The Head To End All Heads

[Lagoon4us]

I can only imagine asking family and friends who cruise with us to crap & pee in the bags provided rather than use our domestic looking toilet with electric flush and holding tanks.

The only time i'll accept crapping in a plastic bag is when i'm a paid up member of the 'Dunrootin Village' and my cruising days are over.

Kinda brings on a new acronym for this RODPMSLIPB (Rolling on deck pissin' my self laughing into plastic bags)......

[GaryMayo]

Originally Posted by Lagoon4us

I can only imagine asking family and friends who cruise with us to crap & pee in the bags provided rather than use our domestic looking toilet with electric flush and holding tanks.

The only time i'll accept crapping in a plastic bag is when i'm a paid up member of the 'Dunrootin Village' and my cruising days are over.

Kinda brings on a new acronym for this RODPMSLIPB (Rolling on deck pissin' my self laughing into plastic bags)......

We have something in common. I could not imagine going up to the marina and asking someone to come over to my sailboat and pump the human waste out. I guess we all have our limitations. Seems some jobs are best not deligatted.

One day, I saw an employee get called out to pump a tank. Looked to be a miserable job in 110 degree weather, with no shade. He no sooner got done, and was rolling the heavy pump cart back uphill to the marina, when someone saw him, and had him come back to empty his. That seemed to repeat several times that day. Felt very sorry for the guy.

Later at the marina, I asked the guy, if he liked us because I usually buy him a soda when I get me one, or because I never had him pump out crap? He looked at me, and said, no you never have, and smiled. And thanked me.

I own a marine head, and holding tank, not sure the brand. Came with my 32 aft cockpit I am using for parts. Did not bother to winterize it this fall. Not going near the old smelly contraption. Lol. When I break the boat down for salvage, I will dumpster the plumbing. Zero interest in storing human waste, with the smells, maintenance, cleaning, pumping outs, yadda yadda yadda.

If I hit the lottery, get a 108 foot yacht, and get a staff, then I would use the facilities that comes with that level of yachting I guess.

What size sailboat, do I think a simple wag bag principle is no longer the way to go? I read of rich people returning mansions in wilderness areas to compost toilets. Does not seem to be the size of the house, or the size of the boat, but the goals of the steward.

To my knowledge, no garbage bag sold today in Wal-Mart will last forever in a trash dump. They all decompose. They rip open at the processing centers and the contents sorted, and sent on accordingly. Dirt like items, garbage, food scraps, and the like are put in land fills, to be tomorrow's shopping centers.

Is it better to have our excrement placed in sewage tanks to be proceeded? I do not know that to be the case.

Some here seem ticked at me because I have choosen a simple direct method to deal with something we all have to deal with. I am not ticked at any of you with your electric pushbutton heads. Seems the world has room for alternative solutions to problems.

[GaryMayo]

There is a Dirty Jobs episode where Mike goes to Alaska to clean a toilet, where the contents are incinerated. Yep, burning toilet. My insurance agent would love that installed on my boat! Lol

Not Mike Rowe, but a simular product on the video below.

Any of you have one of these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcwC...e_gdata_player

[Lagoon4us]

Originally Posted by GaryMayo

We have something in common. I could not imagine going up to the marina and asking someone to come over to my sailboat and pump the human waste out. I guess we all have our limitations. Seems some jobs are best not deligatted.

One day, I saw an employee get called out to pump a tank. Looked to be a miserable job in 110 degree weather, with no shade. He no sooner got done, and was rolling the heavy pump cart back uphill to the marina, when someone saw him, and had him come back to empty his. That seemed to repeat several times that day. Felt very sorry for the guy.

Later at the marina, I asked the guy, if he liked us because I usually buy him a soda when I get me one, or because I never had him pump out crap? He looked at me, and said, no you never have, and smiled. And thanked me.

I own a marine head, and holding tank, not sure the brand. Came with my 32 aft cockpit I am using for parts. Did not bother to winterize it this fall. Not going near the old smelly contraption. Lol. When I break the boat down for salvage, I will dumpster the plumbing. Zero interest in storing human waste, with the smells, maintenance, cleaning, pumping outs, yadda yadda yadda.

If I hit the lottery, get a 108 foot yacht, and get a staff, then I would use the facilities that comes with that level of yachting I guess.

What size sailboat, do I think a simple wag bag principle is no longer the way to go? I read of rich people returning mansions in wilderness areas to compost toilets. Does not seem to be the size of the house, or the size of the boat, but the goals of the steward.

To my knowledge, no garbage bag sold today in Wal-Mart will last forever in a trash dump. They all decompose. They rip open at the processing centers and the contents sorted, and sent on accordingly. Dirt like items, garbage, food scraps, and the like are put in land fills, to be tomorrow's shopping centers.

Is it better to have our excrement placed in sewage tanks to be proceeded? I do not know that to be the case.

