Macerator questions

john6206

john6206

.
Feb 19, 2008
432
Catalina 320 Tawas Bay Yacht Club
I thought I understood this, but my friend says I’m wrong…
my friend knows more about these things than I do - until mid June our head was a thetford porta potti.

anyway - help me out please!

I understood that the macerator pump was to do with dumping waste. Since I’m on the Great Lakes and we don’t dump here… I’ll never use that function.

My friend says that you have to macerate before you can pump out (one person in this discussion had a macerating toilet in his basement, the other friend has a trawler). You can’t pump solids without macerating them first they say.

BUT - if I’m reading the schematic correctly, the macerator is downstream of the pump/dump valve… so I must be right???

fyi - I have a jabsco manual toilet.

proposition:
I should just leave that seacock closed, leave that valve in “pump” position, and I never ever need to think about the macerator again.

true or false?
 
kappykaplan

kappykaplan

.
May 1, 2011
5,059
Pearson 37 Lusby MD
john6206 said:
My friend says that you have to macerate before you can pump out (one person in this discussion had a macerating toilet in his basement, the other friend has a trawler). You can’t pump solids without macerating them first they say.
Click to expand
He's wrong! The macerator is there to pump/empty your holding tank overboard, which you can't do on the Great Lakes. When you go to a pump out station, their vacuum sucks "stuff" out your holding tank.
 
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F

Foswick

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Apr 25, 2024
610
Fuji 32 Bellingham
If I am understanding your setup correctly, yes, as you said. But ...

According to 33 CFR 159.7, you need to secure that seacock in one of the following ways:

(1) Closing the seacock and removing the handle;
(2) Padlocking the seacock in the closed position;
(3) Using a non-releasable wire-tie to hold the seacock in the closed position; or
(4) Locking the door to the space enclosing the toilets with a padlock or door handle key lock.

You could also disconnect the macerator/pump since you won't be using it, or at least remove its fuse, if it is on a dedicated circuit.

One nice thing to do is document whatever you do to decommission this part of the system so the next owner doesn't have to scratch their head. When we acquired our current boat, I was surprise to find that it has a pump/macerator that is just physically disconnected from everything ... except the wiring. So, we found an unlabeled switch and I said, "Hmm ... I wonder what this switch does." And, it turned on that pump, which is how I found out it existed.
 
D

dlochner

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Jan 11, 2014
13,037
Sabre 362 113 Fair Haven, NY
kappykaplan said:
Don't most holding tanks have a vent?
Click to expand
If the tank doesn't have a vent, you can't put anything in it as the air has nowhere to go when it is displaced by the effluent from the head.

Solid waste is mostly water and it is broken down by the pump on the head and the flush water and once in the holding tank, bacteria takes care of most the rest. TP can be a problem, not all TP breaks down easily and it can clog hoses.
 
Richard19068

Richard19068

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Jun 11, 2004
1,801
Oday 31 Redondo Beach
I'm pretty sure that if it got through your toilet pump a dockside pump out station should have no problem sucking it out of your holding tank.
 
JoeWhite

JoeWhite

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Mar 6, 2008
1,362
Catalina 1999 C36 MKII #1787 Coyote Point Marina, CA.
John,
proposition:
I should just leave that seacock closed, leave that valve in “pump” position, and I never ever need to think about the macerator again.

true or false?

TRUE

That is what I do. The valve that is ahead of the macetator it is ahead of the holding tank so that you can dump directly overboard when you are in the ocean and at least 25 miles from shore.
So you keep this closed and you keep the input valve to the macerator closed and the overboard throughull valve closed and locked. This will allow you to pump out at the dock only.
 
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