Thursday 14 July 2011

A bog blog…

We have had 2 things go wrong today – first the grill decided not to work. It was lighting ok, but as soon as you released the knob, the flame went out. It has happened intermittently in the past, but we’ve always got it to work by holding in the knob a bit longer. After much mucking about we decided to phone Spinflo, who seemed to know immediately what was wrong, (the flame failure device, as we suspected) said they would send the parts to their local chap, who would phone us when he had them, and arrange a place for us to meet. Best of all, it’s still under warranty, so won’t cost us a penny!

Next, and potentially a disaster, the loo malfunctioned! We have a Dometic Vacuflush cassette loo, which does have a mind of it’s own, and goes wrong with alarming regularity.  This time it refused to vacuum up – so was unflushable! Out came the Instruction Manual, and luckily, there is a Troubleshooting section – there was either an electrical problem or it was blocked – we decided that blockage was the probable cause. Couldn’t see anything with the trap open, so I donned my Marigolds, (Rog doesn’t do toilets!) and got down and dirty with the 1 inch diameter orifice at the bottom of the base. I poked around into the pipe with an old water hose – the only thing we had that was flexible enough to go round into the pipe. Didn’t think I’d done any good, but, lo and behold, when Rog turned the switch back on in the electrics cupboard, it started to vacuum up.  We flushed it through a few times and it seems to be ok now – disaster averted (this time!)  We are considering changing the loo for an ordinary Thetford cassette, but that will mean re-configuring the shower room (serious dosh!) as there is no room to pull out a cassette either from the side or the back.  The only one that would be ok is a Porta-Potti, and we don’t want to go back to one of those.  So, if anyone knows of a loo where the cassette will pull out of the front, please let us know.

3 comments:

  1. Hi,
    We use a composting loo on our narrow boat. No chemicals, liquid container can be poured down any toilet or sanitary station. Solids dry out and compost. Our loo is manufactured by Airhead and only uses a very small electric fan (60millamps)to constantly draw air through the solids container, in 2 years we have had no smells or problems. With 2 of us on board the liquid container lasts 2 days and the solids about 2 weeks.
    The loo screws to the bathroom floor and the only connection is to the air pipe to the fan. We purchased 2 liquid containers and 2 solids containers so there is never any urgent need to decant!
    I hope that this info helps,
    Ken and Sue nb Cleddau

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  2. Thanks for the info - we've never fancied a composting loo, but may well look into it now. Where do the liquid and solid containers come out from? Do they lift straight out or do they have to be pulled out from the side or back?
    Pip

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  3. It could be the 'docking' station for the cassette causing the problem Pip, that would be much cheaper to sort than a complete re-figure of the bathroom!!

    ReplyDelete

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