Some here seem ticked at me because I have choosen a simple direct method to deal with something we all have to deal with. I am not ticked at any of you with your electric pushbutton heads. Seems the world has room for alternative solutions to problems.

Ah but see we are cruisers, we sail, we move, we don't stay in Marinas.

We have three holding tanks we dump the macerated waste a mile from shore.

There are no smells or difficulties in this at all. If we were in a marina and couldn't put to sea then we would use the marina's toilets. I'm yet to find pump-outs in the marina's of the Adriatic.

Never do i have issue with good ideas......

[RabidRabbit]

If you dont cruise or liveaboard it might work, but its still sorta gross. Is it the $1000 for a quality head install that your trying to avoid? I think it works, because you want and need it to. Not beause its a great idea.
Its just like the porta boat thread. If you can't/won't buy a $5000 inflatable with a $3000 motor, the porta boat becomes the best boat ever. Then the porta crowd goes on to badmouth all the reasons inflatables are no good.
I would ditch the home toilet and get a 10' porta boat, you could crap in it and fold it up when done.

[GaryMayo]

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ead-22001.html

Slightly different focus, topic, but the posts share the same charged feeling. People do get wound up over going to the rest room.

That thread got closed because people forgot to be friendly to one another.

In that thread, about half a dozen posts about wag bags. Every single post about wag bags were 100% ignored, while people went on argueing about holding tanks, and discharging into the water.

Personally, and off topic, I am against ever dumping waste into water. 50 miles out, still seems like a foul idea. Seems better to me to place waste on land designated for such use. Over time, it breaks down, and never pollutes the water, in an ideal world. My mind cannot grasp the vastness of open oceans. If I were 50 miles out, I would wag bag, then return to shore, to land fill the bags. Oceans seem more sacred than city dumps.

[Lagoon4us]

And fish don't crap in the sea?

[GaryMayo]

Originally Posted by Lagoon4us

And fish don't crap in the sea?

I realize everything returns to the sea. I also realize ships at sea discharge. Planes in the air discharge. Space shuttles discharge.

I don't think a holding tank in a boat is a bad thing, I just think there are other ways just as viable. One is compost. Another is wag bags. Another could be incernation. I tend to think simple, when it comes to waste management, on a small boat, is prefered to more complex solutions. What is simpler than directly bagging waste and disregarding it in health dept approved trash cans?

While I do think compost is better than plastic, as a green solution for the environment, I can not get.my head around the chore of messing with dirt on my sailboat. Seems like a more complex chore than I want to get involved in. I would hate to invest a grand in something I later wish I did not have.

[Lagoon4us]

Where do cruisers find health approved trash cans? Most of Europe seaside dumps direct to ocean....

[River Cruiser]

I use wag bags during the winter when I go to the boat for a weekend. When everything is winterized it's the best alternative I've found if making it to the marina shower house isn't possible.

[micah719]

....Planes in the air discharge.....

Yes, some do. Others leak. And sometimes big lumps of blue ice fall from the sky...

The wagbag idea might cause problems with customs inspection, particularly in jurisdictions where they ride roughshod over the victim, er, I mean traveler...

Customs Officer: "Hey, what's in all these black bags? You smuggling something? Here, Private Gump, go through this lot..."

Seaman Wag E. Bag: "Wait, stop! You don't want to..."

CO: "Shut it! Gump, get cracking!!"

[Greenhand]

I would point out that little to nothing breaks down in a landfill - as they pack it in year after year, the air is squeezed out. In those landfills where this is not the case, there have been issues with the gasses released. Landfills are not composting piles, which require attention to make the process work efficiently.

As to why human waste is more toxic than that of other animals, it is because human waste is more likely to carry diseases which are communicable to humans. If cats were running the world, they would put our waste in landfills and find a better solution for their own.

Hopefully, as more composting heads are installed around the globe, we will create the facilities for dealing with them. Marinas and municipalities could have composting bins that they sell to farmers and gardeners after two years. They are the best solution I have seen for areas where plumbing and sewage treatment are scarce.

[onestepcsy37]

bobconnie, nothing beats a bucket. Your wood toilet seat is a bit of one upmanship on my plastic toilet seat. I once heard it referred to as 'Nat Herreshofs favorite'. All my smaller boats were equipped with bucket only. Wasn't until i moved up to a 37 footer that i finally got a 'real' marine head.

Why garymayo would go to the trouble of basically making a bucket out of a household toilet puzzles me, but then those people up in the frozen north have long winters and need to occupy their time somehow...

[Gazelle Family]

No water
No plumbing
No mess
No pumpout
No smell
No bugs
No toilet seat to clean
No clogged toilet
No hassles
No holding tank to leak
No worries
Hundreds of plastic bags in our landfills..... Priceless??
bags inside of bags?? even worse..
got to be a better way.

[daddle]

Geez that is a complicated system you have described there. My Groco marine head works just fine ... 30 years now ... and if conditions warrant I skip the plumbing, hold the shroud, and drop it directly over the side.