TP or No TP

[brian and clare]

hi folks my 2 cents. Lives on board form several years, and always flushed TP. Kept to cheap single ply. Problem comes when the pipes are old and full of calcified gunk and the pipe is actually half the diameter it should be.

IN any case, when going offshore, if possible and available I buy the dissolving TP they sell in marine stores. Its still pretty cheap, and if you get a clog it will dissolve in time. No freakin way I am trying to pull the head apart 200 miles offshore.

Since some crew could not be trusted, I instituted the bag rule when we could not get the dissolving tp. Gross. especially when trying to dump over the side (many many miles offshore) and the wind kicks up and deposits it on the side deck... Nasty

[hellosailor]

Heads aren't the only place tp jams. If you look at tp in the supermarkets, some brands now have a little "Septic Safe" note on them, to indicate they dissolve faster in septic systems. Those usually are made with short-fiber paper and they dissolve quickly in any water. Stick a sheet in a water tumbler, you can see what will happen when your choice of brands gets wet. "Special marine" tp is just an expensive wrapper on some of the same stuff you get in the supermarket. You're paying someone else a lot of money for the convenience of finding that "septic safe" label and put it on the chandlery shelf.