I love when I find posts on here documenting the exact project I want to do on my exact boat, so I thought I would detail my recent head upgrade in hopes that it's useful to someone planing a similar project in the future.
Background:
My 310 had a Jabsco manual head that had clearly be installed by a prior owner but sometime after the boat was built. The head was starting to leak around the pump handle. While the head was usable, the boat develop a notable sewage order whenever it was closed up.
I knew that if I wanted tackle the odor I needed to replace all the waste lines, and if I was going to do all that work I might as well upgrade to a new electric head.
I had previously installed a low-cost electric head on my other boat (Catalina 25), and my partner remarked that it was by far her favorite upgrade. Upon doing a bunch of research (see also Raritan Marine Elegance vs SeaEra QC Conversion Kit), I decided to go all-out on a Marine Elegance with the electronic smart controls. I liked the idea of a heavy-duty macerator built into the toilet and of the smart controls offering a simple operation to my guests.
I decided to stick with seawater flush for now, because 1) I mostly flush with river water which doesn't seem to create much bowl odor, 2) I didn't want to convert to freshwater-only flush ahead of an upcoming coastal trip, 3) I didn't want the added expense of the Raritan dual flush source solution, 4) this is easy enough to change later.
Because the toilet is on a platform, you want the short bowl. The angled back is a must to fit in the tight space (more on that later).
If you're confused about the model numbers when shopping for the best price, this is the decoder you need:
I ordered part 220HR012 - Marine Elegance | Standard | Angled | Household | Raw Water | 12v | Smart Toilet Control.
(note that confusingly there's no suffix digits for Smart Toilet control, but there are for the other control options)
Replacing lines
Whoever installed the current head replaced the 1.5" discharge line from the head to holding tank, but was clearly unable to get the old line out of its conduit. They routed the new line through the same void where the conduit is installed, but left the old, smelly hose in the conduit!
This picture from user paulj nicely captures the void and the conduit that I'm talking about:
Upon purchasing the boat I managed to wrangle the old abandoned discharge hose out, which was very unpleasant, but it didn't really make things smell any better.
Replacing other waste lines:
After reading up on how hoses permeate over time, I decided the first thing to do was replace the factory original waste hoses running:
The first, and probably most important step, was to empty and rinse the tank. I pumped out, filled it with water via the discharge port, pumped out, and repeated 2 more times.
Replacing these hoses was straightforward, but difficult. Getting the old factory hoses, which I believe were Trident Odor Shield Sanitation Hose, required a combination of gentle heat from a heat gun, perforation cuts, and a lot of swearing to remove. The line from the macerator to the discharge seacock had want I can only guess was 20-year-old sewage in it. Gross. I wore a full-face respirator, laid down absorbent pads from the auto parts store to catch the grossness, and used a sacrificial shop vac to suck the fluid out as I made surgical cuts in the line to get it emptied. As careful as I was, things still got dirty. Having lots of Clorox and paper towels to clean everything afterwards was helpful.
These hoses were stiff as a board upon removing. The quality of the Raritan Sani/Flex hoses is clearly higher, and I hope they'll be kinder to whoever removes them next.
I ensured everything was double hose-clamped everywhere. I was disappointed to find a few locations that appeared to have only a single hose clamp from the factory, so show up with some extra hose clamps for this project.
Removing the old head:
Removing the Jabsco was simple, though I didn't find a good way to avoid the residual flushed-through waste water in the discharge line from spilling out. There wasn't much, and it wasn't very dirty since I gave a thorough flush-through before starting. I initially fished a new discharge hose through the void pictured above by temporarily coupling a new hose in to the old one, but in the end I found it was best the route the discharge line to underneath the head, following the path of the line from the macerator to discharge seacock (more on that coming below).
Mounting the new head:
If you read the manual for the Marine Elegance, you'll see that it's meant for the hoses to go straight down through the floor under or behind the head:
Diagram link
Unfortunately, the mounting pedestal on our boat is far too small for this. In order for the head to sit on the pedestal, it needs to be pushed back so that the based of angled back is right up against here the pedestal intersects the hull:
This means that if you were to drill holes straight down from those hoses, you'd be going right through the hull. I suspect others have solved this problem by adding a board to the front of the pedestal and moving the head outward from the wall, but since this is also the shower area and the head is already far larger than the old one, I didn't want to do that. The solution was to mount it as pictured, which allowed for reasonable head use and shower ergonomics, and then deal with the hoses as described in the next section.
The pedestal has thick plywood behind the fiberglass, so mounting with the lag bolts as described in the instructions was easy.
Discharge line:
By far the biggest obstacle to overcome was getting a discharge line out of the head with it pushed up against the curvature of the hull.
