Sunday 30 December 2012

Toilet blockage breakthrough

It's been a while since I clambered aboard Ciao Bella for anything other than a quick check. To be honest I'd come up against a mental block while fitting the loo... I've just broken through that block :-)
When I fitted the seacocks I had planned to have the tails pointing straight up, as this is how I'd seen others fitted.
When I realised how much radius I'd need on the sanitation pipe I decided that I wanted the tails to come of at 90 degrees. I picked up a pair of elbows but the outlet one was too close to the side of the compartment for it to thread on.
I didn't want to rush this and get it wrong again so I've been dickering about trying to come up with a plan. The easy out was to loosen the skin fitting, assemble the tail and elbow onto the ball valve and the re bed the skin fitting. This would have meant being able to put it together without attacking the woodwork in the boat but had the downside of not being able to disassemble while afloat.
Tonight I have taken the bull by the horns and hacked, ground, filled & chiseled the woodwork to allow the elbow to spin on. The outlet hose will now route over the top of the inlet hose and the action of the handles is not impeded. I feel like a weight has been lifted, I plan to get up early tomorrow and spend the whole day working on her.

The picture show the modifications to the cupboard sides to accommodate the elbow and with the seacocks loosely assembled to show how the pipe will fit and clearance for the handles.



5 comments:

  1. Are you SURE you should be drilling holes in your lovely watertight hull???? :o)))

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  2. It bothers me that I don't see any substantial backing pads on the through-hull fittings. My backing pads are 4" in diameter and 1" thick.

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  3. Hi Phil, Hmmm, you could be right. The outlet pad is fairly big but the inlet one is only about 2.5 inch diameter. I shall get some advice but I suspect you're right. Thanks for pointing it out, as much as I don't want to change it you've made me go back to check it.

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