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Holding Tank Alternatives

I have recently taken ownership of a 1982 382 and noticed the holding tank has been completely bypassed. The thru-hull is still there but the hose isn't connected and the head is set up to discharge directly overboard. I'm pretty sure this is not legal, and I'd prefer to have the option of discharging into a holding tank. I assume the previous owner had a problem with the original setup. If the tank in the keel is an issue, where would be a good alternate location to instal a new holding tank?
 
The Port side under the seat ! I had a battle with the leaking keel holding tank also and so did John Harrision of Snead island boat works ! You should contact him and see his set up .
My maserator is behind the head seat when up in that little locker . I have a seperate Y valve for tank or over the side. When i choose the over the side I used a T in the line after the top air loop . Really works i thought maybe i would get back flow but im close enough to the top of the sea cock thats ots not a issue. All my flex pipes are less than 24 inches. ! Less is faster and in my view better.
Both John and i used a custom tank maker down in largo. You should look around Dons Marine salvage yard in Largo for a tank . Honest its a great very large yard.
At some pint you must deal with the Old holding tank cause there will be odor !
Welcome Marc, wait till you go to Long Boat Key Club Marina , first class stuff ! By the John Ringling bridge !
 
Welcome Marc, An easy solution is to install a Sealand marine toilet system 711-m28, it's a self contained household sized gravity toilet that is mounted on top of the 9 gal. holding tank, uses fresh water rinse, plumbs to deck fitting for pumpout and to a pump and seacock for ob discharge, vented to outside, costs around $500. 9 gallons is enough for 2 people for at least 4 days. I've had one for 20 years with no problems.
 
Welcome Marc, An easy solution is to install a Sealand marine toilet system 711-m28, it's a self contained household sized gravity toilet that is mounted on top of the 9 gal. holding tank, uses fresh water rinse, plumbs to deck fitting for pumpout and to a pump and seacock for ob discharge, vented to outside, costs around $500. 9 gallons is enough for 2 people for at least 4 days. I've had one for 20 years with no problems.
Thanks Bill. I will look into that option.
 
The Port side under the seat ! I had a battle with the leaking keel holding tank also and so did John Harrision of Snead island boat works ! You should contact him and see his set up .
My maserator is behind the head seat when up in that little locker . I have a seperate Y valve for tank or over the side. When i choose the over the side I used a T in the line after the top air loop . Really works i thought maybe i would get back flow but im close enough to the top of the sea cock thats ots not a issue. All my flex pipes are less than 24 inches. ! Less is faster and in my view better.
Both John and i used a custom tank maker down in largo. You should look around Dons Marine salvage yard in Largo for a tank . Honest its a great very large yard.
At some pint you must deal with the Old holding tank cause there will be odor !
Welcome Marc, wait till you go to Long Boat Key Club Marina , first class stuff ! By the John Ringling bridge !

Thanks Lee. I will check out Long Boat Key Marina. I'm new in town so haven't been there. I'll let you know how the holding tank situation goes. Honestly, it's somewhat down on my list.

Marc
 
If you go cruising for 3 days the holding tank project will move up on your list real fast . ! Your wife will see to it !!! Good luck
You have to cruise down to Crows nest in venice. Great food always busy. Weather you go down the ICW or outside. Out Long boat and In at venice !
 
Hi Marc, I also had issue with the tank leaking and I opted to repair the tank. It took one long day and every tool I had to remove paint and grind down all the old repairs to the original deck pan. After,I repaired with multiple layers of cloth. My thought process at the time was I didn’t want to get into another major project and even if I did not use the tank and went another route I still wanted the assurance that if the tank cracked,got hit, etc I would not have black water and/or salt water flooding into the boat because of the fractured top deck of the tank. Rick
 
I understand Rick and Oh what a job you had laying down working at the end of arms reach ! WOW did you remove all the old cap and redo a whole new one ?
I saw mine had been patched before and that newer patch had failed. I was fed up with the smell and cloged bilge pumps because of it .And I had done this several times before i saw the seperation most of the way up that side wall .
The Green emergency dye in the head and flush showed me the scale of the problem. No doubt the old patch was not even close to be properly installed. I was out of the water and tested the keel for maybe a break or crack ! So i Drilled a 2 1/2 hole and closed cell liquid foamed the tank and 3 layers of roving as a seal .
You sure did the right kind of fix. I could not take that chance if i had failed, my wife would have never gone cruising !
 
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Marc, I discovered my keel HT had bilge water leaking in but not the bad stuff leaking out. As it seemed not so severe a problem as others may have encountered I took the simpler, perhaps first step, approach and applied 1708 tabbing with epoxy after cleaning and prepping the surface using acetone and a multitool with high grit sandpaper. I was pleased with result and found the job to be relatively easy and access better than i expected. Time will tell if it is just a patch job and a more permanent solution is in order. I wont know as I sold the boat. Great boats so good luck with yours. Any effort you do put in will be well worth it.
 
Marc, welcome to the board. I kept my boat in Clearwater for over 5 years but now have it on the Manatee River just north of Bradenton at Snead Island. I did my tank similar to StNick except i used sweep 90 PVC to run the tank outlet under the deck and to the original macerator, thru hull and deck pump out locations. I posted a very extensive picture expose here in the image galleries somewhere... I hope it is helpful if you are able to find it! I'll look too and put the link in another post here .
 
I have recently taken ownership of a 1982 382 and noticed the holding tank has been completely bypassed. The thru-hull is still there but the hose isn't connected and the head is set up to discharge directly overboard. I'm pretty sure this is not legal, and I'd prefer to have the option of discharging into a holding tank. I assume the previous owner had a problem with the original setup. If the tank in the keel is an issue, where would be a good alternate location to instal a new holding tank?


