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Toilets!


Delibe

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14 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Thats not actually true is it !

 

The BSS requires that any sea toilets should be 'switched over' to the holding tank, as our was when we were on the Rivers / canals.

 

9.2.1 Is a closeable valve fitted in the discharge line of any toilet appliance or toilet holding tank with overboard discharge? R

Check all toilets and toilet holding tanks for the presence of an overboard discharge line. If present, check for the presence and condition of a closeable valve installed in the discharge line.

All toilets and toilet holding tanks having an overboard discharge line must have a closeable valve fitted in the discharge line.

The valve and connections must be complete and leak‐free.

NOTE – valves must not be operated.

NOTE – the diverter valves to toilet holding tanks not capable of being discharged overboard satisfy this check

You really *do* love legal nit-picking, don't you?

 

Go on then, try installing a sea toilet on a new narrowboat on the UK canals and see if you can get a valid BSS... 😉

 

You might get away with it on a yoghurt pot by claiming that you planned to spend most of your time at sea or on rivers where direct discharge is (currently) allowed. I doubt this argument would carry much weight on a narrowboat...

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31 minutes ago, IanD said:

You really *do* love legal nit-picking, don't you?

 

Go on then, try installing a sea toilet on a new narrowboat on the UK canals and see if you can get a valid BSS... 😉

 

You might get away with it on a yoghurt pot by claiming that you planned to spend most of your time at sea or on rivers where direct discharge is (currently) allowed. I doubt this argument would carry much weight on a narrowboat...

Although I can think of no legitimate reason for fitting the pipework for direct discharge I very  much doubt if a BSS examiner would even notice. In 20 years + I've never had one go anywhere near or express any interest in my pumpout system.

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1 hour ago, IanD said:

You really *do* love legal nit-picking, don't you?

 

Go on then, try installing a sea toilet on a new narrowboat on the UK canals and see if you can get a valid BSS... 😉

 

You might get away with it on a yoghurt pot by claiming that you planned to spend most of your time at sea or on rivers where direct discharge is (currently) allowed. I doubt this argument would carry much weight on a narrowboat...

 

You have completely missed the original point - a 'SEA TOILET' can be fitted anywhere, to anything and does not need to be connected to a direct outlet.

 

As I said in an earlier post, the toilet can be plumbed in anyone of three ways.

 

1) Direct to 'outside' discharge

2) Directly into a holding tank

3) With a switching valve to direct to EITHER the holding tank or outside discharge.

 

The BSS says a boat can have option 3 and still be compliant, it makes not reference to ONLY for 'yoghurt pots'. Maybe it is not me 'nit-picking' but a your failure to fully comprehend the written word.

 

Should a BSS examiner fail a boat of mine that had option 3 then the Sh*t would really hit the fan !

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On 06/11/2021 at 11:21, Alan de Enfield said:

On many / most canals you will pass a sanitary station at least once per day.

 

However, they can be closed, full, broken or stinkingly filthy. If you choose a cassette toilet, buy spare cassettes to tide you over. 

 

If you are actually cruising for several hours per day you could even pass 2 or 3, although some canals are better served than others - I have read that London only has one tap and one sanitary station for some 5000 boats.

 

It is generally the NBTA (No Boats Move Anywhere) that like to have holding tanks as it means they only need to move once every 8 weeks. 

 

*Yawn* Pay no attention to sweeping statements that are clearly borne from resentment, closed-minded attitudes or bias. Many hire boats have pump out tanks even though they're moving all the time, as do CCers and those with other types of travelling patterns. The reality is different types of toilet and different types of tank suit all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. 

 

A cassette is the best, most convenient (and cheapest no charge to empty) type of toilet

 

Except they're not. See my comment above.  

 

 

On 06/11/2021 at 11:21, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Regarding checking the pump-out tank, there are so many variables from location and accesability to materials it is made from.

 

Some boats actually use the hull as the walls of the tank, and the only time you know there is a problem when you start to get seepage in the bottom of the boat.

