Plumbing

There wasn't much in the way of plumbing systems when I bought the boat. Tritons were always pretty simple boats 'system-wise'. Drinking water was stored in a 28 gallon water tank in the V-berth. There was one manual bilge pump in the cockpit. Adding an electric bilge pump seemed like a nice way to enter the 21st century. The sink in the galley had a hand operated pump that connected to the V-berth tank via a garden hose. High quality work there. The 'head' wasn't original. It was actually a porti-potty with a 'pump overboard' system jury-rigged in. That definitely wasn't going to cut it because 1.) it was of suspect reliability, 2.) it is illegal by any US discharge standards, 3.) it was most certainly smelly. In the head area was a flip down sink and hand pump. I took that out and have never had a reason to put it back. It went into the dumpster early in the project if I remember correctly.

In order to make my first cruise I built a box in the head with a toilet seat on top and a plastic bucket underneath. The ultimate in reliabilty and a virtual guarantee that I would remain single for the rest of my life. It worked. I cruised. It was never a long term solution.

At some point during the interior distruction, I was able to seriously consider my tankage options. The old fiberglass water tank was not to my liking. 40 year old fiberglass tanks make the water taste funny and I can't help but wonder what is imparted into the water to make it taste that way. The V-berth was still a good area for a water tank though. I wanted and needed a holding tank and decided there was enough room in the V-berth for one. Another option would have been to put the waste tank behind the toilet against the hull but that seriously limits the size of the tank. I wanted something bigger and I wanted the space for the toilet hand pump and misc. storage so I settled on the V-berth location. Some people don't like sleeping over waste tanks. Frankly I worry about smells and such too. On the other hand, moving the waste tank to the 'head' is only moving it about 2 feet aft. On a small boat nothing is really that far away. The more I do on my Triton, the more I realize what a small boat it is.

After my first cruise I decided I wanted more drinking water capacity than the standard 28 gallons. During the cruise I used portable tanks with a capacity of around 20 gallons. I found this to be barely enough for my cruising style. I like to park out in the wilderness for a week or more. In a few instances, after a week of relaxing and exploring, the weather would turn foggy and/or stormy and I would have to stay put for another week. This would seriously run down my water reserves. I was often worried about my reserve capacity and several times I had to return to civilization early just to get more water. When I concluded that I was not going to put a fuel tank in the deep bilge area I quickly decided to convert my fuel tank drawing to a second water tank drawing.

What I ended up with were three custom made stainless steel tanks. From left to right; a 16 gallon waste (toilet) tank, a 22 gallon drinking water tank for the bilge, a 28 gallon drinking water tank for the V-berth.

I did look into plastic tanks but the shapes available in off-the-shelf options didn't fit my needs and the cost of having them custom made approached the cost of the custom stainless steel tanks. If I was going to the trouble of tearing out my interior to install new tanks, I didn't want to compromise with the options available. Also, with stainless there isn't a shred of doubt as to long term health effects and durability issues.

Drinking water tankage

Once I had stripped the V-berth area, I set about building a mockup of the V-berth tank I wanted. Rather than spend a bunch of time measuring everything out and making up a drawing I decided to simply bring in some scrap 1/4 inch plywood and cut it to fit. My first idea was to use roughly the same space occupied by the original tank and just extend the tank higher and up along the hull to increase its capacity. In effect, I wanted to take the original shape and enlarge it which would increase capacity to about 40 gallons. Any more than that and I figured I would start running into some serious trim issues. That seemed to work well. Once I had the mockup built I moved on to contructing the waste and bilge tank mockups.