On the back of the head, the discharge line goes to a plastic adapter offering both 1.5" and 1" barbs that contains a small joker valve and connects to a rubber boot coming from the macerator:
The end of the white discharge piece is only about 5" from the floor. If it's pushed up by a connecting discharge hose, it kinks the rubber boot pictured above that connects it to the macerator. In order to make this work with the head pushed all way way up against the wall, the discharge line needs to make an immediate 90 degree turn to aft, and do it high enough that it's not pinched in the crevasse created between the angled back of the head and the hull. I tried doing this just by bending the discharge hose, but it's too tight of a turn and will kink (and ruin) even the super flexible Raritan discharge line.
I decided the solution was a 90 degrees elbow right off the back of the white discharge fitting. Raritan sells a kit for rear wall discharge, which is simply a 90 degreed barbed fitting a a flexible coupler to connect it to the white discharge fitting. The problem is, it's too long, it will result in the hose turning horizontal at floor level, when in this installation it needs to turn horizontal a couple inches above floor level due to the crevasse.
Behold, my solution:
In order to make the turn in such a small space, there's no room for an elbow that then needs a coupler to attached to the white discharge piece. Instead, I used a pre-molded 1.5" radiator hose with a tight bend that goes directly on the white discharge piece. The hose I used was a cut-down Gates 22495 radiator hose, but I'm sure there are tons of other models that would work. In order to get the hose tight against the discharge piece, I trimmed the 1" barbs off:
On the other end, I used a spare discharge piece, without the joker valve, to adapt to 1" hose. But, only because it was handy. A standard 1.5" to 1" reducing coupling should work fine.
I think this is a good solution because it keeps the 90 degree fitting in 1.5" domain, before dropping down to 1". I'm not sure if the rubber in the radiator hose will be the best for long term odor permeability, but at least it will be easy to replace.
I did learn that the elbow needs to be secured, otherwise the pressure from bends in the discharge hose will push it upward which will kink the discharge boot inside the head. I used zip ties to hold the elbow to the macerator mount. Here's a view looking down with the head installed:
Now that we've got a horizontal hose, you could probably use more fittings or a big S-shaped bend to get it into the hole that into the void where the factory hose went. But, I decided to run it through the floor so that it could follow the same path as the tank-to-discharge-seacock line and be easily serviced.
In order to reduce stress from the series of turns in the hose, I used an oval shaped hole that I trimmed with a Hawse (I learned that word in the process). I used MarineNow Marine Hawse Pipe 316 Stainless Steel 3-3/4" x 1-1/2" from Amazon.
Once through the floor, the routing gets easy and the line follows the same path as the thru-hull discharge line back to the tank. I did transition to 1.5" hose near the tank, since the tank intake fitting is 1.5" and would be difficult to change.
Background:
My 310 had a Jabsco manual head that had clearly be installed by a prior owner but sometime after the boat was built. The head was starting to leak around the pump handle. While the head was usable, the boat develop a notable sewage order whenever it was closed up.
I knew that if I wanted tackle the odor I needed to replace all the waste lines, and if I was going to do all that work I might as well upgrade to a new electric head.
I had previously installed a low-cost electric head on my other boat (Catalina 25), and my partner remarked that it was by far her favorite upgrade. Upon doing a bunch of research (see also Raritan Marine Elegance vs SeaEra QC Conversion Kit), I decided to go all-out on a Marine Elegance with the electronic smart controls. I liked the idea of a heavy-duty macerator built into the toilet and of the smart controls offering a simple operation to my guests.
I decided to stick with seawater flush for now, because 1) I mostly flush with river water which doesn't seem to create much bowl odor, 2) I didn't want to convert to freshwater-only flush ahead of an upcoming coastal trip, 3) I didn't want the added expense of the Raritan dual flush source solution, 4) this is easy enough to change later.
Because the toilet is on a platform, you want the short bowl. The angled back is a must to fit in the tight space (more on that later).
If you're confused about the model numbers when shopping for the best price, this is the decoder you need:
I ordered part 220HR012 - Marine Elegance | Standard | Angled | Household | Raw Water | 12v | Smart Toilet Control.
(note that confusingly there's no suffix digits for Smart Toilet control, but there are for the other control options)
Replacing lines
Whoever installed the current head replaced the 1.5" discharge line from the head to holding tank, but was clearly unable to get the old line out of its conduit. They routed the new line through the same void where the conduit is installed, but left the old, smelly hose in the conduit!
This picture from user paulj nicely captures the void and the conduit that I'm talking about:
Upon purchasing the boat I managed to wrangle the old abandoned discharge hose out, which was very unpleasant, but it didn't really make things smell any better.
Replacing other waste lines:
After reading up on how hoses permeate over time, I decided the first thing to do was replace the factory original waste hoses running:
- from the pump out to the tank T (1.5")
- from the T to the macerator pump (1.5")
- from the macerator pump to the discard thur-hull (1")
The first, and probably most important step, was to empty and rinse the tank. I pumped out, filled it with water via the discharge port, pumped out, and repeated 2 more times.
