015-Ode de Toilet; It Sounds so French

Marine and RV toilets are mostly gross. Everything gets taken with you until such time as you can pump it out. Due to the nature of the installation, the plumbing has to be flexible hose which tends to be permeable to some degree. The potential for odors abounds. It takes vigilance of to avoid odors but it is a task most would like to simply ignore. Ands its not like there is definitive guide on how to maintain your commode, there is a lot of sound bites out there with little basis to support it. For example, if it stinks you need to replace your hoses (not a trivial task). Other remedies including flushing it out with clean water a couple times (what happens after that?), adding digesters to “eat” the odors (really, can they make it disappear before it smells?), adding laundry detergent and water softener (I guess this “cleans” it up), and adding vinegar (didn’t grandma use vinegar to solve just about every problem).

Salt water reacts with urine to create calcium deposits. I’ve had to deal with this on our prior boat and will tell you it is a nasty job to disassemble the plumbing and clear out the “rock” lining. Our 2” diameter hose was reduced to the size of a pencil – how it worked before it failed is unknown.

But I bring this up because our check valve, called a joker (I’m not kidding) failed, so the tank was always full of nasty liquid. I ordered the replacement part from Amazon after researching the fix online and had it delivered to Erie Canal Lock 2 wall where we were hanging for a weather and canal delay. It seems we were really early in the season and they had an unusually wet winter so flooding abound. We weren’t able to move West just yet so we fixed the toilet and glad we did.

Both Lucy and I marveled at the advancement in technology that allowed us to do this, something that couldn’t have been done as little as 10 years ago. For this I appreciate my cell phone, internet, and Amazon.

No pictures here please. Let’s just move along.

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