Frances volunteered to help on Saturday and that's just what we needed. With her pushing and twisting the hose from the bilge and me pulling on the pilot line inside the vanity, the hose finally slid in far enough. Frances also suggested that I wrap my pilot wire around a ratchet extension to form a handle. That helped a lot.
These photos show that first hose in the bilge and finally, behind the vanity where we wanted it.
While she was there, we decided to tackle the other hose, this one the waste line from the new toilet to the top inlet on the holding tank. That necessitated pulling out an old hose, which, surprisingly, came out without much trouble. We used the same technique as before: We started by fishing in the pilot line and then, working together with Frances pushing and twisting and me pulling on the pilot line, the hose finally appeared from under the head floor in the vanity. This picture shows both hoses, finally back where we wanted them.
We began with 12 feet of sanitation hose which, based on some rough measurements, looked like enough. We cut the 12-foot piece in half with a hacksaw but once both hose sections were in place, neither end could be trimmed with the hacksaw because of a lack of clearance. Frances suggested using a cut-off wheel on our Dremel. I immediately rejected that idea. More on that later.
Today, with Frances off boat duty, we tried connecting the line to the bottom of the holding tank. For now, that line only goes as far as the back of the vanity where it will eventually connect to yet another section of hose that will run the the pump-out fitting on the deck.
A word about this hose. First, from the research we did, this hose is supposed to be the best and it ought to be at $9.00 per foot. This is heavy-duty hose with a wall thickness of almost 1/8-inch. It's "flexible" to a degree but is very difficult to work with, especially since it is shipped rolled up and once cut, holds that curve very tenaciously. It is supposed to absolutely contain waste odor, forever. We hope to God it does because this is a project that we don't ever want to repeat.
Today, we trimmed the end of the hose, which enters the bilge area just above the holding tank. Using a heat gun on "high," we managed to soften the hose enough to get it aimed directly at the 1-1/2-inch elbow at the bottom of the holding tank. We heated the end of hose and tried to slip it onto the barbed elbow. No luck the first time we tried this or the second time but eventually, after applying a lot more heat, the end softened enough so that it could be forced over the barbs on the elbow. Not easy. It took an hour to finally get it in place.
Once that was done, we decided to try to connect the other hose (waste from the toilet to the holding tank that you can see at the top of the photo above) but found that the bilge space was too confined to be able to cut it with a hacksaw. Did we reconsider Frances' idea about using a Dremel cut-off wheel? Yes we did, although we didn't have a Dremel with us. We'll have one next weekend, though and we expect that it will make the precision cuts in the hose we need. Thanks again, Frances.
Not having the Dremel with us made us stop and look at all the other things that have to plumbed and wired behind the vanity. Working behind the vanity is a problem, since we can just squeeze through the vanity door opening and once in there are very limited as to what we can do. We removed the old toilet vent line from the thru-hull fitting and measured for a new one.
The vent fitting looks little green but seems to be sound.
That nasty looking old T-fitting is connected to the hose to the old pump-out fitting on the deck. That's going to have to go too. Not looking forward to pulling that old hose out and putting a new one in.
We also sized up where the syphon-breaker assembly for the new toilet will be mounted and measured for the lengths and sizes of water hose that will be needed. We also measured for the installation of the flush-control buttons for the new toilet. That was time well spent because once the sanitation hoses are finally connected back there. we'll have a lot less room to run the fresh water line to the toilet and the vent line to the holding tank and the wiring to the flush-control buttons.
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