Exploding Toilet

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duncanmack

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Not very boaty, but something to bear in mind....

I met an acquaintance today whom I haven't seen for some weeks. He works in the building trade - more particularly in re-furbs. Arm heavily bandaged and in a sling

He had been removing a porcelain WC from the loo in a not-so-old house prior to fitting a new one - when it exploded.

Shrapnel in the form of razor sharp porcelain shards severed several arteries tendons and ligaments in his arm, not to mention the damage done to muscles etc. It damn near took his arm off.

This was 5 weeks ago, and since then he has had various courses of antibiotics to prevent/clear up any infection/s.

Prognosis? Unlikely to get better than 50% use of his arm back. Scheduled for surgical procedures over the next 6-8 months. Going to be on some form of disability and unable to continue in the job he had.

Imagine that happening in the confines of the "heads". Doesn't bear thinking about. Scary or what?

Be careful if trying to renew bog in boat.

Plastic buckets have a certain appeal.........
 
You seem to have omitted the reason as to why i clicked on this post - what the hell made it explode???? /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

That must have been some curry! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I'll get me coat.
 
Was he smoking, or did he use a blowlamp? Not unknown for there to be methane in the downpipe, which is released when the pan is removed.
 
As if we didn't have enough to worry about, now I have to check the bog before I take a dump!
I'll have to add that to my check list when I do a risk assessment.
 
No sparks, naked flames, he doesn't smoke, not thought to be a chemical reaction.

I asked if he'd been daft enough to hit it with a sledgehammer. I've seen a porcelain sink "explode" or more accurately "fragment explosively" when hit with a big hammer.
Nope. No hammers involved.

He merely wrestled it out of the soil pipe having unbolted it from the floor. It went off in his hands.

I can only think that it hadn't been properly - I think the term is "normalised", ie re-heated after firing to remove the stresses set up during manufacture - and that a slight crack in the glaze while wrestling it out was enough to make it fragment.

He is a big lad, and the rest of him looks a bit worse for wear.

That's why I posted this. If you had one like this - a bomb waiting to go off - in your heads and you were trying to remove it or dropped something on it and it did shatter, you'd be lucky to escape without bad injury.

Tho a Mayday call for this might sound funny, the injuries could prove fatal.
 
Tho normal toilets just sit there occasionally getting sat on on a nice flat unmoving floor. Heads on boats are thrown around and banged and bumped as normal passagemaking, so any stresses like that likely to show up much earlier?
 
It doesn;t bear thinking about... but now i am cos you mentioned it, and I'm now typing whilst standing up. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I do not know about porcelain but I was hit as a child by Pyrex exploding. A stack of plates were put in the oven to warm. When they were removed one exploded setting the others off in the process.

As you said the surface stress in some materials can cause it. See the teardrop exploding videos on the web for proof of glass explosions. There is not much difference when it comes to the creation of porcelain they both are essentially glasses.
 
Same thing happened to the rear window of my car. Sounded like a rifle, fortunately we were stationary at the time.
 
Probably, but not that much. There was no hole in the windscreen....
 
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