Hey Marc and welcome to the board. I put some pictures of my holding tank project on my site (Schlepper). I put it under the port side settee on the forward end. I hold 19 gallons measured and have PVC valve in aft locker, with a sweep 90 to run under the galley sink floor, and back up to the Macerator and overboard seacock or with a valve to take it to the deck pump out. I have not had any issues with it so far and it is nice to not have to worry with the original tank leaking and smelling. Because the vent has to run higher than the tank (obviously), I had to run the vent hose under the hot water heater and up behind the stove, up high in the sail locker and then around to the original vent fitting in the transom. It all seems to work fine.
 
Greetings all and thanks for the advice. I am leaning towards the suggested Sealand marine toilet system 711-m28 with its own 9 gal holding tank. I considered installing a new tank under the port settee but that entails a lot of labor, I am not sure how I'd get the discharge hoses all the way to the pumpout located to starboard, plus a new holding tank will run a few hundred dollars. The Sealand, at $500 seems an easier option. For those that use the Sealand system, do you have it plumbed to your existing discharge (again, all the way on the starboard deck)? How did you run those hoses? Seems easier to install a new discharge to port near the head. Did you have to install the recommended thru-hull deck fitting vent?
 
Marc, you ought to figure out why the holding tank was bypassed. 9 gal. won't take you very far. Neither will the Morgan's 15 gal. Maybe together you'll have real world capacity??? I recently moved to FL, and became part of the St Mary's River Keeper water sampling program. I can speak to the fact(?) that liveaboards discharge overboard (although against the law) based on e-coli count in the water near their boats. There's 1 pay to pump out among 3 marinas... crazy state policy! It may have been easier to just un hook and go overboard. You might have a workable tank and could utilize it.
 
On Williwaw, we took the approach Jeff Lovett installed in his 382 (Pilgrim). A Todd 15 Gallon holding tank will fit beneath the sink countertop in the head and we also installed a new through-hull in the wet locker ahead of the chart table as did Jeff. That gives us a clean (as in does not draw from directly next to the toilet through-hull) source for sea-water at the galley sink. My wife and I just spent about 8 days onboard, barely filled half the holding tank and used between 5 & 10 gallons of fresh water from the on-board tank - having non-contaminated sea water at the galley makes a huge difference.

We used a Whale Gulper pump to empty at sea and it has all worked very well for a few years now. You can see the details on Jeff's blog: https://plus.google.com/photos/105725086102693499228/albums/6039966836813480481
 
Marc
Another alternative to the keel holding tank is a tank in the v-bunk. Some boats have owner added fresh water tanks up there. When we grew tried of trying to fix the keel tank on Dana, we opted to put a large holding tank up forward. Our type of cruising is mostly gunk holing and long distance coastal cruising. We found we needed more volume or we were calling the pumpout boat all the time. The solution was a 36 gallon tank under the bunk. The tank was built in 3/8" welded plastic by Triple M plastics in Kennebuck, ME. They did a wonderful job. I had to build a mockup tank in cardboard, disassemble and lay it flat, then mail it to them. Worked great. I'll post a few photos.


Jim
 

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Mark , Drill a hole for a deck clean out PORT side even with the head hamper.
The 1 1/4 hose can snake down thru the port head 2 shelf cabinets to the hamper area There i placed a large 2 way valve pump out or over the side. I ted the sink drain 1 1/4 thru hull
for the wast tank. I macerate to empty, I also have a 15 gallon under the port settee. ! All hoses are short that way !
Best of luck
 
Finally getting around to correcting my head situation. Thanks for all the advice. I don't know the history of why the holding tank was disconnected, I assume based on other's experiences that it likely failed, but the hoses all appear to still be connected to the holding tank in the bilge and I would like to test to see if it possibly is still usable. Any advice on how I might test the system? I assume I could fill the hoses, maybe with a dye, and see if it leaks? If it is determined the old system is unsalvageable what is the correct way to cap everything off, fill the old holding tank...? Plus, where would the original macerator and the switch have been located?
 
Finally getting around to correcting my head situation. Thanks for all the advice. I don't know the history of why the holding tank was disconnected, I assume based on other's experiences that it likely failed, but the hoses all appear to still be connected to the holding tank in the bilge and I would like to test to see if it possibly is still usable. Any advice on how I might test the system? I assume I could fill the hoses, maybe with a dye, and see if it leaks? If it is determined the old system is unsalvageable what is the correct way to cap everything off, fill the old holding tank...? Plus, where would the original macerator and the switch have been located?

While on the hard i put water in the bilge and watched to see if the level went down over a day or so. It did, which meant it was leaking into the bilge somehow/somewhere. I then put more water in the bilge and using a shop vac in reverse blew air into the holding tank outlet hose and looked for bubbles in the bilge. They were obvious. I then used 1708 tape and epoxy to repair the leaking seams, which worked out well for my purposes. With my sensitive nose, no matter how well ventilated, I prefer the HT either in the bilge or out in a cockpit locker rather than in a space in the main living area. I have since sold the boat and I believe the new owner is happy with the setup as repaired.
 
Marc

Like Pete did, you could put air pressure from a vacuum cleaner or air compressor on the tank from either the inlet or outlet side. Or if the boat is in the water you could pump water into the tank with the head until the tank is filled. It will get hard to pump at that point and if there is a leak in the tank ceiling/bilge floor you will see and hear the overpressure venting out through the bad tabbing in the bilge. If the bilge is empty you will get spray at the leak, if the bilge is full you will get bubbles.

Jim
 
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