The toilet has arrived

We must be getting old to get excited about the arrival of our new head.  We shopped all over and finally found the best price at an Internet site.  The Raritan Silent Flush arrived two days later.  Perfect shape, quite a thing to pick up and examine. Really good workmanship. Frances approved of it wholeheartedly so we took out the directions and started our installation drawings.

First, we'll have to install a new holding tank under the floor outside of the head. As part of that, we'll be cutting a access hatch in that same floor (thanks, Rob for suggesting it) so we can reach the shower sump.  Once the holding tank goes in, the shower sump would be behind it where we won't be able to reach it in case it needs repair or cleaning.

It look like a 14-15 gallon holding tank will fit in that space.  The plumbing - all with 1-1/2" sanitary hose - should be a nasty job to say the least.  The hose, at $6.00 a foot, isn't very flexible and it requires the use of a heat gun to get it soft enough to accept fittings.

Then there's the task of routing the outlet hose of the holding tank to the pump-out deck fitting. There's a piece of old, black hose going to it now and we're hoping we can use that to pull the new sanitary hose up to the deck fitting. The deck fitting itself is El-cheapo original equipment so that will have to be changed as well.

The toilet itself is only 14-inch high (they all are, apparently) so we'll be mounting that on the holding tank base from the old toilet to bring it up to a comfortable height. The toilet also comes with a syphon-breaker assembly, which is basically a solenoid that keeps water from the toilet from syphoning back into the fresh water supply. That's a hefty enough electrical draw so that we'll have to provide new wiring for it.  Just one more little detail, but we'll get it done.

Then there's the refrigerator replacement. The old Norcold works but the door seals leak pretty badly and parts are hard to get so that is going to go.  To replace it, Frances found a compact-sized two-door refrigerator-freezer that is meant for household use. All of the compact marine and domestic refrigerators of this type are approximately the same size, so it will fit.

Another interesting note: all marine refrigerators like the Norcold, are 110-volt appliances. They are "marinized" by adding a small inverter built into the back of the unit that changes 12-volts DC from the boat's batteries to 110-volt AC to run the compressor.

It's amazing how much you learn when you begin to research these things.

So, with that in mind, we've developed a plan to "marinize" our new refrigerator. We have a large empty space under the salon floor right behind where the refrigerator is installed. In that space, we'll install a 2,000-watt inverter supported by two 12-volt, Group 27 batteries wired in parallel. We'll charge those batteries with a new marine battery charger that we just happen to have.

Our calculations show that those batteries should keep the 'fridge going for more than 24 hours without being charged. A  24-hour cruise, for us, is not on the horizon, so for a typical cruise of say, 6 hours, we will be fine. Once we dock and plug in again, the batteries will be recharged in a few hours.

If we anchor out, then we'll just have to be a little more careful about opening and closing the fridge door. It appears that a weekend at anchor (our limit, I think) is still well within the capacity of this system.

It's certainly possible to charge the batteries using one of the engines while under way.  That requires an isolator and while a its cool thing to do, it just might be more than we can handle this winter.  We learned last winter that the to-do list has to be reasonable. Next summer will be a good test of the design.