Bog blog ….

Having received the spare parts for our Dometic Vacuflush toilet, today dawned as BBD – (Big Bog Day).  Armed with the new cassette caps and 4 new ‘O’ rings, as well as several pairs of Marigolds, we set off for Gayton Marina to try our hands at becoming toilet engineers!  The idea was to start with the easiest thing to fix,  and work through to the most difficult until we had found the problem and (we hoped) fixed it.

Step 1.   Put the kettle on

Step 2.   Put a new cassette cap on one of the cassettes, plug it into the docking station, turn the loo on and wait……. nope – that didn’t cure the air leak, the pump just kept on a-pumpin’

Step 3.  Make the coffee.

Step 4.  Locate the smallest ‘o’ ring – on the air outlet and change that, not too hard ( Rog swore a little bit while trying to get the old one off, but not at all while putting the new one on), turn on the loo and wait……. the pump kept on a-pumpin’ – then stopped!!!! 

No, we thought, it can’t be that easy.  But it was – we waited for the pump to start up again of it’s own accord, indicating that there was still air leaking in to fill the vacuum…. and waited….and waited.  We then flushed it a few times and waited again, but it was still ok!  We drunk our coffee, all the time expecting to hear the pump come on again, but still nothing.  We debated changing the other two ‘O’ rings, but, my motto is ‘if it aint broke, don’t fix it’ and they weren’t so we didn’t!  We have the new ones as spares for when they eventually go, which they most certainly will.

We feel a bit silly now for putting up with it misbehaving for so long, and then contemplating spending all that money ripping it out and having a different loo fitted, when it was so easy to fix.

So the shower of s**t of Northamptonshire has been avoided for the foreseeable!  Thanks to all those readers who offered advice and possible solutions, especially Mike at LeeSan.