Along my starboard side I have battery compartment, black water tank, and then head. I would love to continuously exhaust all 3. Its easy enough to install blower and hose sucking air from all three but where do I exhaust air ? I'm thinking of exhausting into head, closing head door and relying on air pressure to exhaust through open head hatch. But that requires closed head door and open hatch. Does anybody have a better idea?
Venting 3 compartments at once
- Thread starter Ted10028
- Start date
Why are you venting those areas? Passive ventilation is desirable for the batteries. The holding tank area does not need venting (the tank does, not the area). We've already have gone through the battery issue and passive ventilation is more than adequate, so long as it is vertical.
If there is odor from the holding tank it is likely odor that has permeated the hoses. The solution is not venting, the solution is replacing the hoses with high quality hoses, like Raritan Sani-flex. And don't forget the holding tank vent, that needs a good quality hose too.
If there is odor from the holding tank it is likely odor that has permeated the hoses. The solution is not venting, the solution is replacing the hoses with high quality hoses, like Raritan Sani-flex. And don't forget the holding tank vent, that needs a good quality hose too.
A traditional lead acid battery produces toxic gas when it's being charged and in theory should be vented but Catalina apparently does not think it is significant enough to worry about. I can't picture a sailboat with a two or 3 inch vent through the starboard hull, can you?
Lead acid batteries produce toxic gas when charging. Holding tanks, hoses etc smell , and bathrooms often smell. venting those three would be a big plus.
You are treating the symptoms not the problems. Polyethylene holding tanks do not absorb odor. Sanitation hoses, especially the holding tank discharge hose because sewage sits in the hose. Over time these hose absorb and reemit the odor. If you want to reduce the odor from the system the hoses need to be replaced about every 10 years. The hoses produced today are much better at resisting permeation and are pretty odor free. That's step 1.
Step 2 is to properly treat the waste going into the tank to reduce odor. There are 2 products that will help Zaal Noflex Digester and Camco TST. The cause of the odor is a proliferation of anaerobic bacteria.
Step 3 is to increase the tank vent size, it is probably a ⅝" hose, increase the size to 1"
These are the tried and true ways of reducing holding tank odor. Get @Peggie Hall HeadMistress book Get Rid of Boat Odors
There are 2 main causes of odor in the head, human activity and sea water. There's not much that can done about the first. The second, sea water can't be dealt with. Sea water is filled with all kinds of little critters, plankton, protozoa, and who knows what else that slips by the filter. After flushing this stuff stays in the bowl, dies, and rots. If the boat is used daily the odor doesn't build up because the dead critters are flushed out before they smell. However, most use the boats on weekends and over the course of the week the critters die and rot. The solution is a fresh water flush, either all the time or the last time it is used before leaving the boat.
A properly charged and maintained battery has minimal out gassing, meaning not really enough to worry about. The gases are Hydrogen and Hydrogen sulfide (the rotten egg smell). So long as the battery compartment is not air tight, the hydrogen will find its way out. Hydrogen sulfide is a bit more of an issue, it can condense on electrical parts and cause corrosion, it is not explosive. The cause is a bad charger. The Charles charger you have is a bad charger, it only has 2 stages, bulk and float. Worse, the bulk stage is timed and not dependent on the batteries condition, this will lead to over charging the battery causing both hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide to form. Over time this shortens the battery's life which leads to over charging. Install a modern 3 stage charger from Victron or Sterling/ProMariner and new batteries and you will not have to worry. It is certainly completely unnecessary to add a noisy 3" inch inline fan to ventilate the battery compartment.
batteries holding tanks hoses and bathrooms are always going to smell. I just got a quote on changing my hoses. $2800. A fan is $29
I think you are venting in the wrong direction. I installed a fan in my cruising cat that pulled from the bathroom, through the black water tank compartment. After all, we have bathroom fans at home for non-boat reasons. The fan vents outside ... obviously.
My batteries are on the bridge deck, outside, No problem. Same with fuel tank.
