arriving at Teddington lock had to declare that if had a sea toilet ,whereupon it would be sealed by the lock staff before it was allowed to continue onto the non tidal Thames.

 

Keith

That certainly wasn't the case the summer before last when I went through Teddington Lock, nor when I went through 9 years ago, but I may have been lucky.

 

I wonder how they would seal a sea toilet. If it were a tape seal, you'd think they would check boats as they leave as well to make sure the seal hadn't been broken. I wonder what they could actually do if their seal had been broken; not much probably.

16 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

They would lose their mooring spots while they were away

Isn't that what owners of pump-out toilets do now?

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1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

We are 'blessed' with fairly big tankage :

 

Fuel = 2800 litres

Potable water = 1000 litres

Black water = 300 litres

Grey water = 300 litres

 

We never spend enough time on non-discharge waters to fill either tank, and the 300 litres (each) is an estimate based on the fact it only seems to get about half-full in a week to ten days.

 

Grey water is allowed to be pumped out into the marina so we do a pump out* roughly weekly and it gets flushed out thru the tidal lock everytime it is cycled.

 

** We have onboard pump-out thru a manifold - just select which tank we want to empty, open the sea cock and away it goes

 

 

Edit for double post due to poor signal..

 

 

With fuel tanks of that capacity I'm guessing you have a pair of big, thirsty engines and enjoy mainly coastal cruising.

 

I don't know where you are, but pump out facilities are almost non existent around the coast in the south east.

 

Where I used to live aboard on a tidal salt marsh, up until perhaps 6 years ago all of the live-aboard boats used to have flushing loos emptying into black tanks with a periodic trip offshore to pump them out. Then one of our number, fed up with the smells, blockages and costly breakdowns made his own separating toilet. As the months went by the rest of us were sceptical about his claims that his 'composting' loo was a revelation, with nothing to block or go wrong and totally free of odour. He had three 20l buckets, but we kept being told that with he and his wife aboard they just refused to fill up because of the combination of drying and composting. He eventually got into a cycle of 3 months in use and 6 more months to finish to the stage where it was pleasant enough to feed the roses or whatever. He would march his friends and live-aboard neighbours into his heads, lift the lid and invite them to sniff! A good way to lose friends you might think, but on the contrary, as time went by and prejudice subsided, gradually, but inevitably, almost all either have now converted or have decided to do so when their macerating toilet next breaks down or the smell from the pipework becomes too offensive.

 

I, like you was a doubter and my wife more so, but having tried composting ourselves for some 5 years, we would never go back. I only wish that when we built our barge we hadn't wasted thousands on a Tecma toilet, a huge black tank and associated pipework and trash pump. The separator toilet I built cost about £100, so I wasted a fortune and a cubic metre of valuable storage space where the black tank resides.

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2 hours ago, Bargebuilder said:

With fuel tanks of that capacity I'm guessing you have a pair of big, thirsty engines and enjoy mainly coastal cruising.

 

Yes, a pair of 6 cylinder. 6.2 litre engines.

 

We were based on the River Trent with her from May 2015 to October 2019, and then moved to the coast. No need for pump-outs as it does it itself when you are a few miles off shore.

The Hull is a 14 foot beam 5' 6" draft, offshore trawler design. The 1st owner bought the moulds as the company went bump, then bought a boatyard in Essex to build it for him, and had her built for long distance cruising as a liveaboard. the orginal design was for a single engine but (like me) he liked the safety of having a 'spare'.

Fuel range is safely 2000Nm with 200Nm in reserve at a cruising speed of 6-7 Knots.

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9 or 10l per hour is pretty good; it must have a nice slippery hull. It's a sobering thought that our car is worth less than your tank of diesel!

 

Our barge had a Shire 90 which is a John Deere 80hp tractor engine and at 5 knots it consumed 3l per hour and was only developing 20hp to push through lumpy water a 25 tonne 50' by 13' Dutch barge. It just goes to show by how much many people over engine their narrowboats. 

 

I was chatting to a continuous cruiser just last week who boasted a 9hp engine on his narrowboat and he'd been living aboard for 40 years!

 

When people specify a 43 or 50 hp diesel, travel everywhere at tickover and even worse, moor up and run the engine for hours to charge the battery, I feel sorry for the engine and it's glazed cylinder bores. 

 

Even with our barge, even against river currents, gale force head winds and 2 metre seas, she was still over engined. She would have been much happier with a 60hp. Or a pair of 30s, even better.

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On 01/08/2021 at 11:56, ditchcrawler said:

I also thought pumpouts went to mains sewage  but lots of elsan to tank, hence the notice "not suitable for self pumpout"

I always thought "Not suitable for self pumpout" meant it went to a septic tank, and wasn't on main sewage. The problem being volume and the likely presence of Blue, which would kill a septic tank.

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On 01/08/2021 at 15:06, Bargebuilder said:

Alan, are you able to help me out with some figures?

If at each CRT pump-out station the CRT put a composting bin, how many such stations are there?

Not really the right question to ask, as the vast majority of pumpout facilities on the CRT network are operated by private businesses for a charge, whereas elsan emptying points are provided free by CRT - private marinas and boatyards often charge passing boats to use their own elsan points.

