New duck bills for the J series SeaLand Vacuum tank - 2013

July 2013 - Currently in Paradise Village Marina in Banderas Bay Mexico (by Puerto Vallarta)
Old cleaned up 2" next to a new 1" duckbill.

 Wow. Nothing like going four years instead of the recommended two years without putting in new buck bills(DB) in our J Series Vacuum Tank for our VacuFlush toilet. So of course it was more work replacing the old ones. Lots of build up in the hoses and on the DB’s. We scrapped the hoses out with a knife and then snaked them. We cleaned the rest of the PVC parts with a knife etc to remove the buildup. Then we went to put in the 1” duck bills we got for this and they were too small. The J Series Vacuum Tank takes two inch DB’s. There are two small chandlers at the Paradise Village Marina and one carries VacuFlush parts, but were out of the 2” ers. He was going to Zaragoza Chandlery the larger chandlery in Puerto Vallarta. He picked us up four.
This J Series Vacuum Tank is under our bed by our feet on our Islander Freeport sailboat (s\v Elegant'sea).

There is a cover access plate we made of 3\4 marine plywood that is sound insulated that covers this area. Then there is storage in front of it. All this is under the foot of the bed. 
Debbie cleaned up these Duck Bill's.
 There is another hose that comes out of the top right which is disconnected and has two DB in it.
 In the mean time we used the emergency porta potty by VacuFlush we got just for this type of emergency. I barley fit on it but it works for an emergency. I also used the hotel restrooms some.
The motor housing is off and two DB's under it.
Another DB down in the J Series Vacuum Tank and there was one on top of this one.

Any way it is now back together and working!  Now to schedule a two year replacement. It was not that hard now that we know how to do it and what and how to take apart. Just a small space yada, yada, yada.
How it works

4 comments:

  1. Your holding tank doesn't look very large. How many gallons is it? Are you using fresh water or sea water for the flush? Obviously you weren't using pump out facilities while anchoring out so when do you do maintenance on the macerator?

    Don

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  2. Our holding tank is 34 gallons (not shown here). The tank you see is the J style vacuum tank.
    It holds about an 11 lb vacuum.

    So the waste goes from the toilet to the vacuum tank. You press the toilet peddle to flush it. The waste goes to the vacuum tank by jet. Well by the 11 lb vacuum and is broken up in the vacuum tank. Then the waste is pumped from the vacuum tank to where ever, in our case the holding tank. Then at our choosing we macerate out the holding tank.
    Our macerator is a bellows macerator and needs no maintiance. It does need the duck bills replaced every so often but it is not often.
    The toilet uses fresh water.
    It is a good system with no oders and has a house hold size toilet bowel. All in all very nice setup.
    Hope that explains it.
    Link to how it works.
    http://www.dometic.com/enie/International/Site/Marine/Marine-Leisure/Toilet-Systems/Vacuum-Flush-Toilets/VacuFlush-Technology/

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  3. Do you think it uses any more water to flush than doing it by hand? What about electricity consumption?

    Don

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  4. On the VacuFlus (Dometic) site there is a whole marketing bleb about how you get way more flushes than a hand toilet.
    Not much to speak of in electricity, again on the site it would explain that. The only thing we concern ourselves with electricity wise is our AC for keeping cool. The by product of having two AC units is we only need the small one to sleep with. The other is off al night and most of the day as we are out or busy on deck. So not having to cool the whole boat just to sleep has been a real saver in electricity $$. Never had considered that when we went for two ac units :)

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