Raritan Toilet Melt-Down

[IdoraKeeper]

In my experience all of these products are in their own way...carp. So you pays your money and takes your choice. My sympathies on having to do the job. Why are you breaking so much stuff this year?

[peghall]

Note the post from JayH describing exactly the same problem with his Sea Era -- so this is clearly not an isolated incident.

But he also took responsibility for it, acknowledging that he created the dry friction heat that melted his impeller. You didn't do anything to create it, but could sea water mineral buildup or animal or vegetable sea life have created enough of a blockage in the intake line, even temporarily, to have done so?

Problems with the SeaEra--with any Raritan toilet, actually--really are so rare that till proven otherwise I'm convinced that something external had to have caused it.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by IdoraKeeper

In my experience all of these products are in their own way...carp. So you pays your money and takes your choice. My sympathies on having to do the job. Why are you breaking so much stuff this year?

Yes -- I agree -- to get really good marine gear, you have to pay huge amounts of money. This is down to small volumes, probably. The Sea Era is very cheap in comparison to higher end toilets, so probably I shouldn't be surprised that it's full of carp inside.


Breaking a lot of stuff this year? I've sailed over 3000 miles. It's actually been a great year from that point of view. Autopilot (which has worked fine since I filled and bled it), water supply pump, one toilet -- that's it. A very good year in comparison to some others!

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by peghall

Note the post from JayH describing exactly the same problem with his Sea Era -- so this is clearly not an isolated incident.

But he also took responsibility for it, acknowledging that he created the dry friction heat that melted his impeller. You didn't do anything to create it, but could sea water mineral buildup or animal or vegetable sea life have created enough of a blockage in the intake line, even temporarily, to have done so?

Problems with the SeaEra--with any Raritan toilet, actually--really are so rare that till proven otherwise I'm convinced that something external had to have caused it.

No, the insides were clean, but for the sh*t soup which is supposed to be there. I have two different sea water filters, and there was no mineral buildup at all.


I'm not sure JayH "took responsibility for" his melted down impeller. This is extremely poor design if you can make a moving part flex and contact a stationary one, like this. What the macerator blade is bolted to should not flex in this way, and exactly for this reason. There should be a metal sleeve to take the force of the macerator blade being bolted down; this force should not be borne by a lightweight, flexible plastic part.

This toilet is maybe better than the Jabsco -- certainly I have had none of the maddening hydraulic problems I had with my Jabsco, and the simplicity of the design is a big plus. But it is by no means any kind of masterpiece of engineering. It is a cheap, lightweight, plastic thing, made of a cheap low strength plastic, which in fairness, corresponds to the (at least in marine terms) modest price.

[bvander]

We have two heads (better than one??lol)
Main for us is a Seaera, been using for 10+ years almost non stop, very pleased with the durability and simple design. Forward head is a manual PHII. This one is 14 years and still going strong, only replaced jocker a few times and flapper valve once. It replaced a Jabsco manual, best swap ever did. Jabsco is a superb economy head for weekend cruisiers, no where near robust enough for liveaboard use.
This is not just one example, I work on a lot of heads over the years and by far Jabsco basic manual have the greatest problems.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by bvander

We have two heads (better than one??lol)
Main for us is a Seaera, been using for 10+ years almost non stop, very pleased with the durability and simple design. Forward head is a manual PHII. This one is 14 years and still going strong, only replaced jocker a few times and flapper valve once. It replaced a Jabsco manual, best swap ever did. Jabsco is a superb economy head for weekend cruisiers, no where near robust enough for liveaboard use.
This is not just one example, I work on a lot of heads over the years and by far Jabsco basic manual have the greatest problems.

Yes, I agree that the Jabsco manual toilet is a horror.

I had a Raritan PH on my previous boat. Also a cheap, wobbly, plastic thing, but I never had any trouble with it. Furthermore, it has a huge advantage over the Jabsco in that it operates with leverage, making it far easier to operate. I'll never forget the odd hissing and gurgling sounds it made

[capngeo]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

To each his own!

I love electric toilets. Let me count the ways:

1. Makes it easy to pump an adequate amount of water through -- something which almost never happens with manual ones.

2. Does not intimidate non-sailor guests on board.

3. Much more environmentally friendly (no brown trout).

4. Far less likely to clog, since everything is macerated prior to hitting your black water pipes.


I have had manual pump Jabscos, and in fact I have one in spares (as an emergency replacement for my electric Jabsco). They are simple -- I'll give them that. And yes can be overhauled in less than an hour (don't know about 10 minutes). Biggest plus of all is that they are so cheap that you can carry a whole spare pump and just swap it out (and that you certainly can do in 10 minutes). But in my experience they don't work very well, and it's so much work to pump the small volume of water they pump, no one ever flushes through enough to get everything through the black water pipes, no matter how many lectures they get from the skipper. The result is that your black water pipes get arteriosclerosis and become prone to clogging. Give me electric any day, but to each his own, of course.

LOL, I do have to agree with #1... In fact I always install a valve to my saltwater wash down pump which I can hit to "fill" the bowl for solid waste. The rest, I totally disagree with:

1. Guests are instructed upon arrival
2. It is fairly impossible for a "Brown Trout" to make it through to the holding tank; everything gets chewed up rather well by the pump....that and almost everywhere on the West Coast of Florida there are pump-out stations.... NOTHING from the black tank makes it to the water

Yes, they do pump a smaller amount of water, which rarely clears the line to the holding tank. I see this as a good thing (as my Black Tank is only 27 gallons), and at the end of the day, I usually throw the valve to "dry" and pump through with fresh water. I've found that by doing so, my hoses don't permeate nor clog with uric acid crystals.

Another benefit is electrical use... or more correctly, the lack thereof. At 28' my boat is small, and only has room for 200ah of house bank.

As to durability, I used one daily in live-aboard service for seven years before an overhaul was necessary. In fact I'm not sure ANY other component on the boat worked fine for seven years without attention!

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by capngeo

LOL, I do have to agree with #1... In fact I always install a valve to my saltwater wash down pump which I can hit to "fill" the bowl for solid waste. The rest, I totally disagree with:

1. Guests are instructed upon arrival
2. It is fairly impossible for a "Brown Trout" to make it through to the holding tank; everything gets chewed up rather well by the pump....that and almost everywhere on the West Coast of Florida there are pump-out stations.... NOTHING from the black tank makes it to the water

Yes, they do pump a smaller amount of water, which rarely clears the line to the holding tank. I see this as a good thing (as my Black Tank is only 27 gallons), and at the end of the day, I usually throw the valve to "dry" and pump through with fresh water. I've found that by doing so, my hoses don't permeate nor clog with uric acid crystals.

Another benefit is electrical use... or more correctly, the lack thereof. At 28' my boat is small, and only has room for 200ah of house bank.

As to durability, I used one daily in live-aboard service for seven years before an overhaul was necessary. In fact I'm not sure ANY other component on the boat worked fine for seven years without attention!

Holding tanks are a nightmare. If you flush through enough water to keep your black water system healthy, your tank capacity is never enough. I hate using mine.

I used a Lectrasan system in U.S. waters.

In UK waters, just pump straight overboard. The UK government did a very extensive study and learned that black water pumped out of yachts has zero effect on water quality, with the strong tidal flushing in UK waters, so there are no restrictions other than not doing it in harbours or near beaches. Nor would we do it in an anchorage with other boats.

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