CS34 Head

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT

As you might know, my head on the CS34 is not working.

Last night I worked on taking the head out and rebuilding the guts of it.  It really wasn't that bad of a job. There was some chocolate juice on the internal parts, but I quickly vacuumed it up with a bucket head shop vac.  For those who don't know what a bucket head is, it is a cheap shop wet vac that mounts on the top of a 5 gallon pail.  $20 from Home Depot. They work great for jobs like this.

The first thing I found is that the joker valve was inverted:

New (left)
Old (right)

The joker valve is crucial for the correct operation of a marine toilet.  As you pump the water/waste from the toilet, it goes into the sanitary line to the holding tank.  This valve only lets the stuff go one way; it prevents the foul contents from going back into the bowl.  Well, our manual head has been really hard to pump, and brown colour did get back in to the bowl and smell.  What had happened is we must have over filled the holding tank too much and the joker valve inverted.  This is why we could not pump too well.  Come to think of it, the head was always very hard to pump; the joker valve was probably inverted since I got the boat.

However, the sanitary line between the head and the holding tank was completely blocked.  Even with the toilet disconnected, the pumpout hose would not draw water from the toilet like it normally would.

I had left my plumbers snake at home.  I tried a coat hanger, but nothing.  The pipe from the toilet to the holding tank is about 7ft long.  It would have to wait until tomorrow.

Friday afternoon I went to the boat with the snake.  The pipe was clear until about 6ft where it was block solid with toilet paper.  It took me about 50 inserts/turns/removes/clean cycles before I broke through the TP block.  It was disgusting!  Then the worst happened:

Chocolate Thunder

Uuuuuugggggghhhhhh

I vacuumed it up with the buckethead, and continued to snake another dozen times until the pipe was clear.

Over to the pump out dock, and I hooked up a hose to the toilet intake and let is wash through for a good 15 mintues.

It took me another four hours to clean and disinfect the washroom and all the floors.  I even had to lift the teak and holly floor to clean underneath it!

The refurbished head works great and is sparkling clean!