Vinegar In The Head, Useful...?

[Maine Sail]

Built Up Scale/Calcium Deposits
If I had a dime for every customer who proudly told me they put vinegar in their heads, & flushed it with fresh water, in order to prevent scale/calcium building up in the sanitation hoses, I'd be retired now.

The truth is, despite their best efforts, I still find the sanitation hoses plugged & occluded with calcium build up.

Yesterday was one of those days. I hate these jobs and don't technically do them but for good customers I will occasionally make exceptions. In this case the customers hose was plugged with calcium.

As an experiment I dropped the head outlet elbow into straight vinegar and left it there to see if there was any change or softening of the scale. I had done this before but never took pictures or placed the phone-time, the piece spent in the vinegar, into the photo..

Straight Vinegar
This is the same exact brand I see on so many of my customers boats who "treat" their heads with vinegar.. Must be defective vinegar...

In this case the scale/calcium was submerged into 100% undiluted white vinegar. When putting vinegar into your head there is very little chance you will ever get 100% undiluted vinegar in your hoses. Some sources even suggest a 4-5 minute soak will prevent this build up...This vinegar was undiluted and means any vinegar you put into a head will be MUCH less potent than this experiment was...

Bowl, Elbow & Straight Vinegar
I filled the bowl enough to submerge half the elbow. I only submerged it half way because I wanted to see & poke at the before & after results..

10:44 A.M
I then snapped a picture of the elbow to record the time..

12:11 P.M.
Zero change...

12:30 P.M.
Zero change...... Straight undiluted vinegar did SQUAT.

At this point I had to put the elbow back in so I broke some chunks out and let them sit in the bowl of vinegar.

2:36 P.M.
OK I'd seen enough and quite frankly was sick and tired of the vinegar smell stinking up the boat. Even 100% undiluted the vinegar did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the calcium.. With the rubber gloves on it was still just as hard as stuff that had fallen out of the hose during removal. There was no detectable difference in the multi-hour vinegar soaked bits than the stuff right out of the hose...

My take on this? Save your money and put it towards something that may actually do something.

Snake oil? Urban myth? You decide.....

Please keep in mind that what you put into the head will pass most of the hose very quickly and where it sits in the low spots will be quite diluted unless you go broke buying five gallon pales of vinegar at a time....

Many of the boats I find like this have had religious use of vinegar and fresh water flushing yet the hoses are often plugged tight with calcium... Go figure.... (wink)

 

[The Garbone]

I was going with the understanding that vinegar keeps the critters from growing in you pipes and head and helps prevent that stank head smell. What's this about calcium?

 

[jviss]

Is that really calcium? Where's it coming from? The salt water for flushing?

 

[Maine Sail]

I was going with the understanding that vinegar keeps the critters from growing in you pipes and head and helps prevent that stank head smell. What's this about calcium?

Don Casey
"Calcium deposits eventually lead to total blockage, a most unpleasant prospect.

Avoiding this problem is as easy as running a pint of white vinegar through the head once a month."

I have customers who use vinegar every Sunday and still wind up with plugged hoses..

http://www.boatus.com/boattech/casey/marine-toilet-maintenance.asp

 

[jviss]

Whoops! Mainesail beat me to it!

Might want to tell Don Casey:

http://www.boatus.com/boattech/casey/marine-toilet-maintenance.asp

 

[jviss]

Is this in the same category as the tip someone used to tell us - to "slather" the internal pump parts with Sea Lube or Superlube?

 

[Maine Sail]

Is this in the same category as the tip someone used to tell us - to "slather" the internal pump parts with Sea Lube or Superlube?

From what I see, in the real world, on actual boats who's owners claim to use vinegar in the head, it is akin to adding Cayenne pepper to your bottom paint or locking your three blade fixed prop to "sail faster"......

If it makes you sleep better, by all means, spend the money on the vinegar...

 

[Alan Gomes]

Is this in the same category as the tip someone used to tell us - to "slather" the internal pump parts with Sea Lube or Superlube?

Nope--at least not in the case of SuperLube, which is a Teflon grease. (I don't know what "Sea Lube" is.) This is what Peggy Hall recommends and, according to her, what the head manufacturers themselves do on new units. The grease is tenacious enough to lubricate the internals of the pump a good while, whereas the liquid treatments are gone after a flush or two.

On my current boat I have an MSD-plumbed porta potty, which I actually like far better than any other head I've used in my past boats. (That's another story.) But on the Groco on my old Catalina 30, following Peggy's advice, every 6 or 8 months I'd pop off the intake hose and inject some SuperLube in there, put my thumb over the intake, and work the pump to suck in the grease. It was a 5 minute job max. It definitely helped and I got very good service out of that head.

 

[jviss]

Well, she was a vinegar treatment advocate, with a vegetable oil chaser. I think the "slathering" part is wasteful. I appreciate the benefits of lubricating pumps with the appropriate lubes, that won't attack the parts' materials, but anything more than a thin film is a waste. She advocated Superlube or Sealube.