Once again an incorrect sweeping statement not based in fact. Boats with integral pump out tanks usually have inspection hatches and any thinning of the hull would show up on your hull survey as it would on any other part of the hull

 

On 06/11/2021 at 11:21, Alan de Enfield said:

Some tanks are 'free-standing' steel fabrications and are a little easier to view, but the corrosion tends to be from the inside, so you only start to see a problem developing as it starts to perforate and the 'walls' get damp.

Some tanks are HD Polyethylene and are probably the 'safest' regarding reataining the contents.

 

There are different toilet types that feed into a holding tank and can vary from a dump-thru (where the toilet sits on top of the tank, and when you open the flap its drops straight into the tank), to macerator toilets where the toilet contents are mashed up (like in a food processor) and sucked or blown down a pipe into the tank.

The more complicated the system the easier it is to go wrong and to get blocked.

 

The other thing to consider is water consumption, a 'dump-thru uses minimal water, whiclt a macerator can use many litres per flush - consider your fresh water tank size, or look to have the flush water picked up from the canal.

 

Although macerator loos can use 2 litres of water for full pooptastic flush, many have a low water flush option, and a zero water flush option that allows the bowl to be emptied without addional water. In other words, your pee acts as the water and the tank fills up no quicker than a dump through or cassette toilet would, given the same capacity tank. 

Also with pump outs, there are different tank sizes. Some need to be emptied every 1-2 weeks. Others every 3+ months. Cassette loos often every few days.  It depends on the size of the tank. A remote tank like you get with some macerator toilets is more likely to be larger in size than a dump through. And that in turn has a much larger holding capacity than a cassette toilet. 

 

Hi Delibe. Although Alan has made some good points, some of his opinions tend to be phrased as facts. They're not. So you'll notice different boaters will have different opinions about which type of loo is preferable depending on their own experience, their willingness to get up close and personal with their family sewage, their ability to carry heavy cassettes out of the boat and lift them up onto Elsan disposal equipment, and their storage space (you see quite a few toilet cassettes stored on the roof!), among other reasons, not just their cruising patterns. I've typed in bold font beneath Alan's points where I think it's worth considering that the subject could be expanded upon. (You'll need to click on each quote window above to expand it if it displays as weirdly on your device as it does mine) 

 

I've used porta potti type boat toilets, and built-in type cassette toilets, and pump out dump through toilets, and pump out macerator toilets. I've listed those in order of my least favourite to my preferred type!

 

A macerator loo with a large pump out holding tank suits me best and has done over 14 years of different cruising patterns in different parts of the country, and in different states of physical health. It won't suit the next person best. That's just how it is with boat toilets. 

 

Something to think about if you're really unsure - assuming you don't know any boaters well enough to spend time on their boat using and emptying their loo for the joyous experience - is that it's usually easier to replace a pump out tank with a cassette toilet or porta potti, than it is to do the reverse should you change your mind. (An exception  is where the tank is integral to the hull, however it's not that common to find them)

Edited by BlueStringPudding
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5 hours ago, IanD said:

You really *do* love legal nit-picking, don't you?

 

Go on then, try installing a sea toilet on a new narrowboat on the UK canals and see if you can get a valid BSS... 😉

 

You might get away with it on a yoghurt pot by claiming that you planned to spend most of your time at sea or on rivers where direct discharge is (currently) allowed. I doubt this argument would carry much weight on a narrowboat...

You can discharge a toilet straight into lots of rivers used by Narrowboats

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7 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

You can discharge a toilet straight into lots of rivers used by Narrowboats

Which is what I said. But not canals, which is also what I said.

 

Alan seems to be encouraging people to install sea toilets on narrowboats because they're not actually banned according to the letter of the law. I don't understand why...

Edited by IanD
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20 minutes ago, IanD said:

Alan seems to be encouraging people to install sea toilets on narrowboats because they're not actually banned according to the letter of the law. I don't understand why...

 

You do seem to enjoy twisting the truth to suit whatever agenda you have.

 

If you check back it was one of the very-senior members (not mine) who suggested that the best option (in response to the OPs question) was to use a Sea-Toilet.

