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| Pirates and Mermaids. |
The Head. I'm not talking about that part of your anatomy that sits on top of your neck, and contains other useful parts like, your brain, ears, nose, eyes, and mouth. I'm talking about the nautical term for a bathroom, restroom, or toilet. Oh yes, I'm going to tell you all about our heads, we have two. (Yes, Bill, and I both have heads, attached to our bodies, and nautical wise.) What's that saying? Two heads are better than one, that's definitely our case here.
Our first guests aboard Denali Rose arrived the first summer we purchased her. One of them stopped up the forward head, and that prompted us to take it out, and replace it with a composting Nature's Head. We should be fair, and say it wasn't really his fault, it had to do with a hose problem, and too tight a corner, but he is an engineer, and his specialty is fluid dynamics, so we are honor-bound to tease him. Subsequent guests have actually preferred the composter to our rear head, which is the typical marine pump.
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| Forward Head with the Composting Toilet, no smell, we promise. |
More than you wanted to know already? Choices: quit now, and go do something else, or keep reading.
There are two camps when it comes to flushing toilet paper down the loo, those who do, and those who don't. We are in the don't group. Don't flush anything you didn't eat first, and that includes toilet paper. We furnish compostable waste bags to put your disposables in, and drop in the waste basket. We cover this info in our, "For Our Guests" tab, so that no one shows up unawares, that is if you read it, (we insist), before you arrive.
Our rear head was originally a manual hand pump, Bill did a refit, and changed it to an electric pump. I loved it, just push a button, and whoosh, whoosh, out goes stuff, and in comes clean water. It had its problems though. We never could get the pump to behave correctly, and it was very enthusiastic about doing the exchange of water. When you wanted to use the head, you usually had to lift the lid, and then wipe inside the lid, and seat before you could sit down, or end up with a wet butt.
The other day, as we're getting serious, (finally), about putting away the project tools, and getting off of the dock, the rear head pump made some interesting noises, and refused to do any more work. Guess what, how do you know the pump has quit? When you've used the head, and need to clear out the contents. Special. Bill ordered a new pump from Amazon, and we waited for it to arrive, while using the forward head exclusively. Yay for having a backup.
I'll just say here, that when it comes to bathroom repairs, my job is to be off the boat while the actual work is being done. 👌😁👍 Since we have the covid thing this summer, going somewhere to wait it out, wasn't really an option. 😒👎
As with most boat issues, when you're dealing with the original problem, its almost a 100percent that you'll find at least one more complication. First thing, Bill had to empty out the cabinet, to get to the pump, (pile stuff in the shower), he sees that one of the connections has been leaking salt water, and probably other stuff. Ugh, that meant a complete disinfection of the contents, and interior before getting to the pump, then a drive out five miles to our storage facility for more marine hose, and new clamps. He had decided to return to a manual pump, and forego the electric ease, but still wanted to put the device inside the cabinet, with a hole for the lever on the outside.
I would like to say that things went smoothly, but with the level, and variety of inventive language, I could tell it did not. 😡@#*&^%?! Remember my job from the above paragraph? I pretended I was somewhere else, and stayed out of the way. 🙈🙉🙊
Bill was able to conquer the task, and at 10:30pm, he had the head operating correctly, cleaned up the shower, took a shower, and was ready for dinner. Success is sweet, or at least functional.
As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.