 

[CalebD]

So are there products that will remove calcium build up in head hoses?
Rid lyme?

 

[Stu Jackson]

Is this in the same category as the tip someone used to tell us - to "slather" the internal pump parts with Sea Lube or Superlube?

Alan's right, separate subject is Head Pump Maintenance, different than build up in hoses.

Head Hoses 101 http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,5738.0.html

includes some pictures like Maine Sail posted.

Raritan recommends SuperLube to the pump shaft to "prolong the life of the shaft seal...Applying SuperLube to all moving parts is also recommended." That's in my PHII manual. Hence, why Peggie recommended it. Our PHII has been in weekly use for the past 2 1/2 years and it needs to have the inside of the pump lubed.

IIRC< she was NOT a fan of SeaLube since it diluted itself when put into the bowl. SuperLube is different: it's a real lubricant. If you've never taken your head apart, you might want to consider it for the pump is simply a disk inside the housing, and to work it should have the edge of the disk and the walls of the housing lubricated. That's what the head manufacturers use (at least Raritan) and there's no reason not to continue to do so. Think of it like an oil change!

 

[jviss]

Stu: I don't care, but just for the record:

"Taking the pump apart once a year to slather it with Sea Lube or SuperLube keeps it working smoothly and efficiently for at least a full season...plus, it keeps the seals, and valves from drying out which cuts down on the frequency of rebuilding." PH

 

[alexco38]

Would you think this would work?

http://www.jelmar.com/CLRbasic.htm

 

[Maine Sail]

Would you think this would work?

http://www.jelmar.com/CLRbasic.htm

Probably, and so would a mild acid, if you could keep it where it needed to be to remove the scale. However, IME when the hoses get that caked with scale they are usually due for replacement anyway. Even with Trident 101 I put myself on an approx 8 year cycle.

 

[Rich Stidger]

Would you think this would work?

http://www.jelmar.com/CLRbasic.htm

I think a soak test would be in order.

 

[RichH]

So are there products that will remove calcium build up in head hoses?
Rid lyme?

Yup, RydLyme, or any other inhibited commercial boiler de-scaling agents, will work but be careful and dont let it attack the porcelain bowl .... definitely keep it 'below' the bowl.

Calcium carbonate CaCO3 is formed when uric acid (pee) mixes with seawater ... CaCO3 is same stuff that precipitates as a solid in your engine raw water cooling circuit/passages when the seawater temp. goes above ~155°F.

I use RydLyme in my FRG holding tank every few years, too.

Vinegar is only ~5% acetic acid, much too weak of an acid concentration to quickly dissolve built up CaCO3 in any reasonable amount of time.

 

[jviss]

Thanks!

 

[Solstice]

Probably, and so would a mild acid, if you could keep it where it needed to be to remove the scale. However, IME when the hoses get that caked with scale they are usually due for replacement anyway. Even with Trident 101 I put myself on an approx 8 year cycle.

Just an FYI, Practical Sailor did test CLR in their recent Joker Valve tests and found it to be the most effective at scale removal and had no adverse effect on the joker valves. However, to your point I doubt anything short of hose replacement would alleviate heavily scaled hoses....

 

[Delezynski]

I wonder why we are so different aboard Guenevere? We moved aboard in 1996. We installed a LaVac (and LOVE it). We lived aboard 24/7/365 until 2009. Just finished up a 5 month cruise in the SF Bay area.

We normally put a cup or two of vinegar in the bowl about once a week or so. Add a bit of water and let it soak for a few hours.

So far, we are on the SAME hoses with NO problems what ever. NO stink at ALL and the bowl looks like new with almost no scrubbing.

Seems to work for us, so I don't plan on stopping or changing our routine.


Greg

 

[Maine Sail]

I wonder why we are so different aboard Guenevere? We moved aboard in 1996. We installed a LaVac (and LOVE it). We lived aboard 24/7/365 until 2009. Just finished up a 5 month cruise in the SF Bay area.

We normally put a cup or two of vinegar in the bowl about once a week or so. Add a bit of water and let it soak for a few hours.

So far, we are on the SAME hoses with NO problems what ever. NO stink at ALL and the bowl looks like new with almost no scrubbing.

Seems to work for us, so I don't plan on stopping or changing our routine.


Greg

Perhaps because your head actually gets used and scale does not get to form? It is wiped clean with each flush before turning hard. I suspect that when a coastal cruiser leaves the boat on Sunday and comes back on Friday or three Friday's later the stuff in the hose has had a chance to solidify and form a hard scale that is more difficult to remove.

I honestly have found zero difference in hose clogging between my customers who use vinegar and those who don't...

It is probably not much different than lead sulfate on battery plates turning hard and becoming non-removable when batteries are infrequently topped up. Perhaps it's the constant use keeping the lines clearer.

Could be the water too? Different organisms etc... Up here the hoses can plug up pretty quickly, 6 - 10 years or so..