 

Since that point I have simply explained that installing one is quite within the 'rules' of C&RT and the EA etc, &, in fact is specifically allowed witin the Boat Safety Scheme and relevant paragraphs have been posted here.

 

I am not encouraging anyone to take a certain route and if something is 'not actually banned under the law' then it is allowed.

 

Having a boat is 'not actually banned under the law' suicide is not 'actually banned under the law' so what is your point ?

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23 minutes ago, IanD said:

Which is what I said. But not canals, which is also what I said.

 

Alan seems to be encouraging people to install sea toilets on narrowboats because they're not actually banned according to the letter of the law. I don't understand why...

But sea toilets are not banned on canals!  Only the discharge other than to a holding tank is not allowed.

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12 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

But sea toilets are not banned on canals!  Only the discharge other than to a holding tank is not allowed.

Doesn’t apply to Severn Trent though. As per another thread they regularly discharge raw sewage into the Trent and Mersey canal at Shardlow.

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11 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

But that doesn't give IanD his "Daily Mail" headline.

 

 

Legally, you can install a sea toilet on a boat on the canals so long as it discharges into a holding tank, and while on the canals you never discharge anything directly into the canal from either toilet or tank -- it's this discharge that is forbidden, not fitting the toilet in the first place. When I said "sea toilets are banned" I really meant "using sea toilets like this is banned" -- I should have been clearer, mea culpa. Happy now, Alan?

 

Why anybody who spends most or all of their time on the canals would want to do this escapes me, unless the real (hidden) reason is so they can pump their crap out into the canal if the tank gets full and they can't get to a pumpout station. Like installing a composting toilet and claiming that you're going to be good and compost everything anyway, then just chucking it into the CART bin if you can't get it back to base -- or just can't be arsed.

 

If they spend most of their time on rivers or at sea -- in a "yoghurt pot" as I said, trying to inject some humour which went right past Alan -- then by all means install a sea toilet and a tank, it's the right solution.

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3 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

If you set it up so it uses canal/river water it doesn't matter, and will not use any of the 'precious' potable water.

I would suggest holding tank capacity is far more 'precious' than potable water for most narrowboàt owners.

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16 hours ago, Slim said:

I would suggest holding tank capacity is far more 'precious' than potable water for most narrowboàt owners.

 

Surely with normal tank sizes (at least, on all the boats I've ever been on) the water tank needs refilling well before the pumpout tank needs emptying?

 

Showers and washing (people and dishes) take more out of the water tank than toilet flushing puts into the poo tank -- unless you poo an awful lot and shower very seldom...

 

Or does Slim mean that there are more water points than pumpout stations so it's easier to fill up one than empty the other?

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9 minutes ago, Slim said:

Precisely. 

Against which a typical water tank needs refilling a couple of times a week, and a typical poo tank (assuming it's a decent size not a tiny one) needs emptying every couple of weeks, so if you're cruising the water needs attention more often.

 

Of course if you're continuously moored and the nearest pumpout station is a lot further away (e.g. beyond several locks) than the nearest water point, emptying the poo becomes the bigger concern...

 

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On 06/11/2021 at 11:14, mrsmelly said:

A cassette is ideal for a continuous cruiser. As you are moving about all the time, you will pass an elsan point most days ;)

And they are free to empty...

 

Usually.

#

N

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On 06/11/2021 at 11:25, booke23 said:

Agree with all the above. Remember you can have multiple cassettes to give you much longer intervals between visiting Elsan’s if you want. 

But if you go the PortaPotti route then you might not be able to buy a spare tank.

 

We have a PP 365.  We had to replace the supeerstructure bacause the flush pump wwent wrong.  Faced with the awful dilemma of having to buy two complete PPs to get a secont tank we dedided to get a replacement 365 from EBay and get a tank from the old one so now we have three tanks.  The bigger tanks last us about 3 bottom-days so we have plenty of flexibility regarding elsan emptying.

 

Please try to avoid using blue chemicals to kill the bacteria and reduce smells.  We use nothing most of the time and get no smell.  When we decide that we need to use something we use Odourlos which is biodegradable.

 

Nick

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