Alan Sugarman wrote:
>
> By the way, Cindy, what have you done for your Baba 30 re holding tank??
>
> Alan

Hi Alan,

We completly agree with you - the stock Baba 30 holding tank is
HORRIBLE!! It's too small. It's poorly located. Inflow and Outflow are
both on the side. The top of the outflow (where the suction breaks) is
almost 4" from the bottom of the tank. The vent hose is too small, too
long, and contains several twists and turns. Of course we also had
issues with the head itself, a worn out pump-out pump, and sclerosis of
most of the rest of the plumbing.

So what did we do? Well, I got in touch will Peggie Hall of course. ;-)

Her recomendation was to junk the current situation and install a new
one under the v-berth with proper in/out pluming (all connections on the
top) using PVC with hose at the fittings and bends (to accomodate flex)
and a 1.5 inch vent hose as short and straight as possible. (I don't
know where you got the idea that she doesn't recommend that.) The hose
she recommended used to be sold by Sealand, but is now only sold by the
manufacturer in Australia.

So I told her we couldn't do any of that stuff right now.

Instead of just blowing me off, she helped me work out a few changes
that helped A LOT. The first was to replace all of the old hose with
new. (That project was beyond horrible!! We finally had to hire a marine
plumber!) We replaced the worn out HeadMate with a Raritan Compact II
(endorsed by Rick Emmerson!). We changed the vented loop situation and
rebuilt the Guzzler pump. Peggie had us quit using the tank treatments
we'd been using and start using Odor-Los every week or two. The best
thing we did was to attach a 2.5" PVC elbow fitting on the inside of the
tank (over the pump-out hole) to make a proper pickup tube. This not
only made odor managment much easier, it gained us 3-4 more gallons in
the tank! She also told us how to do a fresh water flush to clean the
salt water from the system and get rid of the things that grow inside
the rim of the bowl.

Mandisa's system is by no means perfect and I don't want to give anyone
the idea that we think it is. However, we've had NO odor problems at all
since we made these changes. At some point we'd like to install a new
holding tank and do everyting "right", but that's not going to happen
for a while. (Too many other projects to deal with first.) I'd also like
to replace the Compact II with a PHII because it seems to be better made.

Just as an asside, Peggie didn't charge us a penny for her help which
involved a whole lot of emails over a period of several weeks. She does
that for a lot of people. I think she's a real class act.

Cindy

--
Cindy Ballreich
S/V Mandisa
Baba 30 #218


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Received on Tue Sep 13 10:14:04 2005