Imagine my surprise a month later when it was time to take out the mockup and bring it to the welding shop. The one thing I hadn't planned on was getting it out of the cabin. The mockup was simply too big to fit out between the vertical oak posts framing the V-berth entrance and 'supporting' the mast beam. "Hmmm..." said I. I pondered that one for a bit. My options were to cut the mockup in half and have two tanks built in place of the one, or reduce my 40 gallon V-berth tank aspirations. With time running short, both to keep my own plan on schedule and to get the mockups to the welder before his busy season, I decided to take the quick way out and have the welder copy the original 28 gallon water tank instead. Maybe I could have figured out a somewhat bigger tank but I reasoned I was going to a lot of trouble to gain maybe five gallons of capacity. The original size worked. Why mess with it? There is room over the original tank for plastic bottles or a bladder type tank if I need some occasional extra water storage and the the stainless tank is certainly strong enough to support this storage method on top. I took the original tank to the welder and had it duplicated by the welder.
Almost.
What I forgot about is the baffle. I didn't notice the 3 inch baffle that runs fore and aft under the top panel of the original tank. My welder, of some experience, felt baffles were optional on a tank of this size and so we decided not to include them. Now I wish I had. I also wish I had been more demanding when I told them what size to make the outlets. I wanted 3/4 inch. They were out of stock and asked if they could use 7/8 inch. "why not" I thought. What I didn't realize is that while water safe hose is readily available in 3/4 inch, 7/8 hose is nearly impossible to find. A 12 inch access hole was specified for tank cleaning and a threaded hole for a plug was installed on the top aft panel so that I could drop a stick down and 'dip' the tank to see how full it is. I considered the idea of installing two 90 degree elbows on the rear face of the tank, one near the top and one near the bottom to be connected with a clear hose. That would allow instant visual indication of how much was in the tank. At the time I was concerned about clear hoses and slime growth. Now, I think that was a silly worry but at the time I decided on the keep-it-simple approach. Dropping a stick into the tank is certainly a simple way of measuring how much is inside. The 1.5 inch tank fill and the ... 7/8ths outlet are both on the rear face of the tank. The vent is on the top face near the front and the vent hose goes up into the anchor locker, keeping with the original design.

Being a V-shaped tank, to mount the tank I found I needed blocks on the fore and aft bottom edges only. The V-shape naturally holds it in place. I made blocks from fir 2x2's that were saturated with epoxy and then epoxied and fiberglassed onto the hull. Holding the tank from moving fore and aft are 'mini-bulkheads' that are tabbed to the hull. In the unlikely event the boat turns upside down, More of the epoxy soaked fir 2x2's are attached to the 'mini'bulkheads and over the tops of the tanks. This tank isn't going anywhere. What do I do if I want to take it out?... Hack it out and start over. Building in provisions for removal might be nice but they greatly add to the complexity. The current crappy tanks have managed okay for 40 years. I am thinking my quality tanks might last that long as well. If not... well, I have the skills to get them out.

The bilge water tank was actually built to a real drawing.

The bilge tank is flat on top, sloped on the bottom edge to follow the shape of the ballast pig, with trapezoidal front and back panels. There are not many square angles on this tank and the welder made me aware of that fact when I got the bill. A 12 inch access hole was built into the top for cleaning. The 1.5 inch inlet is on the front of the tank. This turned out to be bad planning. I should have put the inlet to one side so that I didn't have to run the fill hose directly down the middle of the bilge and spoil some of my bilge storage area. The outlet is on the lower rear face of the tank. The vent outlet is on the top rear face of the tank. Quantity is measured just like the V-berth tank through a small threaded hole on the top panel that can be 'dipped' with a measuring stick. The same elbow and clear hose idea was considered but getting your head down and into a position to see it was awkward. Total capacity is around 22 gallons which gives a combined water capacity for the boat of 50 gallons. Not bad for such a little boat. This tank sits on a 3/4 inch epoxy soaked oak board that is approximately 3 inches wide and glued to the sloping rear face of the ballast pig. On top of this board is a layer of foam for cushioning. The board is narrower than the bilge by about 3 inches to allow water to pass by on its way to the low point under the engine. The tank is held in place by some mahogany strips that are tabbed to the hull on the fore and aft faces of the tank and on either side of the top. About half way down each side of the tank is a wedge shaped wooden block that keeps the lower half of the tank from sliding side to side too. All the wood blocks are epoxied in place and tabbed with 3 layers of 14 oz. biax tape. In the event of a roll-over, the bilge tank is held down by plywood epoxied and screwed to the side retaining blocks. Not super strong perhaps but I don't intend for the boat to remain upside down for any real length of time. I am pretty sure this tank is not going anywhere either.

