Tips for replacing joker valve and dealing with calcium build up

[servechilled]

I just did a full rebuild of my Raritan PHII. Messing, time-comsuming business.
Three questions here.
1) After the joker valve, the discharge pipe climbs 3 feet before dumping into the holding tank. I flushed the system with a ton of water to prevent a bigger mess. But since the discharge pipe with joker valve is on the floor, there is no way to get a bucket under it to catch the 3 feet of waste in the tube. I bled it out little by little with a shallow cut out plastic bottle. It took forever. Any tricks?
2) I've read that CLR can dissolve the calcium build-up. Do I just flush enough down the toilet to fill up the 3 foot discharge tube and let it sit?
3) Please share your calcium build-up prevention tips.
Thank you.

 

[justsomeguy]

Any tricks?

Doesn't flushing in dry mode help clear the pipe?

 

[capta]

You didn't mention how much calcium build up you have in your house.
When I was changing out all the hoses exiting the head going to the Y, and from there to either the holding tank or overboard, I did a test of every method for dissolving the build up, and had virtually no luck at all. My build up had cut in ID to about half, so it was easy to get chunks to do the tests with. Perhaps, over a year or two sitting in one chemical or another would dissolve the build up. As our head overboard discharge was under the stern the hose was around 15 feet. Even after spending a day or so trying to clean them, I found that any low point, like between a couple of frames, was much more clogged and just too much work. It was more efficient to replace the hoses than clean out the old ones, even though the hose itself was in good shape.

 

[SoSound]

The last time that I replaced my Jabsco joker valve, I removed the top of the hand pump and then used a pump from a shampoo bottle to empty all of the remaining (clean) water from the cylinder. Something like a turkey baster/bulb pump would work just as well. I happened to have a Costco sized bottle pump laying around. It made a HUGE difference in keeping the work area clean and dry.

 

[servechilled]

Doesn't flushing in dry mode help clear the pipe?

It doesn't, or at least didn't. Now with a calcium-free joker valve it might. But it's a hand-pump, and each stroke probably only pushes about 6 in of air into the tube (once the bowl is empty), so I'm not sure how it could. But I'm also new to all this, so I may not know what I'm talking about.

 

[servechilled]

You didn't mention how much calcium build up you have in your house.

I would say everything had from 1-4 mm of Ca build-up. There may be more up the discharge tube.

 

[servechilled]

The last time that I replaced my Jabsco joker valve, I removed the top of the hand pump

Nice suggestion. I can see how that would cut down on mess. Unfortunately the Raritan has a different pump configuration that doesn't allow you to do that (that I can tell). And the thing I found most difficult was dealing with everything past the joker valve that hadn't made it into the holding tank yet. Not very clean stuff.

 

[SoSound]

Argh! Can’t remove the top? It really helped. I did the same as you, pumped clean water through before taking the base of the pump apart. Since the joker valve wasn’t sealing anyway, everything left in the hose seeped back into the base and I was able to empty it, it was nearly dry when I took it apart.