Flushed with success
David Berry describes the process involved in servicing his boat’s toilet
There are some jobs you just don’t want to do, but after a while, when the shrieking gets to a pitch where earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones won’t work – and where however many glasses of wine you pass across the table to your ever-loving partner, her squealing also won’t stop – you just have to bite the bullet and get the gloves out.
In truth, servicing your boat’s toilet isn’t going to be as bad as changing the average baby’s nappy. On the other hand, if you’ve not yet had that pleasure, then changing the average baby’s nappy is worse than cleaning out the toilet; so that’s a little something to look forward to...
Hygiene
You’re dealing with bacteria, most of which came from you in the first place, but not bacteria which you want to spread around the place or ingest – so start with hygiene.
Firstly, if the local regulations allow, flush the toilet through with whatever sterilising product meets the rules in force in your location and situation. Since we were in a harbour when we carried out the toilet service, we were unable to flush through with anything other than seawater. We did, however, spray all the external surfaces with an anti-bacterial surface spray: we kept this within reach throughout the entire operation and used it liberally on all the parts as they became exposed, the tools we used to expose them, the nearby sink we used as a bench, and so on...
Disposable nappies are designed to absorb many times their weight in water and brown stuff (I know: babies again!) and we use them regularly on board for such tasks as bailing out bilges and catching oil spills during oil changes, so nappies were our first choice to pack around the base of the toilet pump to contain any escaping liquid.
Finally, we chose to use disposable gloves. It probably doesn’t need saying, but it’s best to have a supply of these to hand, not just one pair. When you’ve finished the job, wash down everything your gloves have touched – including tools, door handles, valve handles and anything else – with a disinfectant solution which you then need to dispose of properly (absorbed into nappies, put into bin bags and then in rubbish bins, perhaps – not flushed overboard).
We began by first emptying the toilet and the pump, leaving the handle in the evacuated position to minimise the amount of water we would have to deal with. Then we closed both the inlet and outlet valves. It’s arguable that if you have siphon breaks you won’t need to do this, but I wasn’t taking chances. 1 Start with the head of the pump. Remove the six screws at the top to expose the seawater side valve assembly. n The screw threads have two starts, and it’s really important when you replace them to turn them backwards to feel for the thread start and then, if they seem too tight to screw down, turn them backwards another halfturn until the other thread starts. This sounds pedantic, but if you don’t take care with this the screws will recut the thread in the hole and eventually all the thread will be lost. 2 The handle, piston and upper housing are one assembly and came away together, leaving the rubber valve assembly on top of the cylinder. 3 The valve assembly simply lifts off, leaving behind the stiff plastic shield. I only had to swap the old one for the new one from the kit, which simply dropped into position.
4 Then the new rubber valve assembly fits over the screw spigots. The brass weights are uppermost, and its asymmetry makes it impossible to fit incorrectly. I ran a smear of Vaseline around the edge to help the seal find its position when the housing was replaced. 5 The housing, pushrod, piston and handle are a sub-assembly that I had to strip down, but first I sprayed it liberally with disinfectant. 6 The pushrod bearing and seal sit inside this plastic cap, which was easily removed with a spanner. To remove the pushrod I first had to remove the handle, which was simply a case of holding the rod tightly and unscrewing it. 7 The kit contains a new piston O-ring – the fattest one in the pack. The correct way to remove any O-ring is to pinch it between finger and thumb until there’s enough of a bulge to let you pull the whole thing out of its groove. Never lever an O-ring off with a metal tool or cut it with a knife while it’s in position, since any scores in the O-ring groove will compromise the seal. 8 The newly reassembled piston looked like this, with the new O-rings on the piston and around the top of the cap. 9 With everything cleaned up and new seals fitted, I replaced the housing. The selector switch must be moved to the position shown here to enable the actuator to slip under the valve as the housing is positioned. At this point I covered everything with oil. We now use simple olive oil as the toilet lubricant since it seems to be more tenacious than the mineral oil we previously used, as well as being biodegradable in the holding tank. 10 At the bottom of the cylinder is another valve, and this one allows waste to be drawn up into the cylinder bore. Replacing it was a straightforward matter of removing the four cylinder-retaining screws then swapping the old rubber assembly with the new one from the kit. 11 The bottom valve assembly has a weight in the centre and an asymmetric arrangement of holes to prevent us fitting it the wrong way around. This one also got a little smear of Vaseline to help the seal bed into its location. 12 Finally we opened the two seacocks, checked the toilet for leaks and cleaned up.