 

When my parents hired in 1965 the boat came with an Elsan bucket type chemical toilet and a spade, together with instructions to dig a hole in a field and empty the toilet contents into it.  As leisure boating became more popular BW built 'Sanitary Stations' which usually had a room with an elsan emptying point inside and a water point on the outside. Over time these were used by boaters with bucket toilets, portapotty types and cassette toilets. Pumpout toilets started on hire boats, and so the hire yards provided their own pumpout stations to empty them. Over time, as pumpout toilets became more popular in private boats, the hire yards would sell the pumpout service to passing boaters (but often not on turnaround day). At the same time marinas offering long term moorings provided pumpout services to their own moorers and often to passing boaters. BW didn't get involved with pumpout toilets for a long time. Indeed I have wondered why they ever did. Same with providing toilets and showers in sanitary stations. Since almost all boats have these facilities on board, why would BW/CRT want to get involved with the capital, operating, maintenance and repair cost of facilities which generate no income and which are not needed by most boaters?

Edited by David Mack
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17 minutes ago, Iain_S said:

I always thought "Not suitable for self pumpout" meant it went to a septic tank, and wasn't on main sewage. The problem being volume and the likely presence of Blue, which would kill a septic tank.

This publication from the C&RT certainly implies that many of their sanitary stations utilise septic tanks, as otherwise "capacity" as they put it, wouldn't be an issue.

 

Many of our facilities don’t drain into the main sewage system so it’s a constant job for us to service all these septic tanks. What you must never do is use a free-standing pump to pump out your tank into an Elsan disposal point. These simply don’t have the capacity and there’s a high risk of the waste backing up and overflowing. 

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19 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

Many of our facilities don’t drain into the main sewage system so it’s a constant job for us to service all these septic tanks. What you must never do is use a free-standing pump to pump out your tank into an Elsan disposal point. These simply don’t have the capacity and there’s a high risk of the waste backing up and overflowing. 

 

I remember the photos posted by "Are we there yet" as he went in to the elsan point to empty his cassette and the previous user was a self pump-out, the pipe apparently had 'jumped' out of the bowl and had been thrashing about plastering the wall, & the ceiling as well as the floor. The boater rolled his pipe up, jumped into his boat and did a hasty get-away,

 

Dirty bar-stewards,

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7 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Why would BW/CRT want to get involved with the capital, operating, maintenance and repair cost of facilities which generate no income and which are not needed by most boaters?

I would hope that the C&RT want to make their product (the waterways they manage) more attractive and easier to enjoy for their customers and also to attract additional licence payers.

 

Secondly, they will be aware that if they didn't provide rubbish bins that littering would soon be a problem, if they didn't provide Elsan points, well, you can imagine.

 

Rubbish is generated by all boaters, many have cassette toilets to empty, but before too long, it may well be that the many advantages of separating toilets over other types will see them in the majority. Perhaps at that point the C&RT will provide composting bins for toilet waste for the same reason that they currently offer Elsan emptying as a free facility.

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3 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

 

 

Secondly, they will be aware that if they didn't provide rubbish bins that littering would soon be a problem, if they didn't provide Elsan points, well, you can imagine.

 

I thought at one time they had a policy to remove them, but in the last 12 months have installed loads on the BCN

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6 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

Secondly, they will be aware that if they didn't provide rubbish bins that littering would soon be a problem, if they didn't provide Elsan points, well, you can imagine.

You have misunderstood my point. Fine that CRT provide rubbish disposal and elsan points - something BW introduced as leisure boating became more popular in the late 60s and 70s. But why do they provide toilets and showers? Lots of cost and no benefit to most boaters.

Edited by David Mack
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1 minute ago, David Mack said:

You have misunderstood my point. Fine that CRT provide rubbish disposal and elsan points - something BW introduced as leisure boating became more popular in the late 60s and 70s. But why do they provide toilets and showers? Lots of cost and no benefit to most boaters.

I couldn't agree more, I've wondered the same myself. Perhaps some GRP cruisers have no showers, but surely every boat has a loo of some description.

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11 hours ago, Iain_S said:

I always thought "Not suitable for self pumpout" meant it went to a septic tank, and wasn't on main sewage. The problem being volume and the likely presence of Blue, which would kill a septic tank.

What about the blue in cassettes? 
We installed a septic tank for our club pump-out station. There were members who raised the blue issue. I wrote to Elsan and the response said something like Elsan blue evaporates. The issue with septic tanks arose first at caravan sites but it wasn't the blue that killed the bacteria it was the Domestos the cleaning staff used to clean the toilet block.

 

I know of at least one elsan on a sewer with a 'not suitable for self-pumpout' notice. A local told me it was because the nearby boatyard complained they were losing trade. In regard of capacity a Thetford cassette capacity is 18L a standard Leesan tank is 85L i,e eqivelant to 5 cassettes . Not really that much of a problem is it considering most holding tank warning lights come on at around 2/3 capacity

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13 minutes ago, Midnight said:

In regard of capacity a Thetford cassette capacity is 18L a standard Leesan tank is 85L i,e eqivelant to 5 cassettes .

