porta potty question

[Peggie Hall HeadMistress]

We installed an Envirolet composting toilet at our comp in West Virginia. It is only used about two days every six weeks.

Does it get any attention between uses? If not, I think that's your problem. Composting is a continuous process....the drum has to be rotated to aerate the material...it has to be "fed" enzymes or bacteria on a schedule...the temperature has to stay well above 70 F, 'cuz bacteria become increasingly sluggish below 70...till they become totally dormant at 40. Bacterial activity is essential to composting.

So if you just use it for those two days and then just let it sit there for weeks, it's not gonna work...some kind of fan and heater has to run continuously and rotate the drum on a schedule or somebody has to tend it at LEAST weekly...liquids have to drain as the material breaks down..new peat moss added and enzymes. A little homework into how to use and maintain a composter before you installed it could have saved you from an expensive mistake. For the kind of use it gets an incinerating toilet may have been a better choice. You might look into selling the composter and replacing it with an Incinolet - I N C I N O L E T -

 

[RichLan]

With the composting toilet, we do leave the fan and heater running, but do not rake it, add enzymes, moisture or otherwise tend to it for several weeks at a time. The manufacturer's literature says that it is OK for "occasional use". I was wondering if non-use might be why it does not decompose well. Thanks for the information.

 

[soling42]

Peggy, you're killin' me. That Bumper Dumper gives poop deck a fresh new meaning. I'll be grinning a long time when I imagine the look of my crew(wife) being told to plug in a BD to the stern fitting for relief while underway......don't forget your favorite magazine and a PFD dear

Good find. Mike

 

[Peggie Hall HeadMistress]

You do want to be careful

Not to heel much or do much tacking while the BD is in use... Otoh, you COULD fit it with a seatbelt and shoulder harness! :dance:

 

[Winkfish]

Not to heel much or do much tacking while the BD is in use... Otoh, you COULD fit it with a seatbelt and shoulder harness! :dance:

Kind of a natural bidet.

 

[biorapper]

7 years sailing and never used the porta potty. we use plastic bottles for liquid (interesting experiment in how much the bladder can hold!!), and mostly anchor near state parks w facilities or off wilderness like shores for solid. Aside from a few times of discomfort, never been a problem. I just really don't like the idea of excrement on the boat, aside from capped plastic that can be poured into a toilet eventually. Heck most of the time I'm peeing into water or earth. Perhaps it is not "correct", but I'd be lieing if I said I did not get some kind of "mammilian" satisfaction, Could be that I have lived in ruralness for 10 years...I'd rather go pee off the deck or in the woods than in a toilet anytime.

 

[kenn]

7 years sailing and never used the porta potty. we use plastic bottles for liquid (interesting experiment in how much the bladder can hold!!), and mostly anchor near state parks w facilities or off wilderness like shores for solid. Aside from a few times of discomfort, never been a problem. I just really don't like the idea of excrement on the boat, aside from capped plastic that can be poured into a toilet eventually. Heck most of the time I'm peeing into water or earth. Perhaps it is not "correct", but I'd be lieing if I said I did not get some kind of "mammilian" satisfaction, Could be that I have lived in ruralness for 10 years...I'd rather go pee off the deck or in the woods than in a toilet anytime.

I think most trailer-sailors try to drop their ballast ashore, so you're not alone there. At the same time though, it's a bit liberating that with a small head aboard, you don't have to schedule the day's sailing around bathrooms. And not everyone 's system has Swiss-chronograph-like reliability.

We have one of those type-3 MSD head/portapotties, and with a bit of care and the right MSD chemicals, we haven't been bothered by odours. Prompt pumpout and rinsing after the trip is KEY. Do not, repeat DO NOT leave the boat unpumped on the trailer, in the summer sun for a week or two.

I'm more freaked out about the poop-in-a-bag idea than by the MSD. Ecch. Just me I guess.

I too acknowledge the primal pleasures of peeing off the stern, but it's a bit unsettling to the locals, or to other boaters in the same anchorage or marina... I also note that the leading cause of falling overboard and drowning among adult males is... peeing off the stern. (It's that, or drowning men instinctively open their flies as they struggle their last.). In Amsterdam, that's also the leading cause of drowning in the canals.

 

[Manureva]

I think most trailer-sailors try to drop their ballast ashore, so you're not alone there. At the same time though, it's a bit liberating that with a small head aboard, you don't have to schedule the day's sailing around bathrooms. And not everyone 's system has Swiss-chronograph-like reliability.

We have one of those type-3 MSD head/portapotties, and with a bit of care and the right MSD chemicals, we haven't been bothered by odours. Prompt pumpout and rinsing after the trip is KEY. Do not, repeat DO NOT leave the boat unpumped on the trailer, in the summer sun for a week or two.

I'm more freaked out about the poop-in-a-bag idea than by the MSD. Ecch. Just me I guess.

I too acknowledge the primal pleasures of peeing off the stern, but it's a bit unsettling to the locals, or to other boaters in the same anchorage or marina... I also note that the leading cause of falling overboard and drowning among adult males is... peeing off the stern. (It's that, or drowning men instinctively open their flies as they struggle their last.). In Amsterdam, that's also the leading cause of drowning in the canals.

fish and whale do let their waste go in the water, ma san juan23 came with a dump out porta poti, but the marina here had a broken pump out... so i have seen myself holding the tiller, pants down in the wind dumping waste over board just like the fish, my girlfriend found it pretty funny and the fellow racing us at the time had the surprise of his life! I take lots of med for a back problem and when i have to go it is in the next 5 min.... I dont understnd why nobody talk about the benefice of having a jabsco toilet with a holding tank and a pumpout or the option of pumping from the toilet to overboard when no other option is available, this is the setup i am currently instaling in the boat...