Waste tankage

Figuring 'more is better' I chose to make the waste tank as large as possible to just fill the cavity behind and to port of the V-berth water tank. From the photo, the tank might look symmetrical but it is not. Front and rear faces are of different dimensions and angles. Naturally, this increased the cost but I did it to maximize capacity. The end result is a 16 gallon tank with the fittings exiting the rear of the tank to be accessed from the head area through the main bulkhead and behind the V-berth. There is one thing I didn't do that I wish I had done now. In doing some more reading I have found that good airflow through the waste tank will actually reduce smells. Apparently, its the anaerobic bacteria (bacteria that lives where there is no oxygen) that smells so bad. The aerobic bacteria (oxygen 'breathing' bacteria) doesn't smell. Knowing this, I wish I had installed two vent fittings on the tank so I could have created some positive airflow through the tank and reduced the odor output. Frequent flushings should be fine but the extra vent would have been easy to incorporate if I had thought of it. Rumor has it that waste tanks need to have a way to check how full they are. I wasn't going to put in a meter that would fail and make me repair it (Yuck) so my solution is to simply drop a stick down the pump out hose. Where the icky stuff sticks to the stick is where the level of the tank is. I don't intend to use this often but the opportunity is there and its legal. One thing I would have done differently next time is that I wouldn't have spent precious money on a stainless steel waste tank. It will work fine but I didn't really need stainless. Stainless was the right choice for me for the drinking water tanks and I just lumped all the tanks together when I had them made. What I would do next time is to make the waste tank with plywood and fiberglass and save myself several hundred dollars. But then I would have had to spend more time building it so maybe not?

To mount the waste tank, I followed the example of the V-berth water tank; tank sitting of fir blocks; squeezed between the main bulkhead and the aft 'mini bulkhead' of the V-berth water tank to restrict fore and aft movements. The V-berth bunk structure itself holds the tank down in the event of a rollover.

Head installation

After the season of using the bucket, I ordered a real marine toilet. I have heard nothing but good things about the Lavac marine head; extremely simple and reliable. That sounded good to me. I chose the 'popular' model. Again, that's what everyone else had and they liked it.

The Lavac head is a bit different from other marine heads. The Lavac uses a diaphram pump, a common bilge pump really, downstream of the toilet. The toilet lid has a seal and when the pump is operated it draws from the toilet and creates a low pressure that sucks the effluent through. The toilet bowl is filled by a raw water inlet with a small bleeder valve. The pump empties the bowl and draws more water in. The bleeder valve maintains the low pressure for about fifteen seconds until it slowly equalizes the pressure. The delay gives the bowl enough time to fill up in preparation for its next use. There are no valves in the system which is where the supreme reliability comes in. The pump is rumored to suck just about anything that gets into the toilet bowl. I haven't tested the rumor myself so I can't comment yet.

Like most things, when you think too much about it, it gets overly complicated. I wanted to hide the plumbing so I located the hoses, valves and pump, as much as possible against the hull and behind a panel. The photo shows (most) everything with the panel removed. Basically, the 3/4 inch seacock to the right of the toilet is where the raw water enters the system. In the photo, the hose hasn't been installed yet. I will update this paragraph and picture when I do install it. From the seacock, a hose will climb up to the highest point and go through a vented loop (to prevent accidental siphoning) and then the hose comes down to connect with the toilet. Directly behind the toilet, the outlet hose rises straight up to a 'Y' valve. The two small 'Y' valves select the input for the pump. When pumping the toilet, the pump draws from the toilet and sends the output up to a second vented loop and then down to a large, clunky, "Y" valve. The clunky valve is designed to accept a padlock that will make complying with US regulations easy. Within the 3 mile no-discharge zone, the clunky valve is locked in the direction to direct the pump output to the holding tank. Outside of the 3 mile limit (or in Canada or elsewhere where direct overboard discharge is viewed more reasonably) the clunky valve is switched to direct the output to the 1.5 inch seacock to the left of the toilet.

The two smaller 'Y' valves select what the single pump draws from. The PVC tubing that runs on the floor in front of the toilet and up the left side is the outlet from the waste tank. By switching the small 'Y' valves the same pump can be used to pump the waste tank contents through the system to the overboard seacock. That's how I can empty the waste tank at sea. Finally, and this is where I really got carried away, the second small 'Y' valve will eventually be connected to a hose that runs back to the deep section of the bilge. This allows the head pump to operate as an inside bilge pump. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now I am not sure what I was thinking. I guess I had read about some offshore racing requirements to have a bilge pump that can be manually operated from inside the cabin. This seemed like a good idea and while I was designing the head system I found it easy to add the second valve and incorporate the bilge pump into the head system. In the unlikely event that I can actually find a pump out station that is open and operating, the waste tank outlet piping runs directly up to a deck pump out fitting. I put a PVC shut-off valve in the line so that I could direct the pump out suction just to the waste tank. It might work without the shut-off valve but since I am not familiar with deck pump out facilities, I wasn't sure about designing a system to use them. It should work. I may never find out...

Galley water systems

No galley as of yet and thus no galley water sytems. More coming.