 

My understanding is that the cassette is 'manually' tipped so flow control is easy to achieve, if it starts to block / back up you can stop and do a flush, or let it clear and then start to pour again.

With a mechanical pump-out it will will be coming out continuously at a far higher rate and cannot easily be 'adjusted' if it starts to back-up.

 

It is not that difficult to block a domestic toilet with a single 'deposit' if the consistency is 'correct' or too much paper is used.

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13 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

It is not that difficult to block a domestic toilet with a single 'deposit' if the consistency is 'correct' or too much paper is used.

But that hasn't been through a pump and length of hose

14 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

My understanding is that the cassette is 'manually' tipped so flow control is easy to achieve, if it starts to block / back up you can stop and do a flush, or let it clear and then start to pour again.

 

From some of the elsan disposal points I have seen some people have a problem with that idea

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22 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

My understanding is that the cassette is 'manually' tipped so flow control is easy to achieve, if it starts to block / back up you can stop and do a flush, or let it clear and then start to pour again.

With a mechanical pump-out it will will be coming out continuously at a far higher rate and cannot easily be 'adjusted' if it starts to back-up.

 

It is not that difficult to block a domestic toilet with a single 'deposit' if the consistency is 'correct' or too much paper is used.

A hand cranked or 12v self-pumpout is much, much slower than tipping a cassette. TBH I have a 240v jobby which does push it through fast but it's all macerated liquid.  I stand at the exit end and check it's all working so far never had a blockage. 

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20 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

But that hasn't been through a pump and length of hose

 

Hopefully not too much detail, but ..

 

It tends to be a thick slurry/soup that block toilets, not 'full size logs'

 

All made worse when folks try and save pump-out tank capacity by using hedge bottoms, or tipping it in the cut etc for pee.

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We had the joy of an overflowing pumpout septic tank at the Red Bull services on our latest trip. Just as we came to the end of our pumping there was an ominous gurgling and a stream of 'matter' came oozing out of the manhole further up the path. We stopped and hosed the path off and I went to tell the CRT guy who was sat in his van oblivious. It wasn't very pleasant to put it mildly!

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57 minutes ago, MrsM said:

We had the joy of an overflowing pumpout septic tank at the Red Bull services on our latest trip. Just as we came to the end of our pumping there was an ominous gurgling and a stream of 'matter' came oozing out of the manhole further up the path. We stopped and hosed the path off and I went to tell the CRT guy who was sat in his van oblivious. It wasn't very pleasant to put it mildly!

Some CRT tanks have a red light. Naturally we don't pump out if it's on. Because a tankwatch switches the boat warning light on at about 2/3 full it gives us about a week before the secondary "it's full" (cheap Ebay float switch) light comes on. If there's a convenient and suitable sanitary station around I empty after  a week to ten days so our tank is never more than half full. That's about 3 cassettes.

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17 hours ago, David Mack said:

Not really the right question to ask, as the vast majority of pumpout facilities on the CRT network are operated by private businesses for a charge, whereas elsan emptying points are provided free by CRT - private marinas and boatyards often charge passing boats to use their own elsan points.

 

When my parents hired in 1965 the boat came with an Elsan bucket type chemical toilet and a spade, together with instructions to dig a hole in a field and empty the toilet contents into it.  As leisure boating became more popular BW built 'Sanitary Stations' which usually had a room with an elsan emptying point inside and a water point on the outside. Over time these were used by boaters with bucket toilets, portapotty types and cassette toilets. Pumpout toilets started on hire boats, and so the hire yards provided their own pumpout stations to empty them. Over time, as pumpout toilets became more popular in private boats, the hire yards would sell the pumpout service to passing boaters (but often not on turnaround day). At the same time marinas offering long term moorings provided pumpout services to their own moorers and often to passing boaters. BW didn't get involved with pumpout toilets for a long time. Indeed I have wondered why they ever did. Same with providing toilets and showers in sanitary stations. Since almost all boats have these facilities on board, why would BW/CRT want to get involved with the capital, operating, maintenance and repair cost of facilities which generate no income and which are not needed by most boaters?

Your comment about the spade and digging holes to empty the toilet reminded me of when I enquired about a houseboat mooring on the Basingstoke canal a few years ago.

The mooring had power hook up and mains water but no sewerage facilities. When I asked what the previous tenant did I was told that they buried it in the small piece of land next to the mooring, they'd been doing that since the 1960s!

 

Keith

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21 minutes ago, Steilsteven said:

Your comment about the spade and digging holes to empty the toilet reminded me of when I enquired about a houseboat mooring on the Basingstoke canal a few years ago.

The mooring had power hook up and mains water but no sewerage facilities. When I asked what the previous tenant did I was told that they buried it in the small piece of land next to the mooring, they'd been doing that since the 1960s!

 

Keith

In the mid 60s I worked at a camping and caravaning site and we had a scout group stay, their first question is where can we dig the latrines, we pointed out that they would have to use the flush toilets like everyone else otherwise the health inspector would probably shut us down.

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