Awesome Experience #459: tracking down fecal odor in the head plumbing

The most pressing issues at the moment, on the boat, is the lack of a usable stove, and the smell of rotten fecal matter that permeates our lives. Let's start with the latter of the two.

We always knew that the head smelled a bit, but as to how much, where, and why, those were mysteries. I suppose I chalked it up to the idea that boats tend to stick in general, so this just one of the aspects. As I found out, boats shouldn't really stink at all if you do it right, and certainly not the head.

To summarize, there are two things going on that I (and my friend Ryan) helped identify. There is an initial stink factor that happens on salt water plumbed boats. Salt water is teaming with biological life, and you pump it into your hoses. You then seal the sea cocks, and seal in the living creatures into your hoses. They die, and generate some extremely bad gasses. So when you use your boat on the weekends only (or less frequently), you can be promised a rather disgusting blast of gas in your face.

When you blow into a straw in your soda, bubbles come out the top. The same goes for when you pump waste water into the holding tank; the air you're displacing needs to go somewhere. To address this issue, a vent is always installed, that usually terminates in the bow or just above the waterline. Obviously the air in the poop tank is disgusting, so when it goes out the vent (caused by your flushing), it can really knock the wind out of you.

So the first thing I needed to do was determine that the vent was working, otherwise the air can leak directly into the boat, which is absolutely gross.

The next thing I checked was the connections. My friend Ryan would pump, and I would dribble soap suds all over the connections, looking for bubbling. Didn't find any. Then I bagged the manual pump and the Y valve, hoping that the smell would vanish, and I could reproduce it by opening one of the bags.

Under the bags, everything smelled fine. So where was this nasty stink coming from? The vent, connections, and tank itself seemed fine. We've been using the head every few hours over the last couple of days, so the dead-sea-water-living-things-nasty-gas issue shouldn't be present.

Then we smelled it: two of those hoses smelled like hell. One of them is the long run from the head to the tank. There's a sag in it, which would have allowed waste water (fecal matter + sea water) to hang out, probably for months, in that pipe. The same goes for the outbound pipe, which sits lower than the tank, also letting gross stuff hang out in it for way too long. All the other hoses smelled like plastic, but those two smelled like shit.

At nearly $10 per foot, good sanitation hose is not cheap by any means. Ryan and I were commenting on how we get it now why so many people just do direct discharge overboard. It's not only illegal, but for people like myself with sea water pumps installed in the galley, rather unsanitary as well. In the big blue ocean it's not really an issue, but in a harbor, it's completely unacceptable. Even still, looking at such a gross project that will cost so much money, when flipping a Y valve to "direct discharge" would solve it all, makes you consider it for a split second.

So that's my little story of my stinky head. I've gotten much more familiar with my boat, and although this is a gross thing and I'm not done with it yet, I like knowing that I'm a little bit smarter than when I started this process. Also, as a trick if any of you have the problem of stinking hoses but you need to deal with it for a few days before you can fix it, wrap them in plastic trashbags (the thicker the better), and tape them up nice and good. We taped them off, and then sealed a couple of the big holes into that space (for storage access) with painter's tape and some trash bags; completely removed the smell. Certainly not the long term fix, but it made for a good night's rest.

Update on Friday, June 29, 2007 at 07:27 by Eric

I went to my local chandlery, and picked up what I believe is enough hose to do the job. I talked to Chris (I think he's the owner?), and he explained to me that the way you use your head makes a much bigger difference than the supplier. If you flush it routinely, and do the vinegar and Joy thing, you can get > 15 years out of your hoses if you play your cards right.

Update on Monday, July 2, 2007 at 20:25 by Eric

I hit the eject button on doing this project by myself.

I was ready to go. Had my screw driver in hand, pumped the tanks dry, ran water through everything, and was ready to undo the double stainless steel clamps. Then I started to try to really understand what I was going to have to do, and how long it would take. I would end up, most certainly, with a partially completed head, of which the stink would be shocking.

Instead, I called for backup. I've got an appointment with Southern Cross Marine Services on July 10th, and I'm probably going to get a quote for not only fixing the current problem, but also installing a new Lavac head, which I wanted to do anyway. The toilet itself is around $400 with shipping and a tax, so if I can keep the labor down to another $600, I can escape with a kick ass head arrangement for under $1000.

That's really not bad at the end of the day, considering I'll have the super awesome stove done for under $1000, and the super awesome head for the same, which were Charlotte's two biggest priorities. I'll keep you updated on the head, because I'm so very sure you are just glued to the drama that is our disposal of sewage.

Comments

[Charlotte]

You are my hero for this fixing this kind of stuff. <3