My batteries are on the bridge deck, outside, No problem. Same with fuel tank.
got it. You pull air from the bathroom but the issue is how to get that air out of the boat!
none of those things/areas should ever “smell”.
the fan might be cheap but the system to vent it isn’t.
I would add dorade or some other vents to the cabin top which constantly pull/exchange air from the whole interior without electricity, all the time. Still, you got to get rid of the sources. $2800 - wow, it cost a little more than $100 to replace the hoses in my boat and maybe a couple of hours of (not fun) work. Like dlochner, the batteries, holding tank hoses and head on my boat don't smell, you can get there.
The battery compartment under the settee is already open to the space behind the toilet. That's where the hoses pass through. I would never spend $2,800 for the boat yard to replace hoses. Granted, the hoses are expensive, but this is an easy job. If your hoses smell, there is no substitute and there isn't any venting that will help. The holding tank is vented out the stbd hull ... no reason why you can't add another. Or you could install a dorade over the head. (I've never seen a 320 with dorades, but I had neighbors with Catalina Morgan 32 that had dorades and they worked very well.)
Ted, it's your boat you can within limits do what you want with it. However, you have a bunch of sailors with literally hundreds of years of experience saying you are barking up the wrong tree with using ventilation to solve the odor problem. Oh, and those inline ventilation fans are quite noisy.
Someday you or your heirs will want to sell this boat. If someone showed me your boat with ventilation system your planing to install, I'd tell them to walk away.
Inexpensive and prevents bad smells. That's what it says. And yet only $9.98.
Amazon.com for Bad Smells
Amazon.com for Bad Smells
most modern bathrooms come with a fan. a speed control on an in-line fan can reduce the noise as much as you want but a totally silent computer fan would be adequate for this small job. I see no way that putting a little fan in will diminish the value of the boat. When I looked at my first boat last August the broker ran ahead of me to get into the boat and open the hatches to air it out before I could smell it. good ventilation adds to the value of the boat rather than subtracts from it .
Of course sea water intake odor CAN be dealt with--even eliminated...I've posted the cure many times. You're correct that the source is dead and decaying micro and not-so-micro sea life is the source, but it's not in the bowl, it's in the intake line and in the channel in the rim of the bowl. It can be prevented on with a simple inexpensive modification to the intake line that's easy to do as long as the toilet and the head sink are on the same side of the keel and the sink drain thru-hull is below the waterline.
Sink drain thru-hulls are below the waterline on almost all sailboats. So disconnect the toilet intake hose from the thru-hull (close the seacock first!) and r-route it to tee or wye it into the sink drain line as close to the seacock as possible because the connection must be below waterline to work. You'll be left with an unused thru-hull that you can repurpose to use for a washdown pump and probably be able to shorten the intake line.
This will allow you to flush normally with sea water. After you’ve closed the sink drain seacock in preparation to close up the boat (you do close all seacocks before leaving the boat to sit??), fill the sink with clean fresh water and flush the toilet. Because the seacock is closed, the toilet will draw the water out of the sink, rinsing the sea water out of the entire system—intake line, pump, channel in the rim of the bowl and the discharge line,(Water poured into the bowl only rinses out the toilet discharge line). If your toilet is electric, be careful not to let it run dry…doing so can burn out the intake impeller. Or you can keep the sink drain seacock closed except when it's needed to drain the sink and flush with fresh water down the sink all the time...your choice.
It may also be necessary to keep the sink plugged except when in use, with a rubber sink plug or by installing a conveniently located shut-off valve in the drain hose. Otherwise the toilet may pull air through the sink when you try to flush, preventing the pump from priming.
--Peggie
does this mean that flushing the toilet with fresh water from the head sink would be helpful too?
You must have missed seeing this sentence "Or you can keep the sink drain seacock closed except when it's needed to drain the sink and flush with fresh water down the sink all the time...your choice. "
--Peggie
why keep the sink seacock closed when in theory you will be using the sink as much as the toilet?