 

[pfschmid]

In NY it's against the law to dump waste overboard, or in any storm system that outlets to fresh water. Recently the NY State Department of Conservation implemented new guidelines for waste water, sediment and erosion control in an effort to reduce water polution, and they've been pretty strict about it. The fines are ridiculously high. Sailing & boating on Lake Erie in NY, an on board toilet is a must.

 

[Peggie Hall HeadMistress]

He's in Canada, Pete...

And while the inland lakes, including the Great Lakes in both the US and Canadian waters, are "no discharge," it's perfectly legal to flush directly overboard or dump a tank in the coastal waters of the Canadian Maritime Provinces.

You also need to know that there are considerable differences in marine sanitation laws and waste water discharge laws on land...starting with some definitions. On land "sewage" is anything that goes down a sewer pipe..."wastewater" can include "sewage" and even runoff. But, while it may be illegal to discharge water from a shower or a sink in a building into a storm drain or anywhere else except into the sewer or a septic tank...when it's from a vessel, "sewage" is only "human body waste and the waste from toilets and other receptacles intended to receive, retain or discharge human body waste." And "sewage" by THAT defintion is the only thing that's covered by federal--and therefore all state--marine sanitation laws.

Galley, bath and shower water from a vessel isn't "waste water"..it's known as "gray water"..and it's perfectly legal to discharge gray water directly overboard from a boat--not only in Lake Erie, but in ALL US waters except for a very few closed (not navigable by interstate vessel traffic) inland Lakes...Lake George is the only place in New York where gray water can't go directly overboard...there are a couple of lakes in NH, one or two in CA, and a few very small areas directly over reefs in the FL Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

As for onboard toilet facilities on a boat...it's quite legal in ALL US water, inland lakes and rivers as well as coastal waters, to use the lee rail or take a swim when necessary. It's only illegal to deposit it in any kind of container first...it has to be a "direct deposit" to be legal.

 

[Manureva]

gee that is a lot of knowledge ! up here we have to be at lest 2 miles from the shore and it is perfectly legal... i never thought about all ythe other restriction that apply , being a marine engineer i have pumped ton of black and grey water overboard as long as whe where more then 5 mile of the coast!

 

[druid]

Peggy, you're killin' me. That Bumper Dumper gives poop deck a fresh new meaning.

Good find. Mike

Where do you think the term "poop deck" came from? (Actually I think "poop deck" was first, THEN "poop")

What I'd like to see is a porta-potti with built-in pumpout fitting. That way, when there IS a pumpout station available, you could put the potti on the dock, hook up the hose and SLU-U-U-RP! If not, you can take it onshore and dump wherever it's ok.

druid

 

[pfschmid]

The following is the actual meaning for "poop deck" but I like the new one from Peggy.

In naval architecture, a poop deck is a deck that forms the roof of a cabin built in the aft (rear) part of the superstructure of a ship.
The name originates from the French word for stern, la poupe, from Latin puppis. Thus the poop deck is technically called a stern deck, which in sailing ships was usually elevated as the roof of the stern or "after" cabin, also known as the "poop cabin". In sailing ships, with the helmsman at the stern, an elevated position was ideal for both navigation and observation of the crew and sails.

 

[Peggie Hall HeadMistress]

But there was another reason for the poop deck...

Not all sailing vessels had a raised aft helm. The main reason for a raised stern deck was to protect the vessel from being swamped by waves over the stern in a following sea...a condition known as being "pooped."

Now I'll send y'all out to do more research: name the vessel that had the first below waterline flushing marine toilet.

 

[pfschmid]

Re: But there was another reason for the poop deck...

The USS Monitor

 

[Peggie Hall HeadMistress]

We have a winner!

It was indeed the MONITOR. And a flush toilet wasn't the only new invention on it.

"Before the Civil War, only the rich owned flush toilets. It'd be a decade before that famous plumber, Thomas Crapper, would popularize water closets. And on a ship, you used either a slop bucket or a hole in the edge of an upper deck. But most of the low-lying Monitor, crew included, rode below the waterline. It had a serious waste-disposal problem: Toilets depend on gravity, and gravity can do little good below water. Waste had to be forced out. The Monitor's designer, Swedish engineer John Ericsson, had one of the most restlessly inventive minds of the 19th century. He solved the problem by creating a kind of mini-torpedo tube. After a sailor used the toilet, he had to close a near valve, open a far valve, then actuate a pump to drive the waste out. The system was fiendishly tricky to use. One sailor turned the valves in the wrong sequence and was blown off the seat by a powerful jet of seawater. Problems like that bedeviled the Monitor. It was one-of-a-kind all the way through. From its radical use of new screw propellers to its 120- ton turret, everything was new."

You can read the rest--and it's worth your time to do so--and about the Swedish-American engineer/inventor who designed and built the Monitor in the rest of this copyrighted article here No. 1344: The Monitor's Flush Toilet

Btw...notice that the author says that Thomas Crapper "popularized" water closets, he didn't say that Crapper invented the flush toilet. That's because, contrary to popular belief, Crapper did NOT invent it.

 

[pfschmid]

Re: We have a winner!

She was also famous for her battle with the Merrimac the first battle in naval history using iron clad vessels

 

[pfschmid]

Re: We have a winner!

That seawater blow back may have been the start of the firsr bidet

 

[Winkfish]

It may also be why we don't use them so much in the States.

 

[pfschmid]

You got that right - they're nice when neccessary, bu they could make a potential mess