Who designed this boat?

We'd love to meet the person who designed our Silverton and perhaps invite him or her to visit and explain just why certain things were done the way they were.

Let's begin with the plumbing.  If you've read previous posts, you'll remember that we are replacing the old Mansfield Traveler toilet with a new one. We solved the problem of mounting the new toilet that is just 13-inches high by mounting it on the base the from old toilet to boost it up to regular "sitting" height. Lucky we saved the base of the old toilet..

This weekend we began removing some of the old plumbing and found some very sub-standard waste hose even given that is is more than 30 years old. The plumbing connections were all made inside the vanity and I'd say that "sloppy" would be a compliment. Pulling out all these poorly designed connections and replacing them will take many weekends.  Here is a picture of where we'll be working well into the first of the year - under the vanity.

The elbow you can see in this picture had a hose on it that was connected to the discharge fitting on the old head. I had just removed it. The other hoses are for fresh water to the old toilet and a hose to an unused seacock that must have supplied sea water to the head sometime in the past. Why would anyone leave 2-3 feet of extra hose stuffed back there?  Maybe it wasn't Silverton.  Perhaps it was the previous owner.  Either way, it's sloppy and considering that one of those hoses went to an unused seacock, fairly stupid.

Then there is the shower sump. The old one was mounted so far up under the floor that it was impossible to reach. This wasn't the doing of the previous owner. This was Silverton. They probably installed it before putting in the floors.  How were you to open this thing to clean it?  How were you supposed to get to it to replace it, as we are doing?  Impossible!  So, we pulled up the carpeting and cut hole in the floor right over the shower sump.

Since we're on everyone's case today, let's mention the Rule Shower Sump. It's a plastic box with a removable top that contains a strainer, a small bilge pump and an enclosed float switch and it's not cheap.  To begin with, the mounting flange on the bottom of the sump is so narrow, that it is impossible to use a power screwdriver to drive screws straight down to mount it to the fiberglass hull. The Rule sump has a variety of inlet sizes; and you need only open the one.  We opened the 1-1/2-inch port but when we went to connect it to the 1-1/2-inch outlet hose that runs to the through-hull, we found that the Rule was just a hair over the 1-1/2-inch inside diameter of the discharge hose. Cute. It won't fit and hanging upside down trying to make that connection isn't fun. Imagine paying some marina mechanic $65 an hour to install this thing?

On Sunday, we brought down our trusty heat gun and gave that old hose a shot of high heat for about 60 seconds. It relaxed enough so that after a couple of tries, we could slip it onto the 1-1/2-inch fitting on the shower sump.

Here's a picture of the shower sump properly connected and, although you can't see it here, leveled and screwed down. We poured pink antifreeze down the shower drain to test it and it worked.  We also bolted some wood supports in place to hold the access hatch in place. We'll have to add one more on the right side but we ran out of time today.

Looks OK, and will be invisible once the carpet is rolled back in place.

As it turned out, we spend two valuable days replacing a shower sump that Silverton should have located where it was more accessible. Luckily, we have more energy than Silverton had intelligence when they designed this part of the plumbing.

The wiring for the bilge pump is another story.  This rat's nest has dozens of old connections.  All of this will be replaced. We'll also replace that old bilge pump.  Let's call that work for one weekend.

While we were at it, we dropped the new holding tank in place and measured for a piece of plywood that will support it and keep it from sliding side-to-side and fore-and-aft.

We originally thought that we'd install a large holding tank under the cockpit, outboard of the starboard engine but the plumbing issues (running sanitary hose from the head to the cockpit) and the fact that we'd have to remove the outboard exhaust manifold on the starboard engine to get the holding tank in there made us re-think that. Instead, we have chosen to install a smaller (14-gallon) holding tank under the hallway outside of the head. We bought a holding tank from Tank-depot.com on Long Island.  The tank was made by Ronco Plastics in California and from what we saw, they are a major supplier of water and holding tanks. I'm glad we settled for this size tank because it just fits through the opening in the floor.

We also had to make some decisions regarding how we dispose of waste. We cruise in waters that are all protected from on-board discharge of waste so we're designing this system to be absolutely legal; there will be no way for us to pump waste overboard.  That simplifies the plumbing somewhat but we'll still have to spend many weekends drilling big holes under the floor outside of the head and snaking hoses.

This isn't going to be fun but we'll get it done