Choice of Sea Toilet?

Current boat has a Lavac and it works fine. I has very few moving parts and there is very little that can go wrong. I like that.
I had Jabscos on my previous boat. 2 of them in a live aboard situation. They tend to last about three years in that situation, collectively. I have found the service kits, relative to the initial purchase price, unreasonably expensive. Working on them is unappetizing to say the least.
 
The Force4 electric toilet is a badged Ocean Technologies/MatroMarine unit for less than £200. I bought a complete unit for just a few quid more than a replacement motor for the pump on my old toilet.
 
Star-Lord said:
imho Jabsco manual or electric. If You have two heads then one electric and one manual (guests use electric) - everyone uses electric till it breaks!
ASAP supplies will sell and ship a Jabsco for almost the price of Dim Sum at Hakasan! I use Jabsco and dream of electric sheep.
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The only things jabco has in its favour is cost and ubiquity.
They are ugly, difficult to keep clean with lots of nooks and crannies and the electric ones wake everyone on board.
Lavacs with their seals and pipe work are even worse in my opinion. Dreadful contraptions.
Both are generally favoured by the people who own them which is a good sign however.

No one who has had a tecma would ever go back to either though.
Easy clean one piece china like a domestic loo. All pipes hidden within the china so no nooks and crannies to get skanky.
Super quiet - no louder than the domestic water pump.
Pricey at about £1000 but you pay way more for some things on a boat that you use far less often. Worth every penny.
 
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I’ve got 2 Jabscos on the boat which are reliable, simple to maintain and cheap. Parts are available everywhere I’ve been whilst other makes must be so reliable that they don’t need spares, because I’ve never seen them.
I’d not fit electric heads as they outside my price bracket, the ones I’ve used are noisy and they use that scare resource, battery power.
I’ve overcome the “guest can’t use them“ problem with a simple set of laminated instructions on the inside of the head door, gives folks something to read whilst enthroned.
 
Thank you all for the replies. Finances do not allow a Lavac so it is a choice of Jabasco (£20 pounds more) or the Lazisas.

I am not in a position to head out into the wide blue yonder, so the availability of parts is the main consideration.
 
Rappey said:
Blakes/lavac/taylors now make an electric conversion for the baby blake... No doubt it will be thousands though :mad:
would love to see how its plumbed in...
Im not recomending the baby blake due to it being a little on the expensive side...
I would choose the lavac due to its reliabilty and simplicity of use..
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My Blake is absolutely faultless ....... but then of course they 'aint' cheap !!
 
Katy Louise came with a Baby Blake, a charming piece of Victorian engineering that should be in a museum. I love it and hate it in equal measure. The service kit cost me £145 discounted from the current price of £198, enough to buy a complete twist and lock or a vacume pump toilet. It has more nooks and crannies to clean out than any other. With some 32 gaskets and washer to replace it looks to be a right pain to service and special tools for it it as well. Ideal for old salts of a certain vintage.
If I could fit the Tecma nano I would.
 
Laminar Flow said:
They tend to last about three years in that situation, collectively. I have found the service kits, relative to the initial purchase price, unreasonably expensive.
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Do feel free to argue otherwise, but I suggest that buying full service kits is a mistake: As you say, depending on the one you get they're half the price of a new pump assembly and those that don't care about landfill might be tempted to save themselves the trouble of dismantling and buy a new one. We were liveaboards for the best part of 4 years, but marina based so no solids were flushed. Pump re-greased with petroleum jelly 2-3 times per year. Joker valves could often be cleaned up and put back but where it was time to replace they're about £7: I think I've gone through 3 per toilet in 10 years (though note previous proviso of no solids except at sea and we train guests well). The other bits and bobs you get with a service kit can normally just be cleaned up and put back. I carry a spare pump assembly so if I need something which I don't have in a part-used service kit I can switch out the pump assembly and fix the old one when I can get to a chandler for the cheapest service kit which contains the part I need.
 