Replacing these hoses was straightforward, but difficult. Getting the old factory hoses, which I believe were Trident Odor Shield Sanitation Hose, required a combination of gentle heat from a heat gun, perforation cuts, and a lot of swearing to remove. The line from the macerator to the discharge seacock had want I can only guess was 20-year-old sewage in it. Gross. I wore a full-face respirator, laid down absorbent pads from the auto parts store to catch the grossness, and used a sacrificial shop vac to suck the fluid out as I made surgical cuts in the line to get it emptied. As careful as I was, things still got dirty. Having lots of Clorox and paper towels to clean everything afterwards was helpful.
These hoses were stiff as a board upon removing. The quality of the Raritan Sani/Flex hoses is clearly higher, and I hope they'll be kinder to whoever removes them next.
I ensured everything was double hose-clamped everywhere. I was disappointed to find a few locations that appeared to have only a single hose clamp from the factory, so show up with some extra hose clamps for this project.
Removing the old head:
Removing the Jabsco was simple, though I didn't find a good way to avoid the residual flushed-through waste water in the discharge line from spilling out. There wasn't much, and it wasn't very dirty since I gave a thorough flush-through before starting. I initially fished a new discharge hose through the void pictured above by temporarily coupling a new hose in to the old one, but in the end I found it was best the route the discharge line to underneath the head, following the path of the line from the macerator to discharge seacock (more on that coming below).
Mounting the new head:
If you read the manual for the Marine Elegance, you'll see that it's meant for the hoses to go straight down through the floor under or behind the head:
Diagram link
Unfortunately, the mounting pedestal on our boat is far too small for this. In order for the head to sit on the pedestal, it needs to be pushed back so that the based of angled back is right up against here the pedestal intersects the hull:
This means that if you were to drill holes straight down from those hoses, you'd be going right through the hull. I suspect others have solved this problem by adding a board to the front of the pedestal and moving the head outward from the wall, but since this is also the shower area and the head is already far larger than the old one, I didn't want to do that. The solution was to mount it as pictured, which allowed for reasonable head use and shower ergonomics, and then deal with the hoses as described in the next section.
The pedestal has thick plywood behind the fiberglass, so mounting with the lag bolts as described in the instructions was easy.
Discharge line:
By far the biggest obstacle to overcome was getting a discharge line out of the head with it pushed up against the curvature of the hull.
On the back of the head, the discharge line goes to a plastic adapter offering both 1.5" and 1" barbs that contains a small joker valve and connects to a rubber boot coming from the macerator:
The end of the white discharge piece is only about 5" from the floor. If it's pushed up by a connecting discharge hose, it kinks the rubber boot pictured above that connects it to the macerator. In order to make this work with the head pushed all way way up against the wall, the discharge line needs to make an immediate 90 degree turn to aft, and do it high enough that it's not pinched in the crevasse created between the angled back of the head and the hull. I tried doing this just by bending the discharge hose, but it's too tight of a turn and will kink (and ruin) even the super flexible Raritan discharge line.
I decided the solution was a 90 degrees elbow right off the back of the white discharge fitting. Raritan sells a kit for rear wall discharge, which is simply a 90 degreed barbed fitting a a flexible coupler to connect it to the white discharge fitting. The problem is, it's too long, it will result in the hose turning horizontal at floor level, when in this installation it needs to turn horizontal a couple inches above floor level due to the crevasse.
Behold, my solution:
In order to make the turn in such a small space, there's no room for an elbow that then needs a coupler to attached to the white discharge piece. Instead, I used a pre-molded 1.5" radiator hose with a tight bend that goes directly on the white discharge piece. The hose I used was a cut-down Gates 22495 radiator hose, but I'm sure there are tons of other models that would work. In order to get the hose tight against the discharge piece, I trimmed the 1" barbs off:
On the other end, I used a spare discharge piece, without the joker valve, to adapt to 1" hose. But, only because it was handy. A standard 1.5" to 1" reducing coupling should work fine.
I think this is a good solution because it keeps the 90 degree fitting in 1.5" domain, before dropping down to 1". I'm not sure if the rubber in the radiator hose will be the best for long term odor permeability, but at least it will be easy to replace.
I did learn that the elbow needs to be secured, otherwise the pressure from bends in the discharge hose will push it upward which will kink the discharge boot inside the head. I used zip ties to hold the elbow to the macerator mount. Here's a view looking down with the head installed:
Now that we've got a horizontal hose, you could probably use more fittings or a big S-shaped bend to get it into the hole that into the void where the factory hose went. But, I decided to run it through the floor so that it could follow the same path as the tank-to-discharge-seacock line and be easily serviced.
In order to reduce stress from the series of turns in the hose, I used an oval shaped hole that I trimmed with a Hawse (I learned that word in the process). I used MarineNow Marine Hawse Pipe 316 Stainless Steel 3-3/4" x 1-1/2" from Amazon.
Once through the floor, the routing gets easy and the line follows the same path as the thru-hull discharge line back to the tank. I did transition to 1.5" hose near the tank, since the tank intake fitting is 1.5" and would be difficult to change.
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