Trojan Boat Forum

One of my most hated parts of my restore and project, especially for the 6 months I lived aboard has always been the toilet. My boat had something that looked like bigger porta-potty with about 9 gal capacity that could be pumped overboard. A PO screwed up the maceator by removing a y-valve and installing a simple T and that screwed up the pump line by making it take extremely long to empty 9 galons.

Well, it's gone. I ripped it out yesterday. I'm mid project and hope to finish this week.

So, I'm putting a 24 gallon holding tank forward, beneath the v-berth. I routed sanitary hose along the port side and am installing a lockable y valve to the maceator hoping someday to take her offshore.

Anyway, my questions: 1) I'm routing the air line from the holding tank aft to the exisiting air through hull in the sink area of the head. At points the hose goes below the tank level, but the through hull is definitely above. Physics says that will still work? Right? Do I need a new through hull in the v-berth and how do I prevent stink if so? 2) used sanitary hose for the 1 1/2" toilet, but poly tubing for the air. Ok? Worst case? 3)there are now 9 unused holes in the floor of my head from the screws I removed. I'm building a short box to raise the height of my toilet? Can i simply fill these holes with 5200 and lay my box over them? Any issues?

Thanks.

The big reason that holding tanks stink is lack of fresh air getting into the tank. The vent line(s) from the holding tank should be as large and short as possible. If the vent hose has a dip in it and you get sewage in the line, it will be trapped and the vent will not function. Sewage can slosh into the vent hose underway even if you never fill the holding tank to the top. I have discussed this issue at length with Peggy Hall who has done research and written books about it. On my previous boat the holding tank smell was horrible. Peggy recommended getting fresh air into the tank, I put in a Groco Sweettank air system. The smell was gone in 2 hours. In my F32, Peggy recommended putting in 2 vents, one on each side to allow air to flow through no matter what direction the wind is blowing. I put in 2 1" vents, maybe should have gone to 2 1 1/2" vents, but I went with 2 1". What causes the stink is anerobic bacteria. Lack of oxygen causes the anerobic bacteria to grow. Aerobic bacteria does not stink, so getting oxygen into the tank promotes the "good" bacteria. After installing the Sweettank, in 8 years, I never put any holding tank chemicals in the tank and had absolutely no stink.

+1 on comments from Dave. Don't use poly vent. Use sanitation rated hose or over time, it will allow oder to leach. No dips in the line, always running up-hill and as Dave says, the larger the better.

Next thought is I had my holding tank under the front birth in my F36 and found that if I did not pump it out and left the boat sit without both gas tanks and fresh water tanks at full, water would sit on the bow. This is bad for those of use trying to prevent water getting into the cored decks. I moved the wast tank to be located below the galley / between the engine room bulkhead and the bathroom bulkhead and that fixed the standing water on the bow issue.

Mitch