FWIW, I put an RM in Jissel some years ago, mainly because it had a connection for the basin to drain into it. When it needed refurbishing, it was cheaper to replumb the basin and fit a Jabsco than to buy the repair kit for the RM. I'm perfectly happy with the jabsco.
 
A manual Henderson Mk5 bilge pump on board it is an additional reason for fitting a Lavac, as you can then carry one set of spares for both items. Essentially, the pump is the only thing with moving parts.
Mind you I've had a Lavac for 25 years and never needed any spares at all.
It is also possible to rig the Lavac as an emergency bilge pump, I understand. There used to be a kit available to do this, which was essentially a sealed pipe that you rammed down the bog hole.

One proviso; I don't think the newer spare diaphragms are up to the standard of the old.
.
 
I have used Lavacs in the past and found them a little frustrating, having to wait for the vacuum to dissipate before the lid could be opened to check that the bowl was clean. Despite that I was going to fit one in the Sadler 34 but the pump is so large that there was nowhere to fit it without taking out much needed locker space.
 
doug748 said:
A manual Henderson Mk5 bilge pump on board it is an additional reason for fitting a Lavac, as you can then carry one set of spares for both items. Essentially, the pump is the only thing with moving parts.
Mind you I've had a Lavac for 25 years and never needed any spares at all.
It is also possible to rig the Lavac as an emergency bilge pump, I understand. There used to be a kit available to do this, which was essentially a sealed pipe that you rammed down the bog hole.

One proviso; I don't think the newer spare diaphragms are up to the standard of the old.
.
Click to expand...

The blake was also able to be used in the bilge pump role ....
 
vyv_cox said:
I have used Lavacs in the past and found them a little frustrating, having to wait for the vacuum to dissipate before the lid could be opened to check that the bowl was clean.
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Indeed - and not uncommon to find the lid cracked near the handle where someone tried too hard to open it too soon.

While acknowledging that Lavacs are good for being simple and hard to block, I don’t really like them. The seat and lid assembly with its perfectly circular shape and damp, clammy, often discoloured rubber feel unpleasantly industrial, and for me Lavacs have strong connotations of being grubby and smelly. Intellectually I know that’s probably because all the ones I’ve encountered were on old boats with grubby and smelly heads compartments, and not the fault of the toilet design itself, but nevertheless that’s the association they have for me.

I’ve only ever seen the “Compact” Jabsco, but I read somewhere that the larger version will actually accept a standard domestic seat. Assuming this is true, I’ve long thought that the “ultimate” installation would be the bowl from that, domestic seat of choice, and a custom adapter from the bottom of the bowl straight to 1.5” hose and a quality diaphragm pump as used with a Lavac. Flush water supplied by a second smaller diaphragm pump mounted adjacent, so you can add as much or little as you need instead of tying the “in” and the “out” action together with a single handle.

Pete
 
I ran a charter yacht with a manual Lavac for 9 years. No problems.
My current boat came with an ancient Baby Blake, that needed rebuilding. Spares and parts were available but at a horrendous cost so I took it out and put a Lavac in. Also, bought spare seat and lid seals and spares kit for the pump. That was almost ten years ago; years that have included living aboard by two people for between six and eleven months each year. Have not used any of the spares yet and have yet to notice any associated unpleasant smells (mentioned in a previous post).
This is in complete contrast to my experiences of Jabsco and similar toilets that frequently seem to develop dribbles from the pump, are somewhat complicated to use, and have somewhat fragile plastic parts in the pump - all adding up to the need for frequent loving care.
The only advantage I see to the Jabsco type of toilets are being cheap to buy, which is why boat builders choose to fit them. But then most boat builders do not have to live with them.
 
The only maintenance I do with my Blake is to refill the grease cup on the fill water pump. And a pint of Anti-freeze through it before winter.

Because cooking oil once cooled gets put through it occasionally - the emptying pump gets its lub !
 
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