Chip & Debbie Willis on s\v Elegant'sea: J-Series VacuFlush tank serviced...a "Poo Story"

This is our J-Series Vacuum Tank that needed servicing. It stopped holding a vacuum.

So how come this always happens at anchor? A week and a half at anchor and we need to service this tank! Anchored here in the Bahia de Navidad Lagoon!

I'll tell you why😀 It is because I do not have this system on a regular maintenance plan😖 So you know that is going to end. It would be much easier to service this tank at a marina with working banos (bathroom(s) than at anchor with none! Also, if it was not broken it would not be so messy.

I think, why perform this messy job now when maybe it will last another year? Of course it doesn't and so here we are.

Now we have put this system on the service calendar, about seven years of cruising late but you gotta start sometime right.😇

March 2019 - We are currently anchored in Bahia de Navidad Lagoon, Mexico

This is the access.

First off, thought the problem was the duck bill flappers. They need replacing every two years...and it has been two years. So we pulled them out and checked them out and sure enough there was at least one that was needing replacement. So I replaced all four. It takes four two inch flappers.

We have posted before on the VacuFlush J- Series Vacuum Generator a few times on doing service etc. Anyway this is the duck bill on the right that is bad we think. The one on the left is new. You should not see the light coming through or have any space.

We had marked the way each way the duckbill faces on the white plastic

fittings last time and this saved us time and energy this time

reassembling the VacuFlush J-Series Vacuum Generator.

Now we put back together after cleaning everything up and replacing the four duck bills. However the J Series Vacuum Tank still would create a vacuum? It didn't, so....

...we had to take it apart again and take apart the bellows -

the part the motor drives like a piston.

Sure enough the bellows was split. We had purchased a lot more spares for this system a couple years ago so we had the duck bills and a spare bellows. Now we will need to replace them and add more of the same to the spares. Also a spare motor would be nice.

Clean it all up and put it back together. New bellows, new duck bills and we snaked the white 1 1\2 inch sanitary hoses and put it all back together.

And just and easy it works fine😎

The white sanitary hoses were free of stalactites and other debris so we think the regular detergent flush is working. We leave the VacuFlush J- Series Vacuum Generator tank full of water and a half cup of detergent once a month. We leave it overnight. Also sometimes we first flush with detergent in the water to leave some in the hoses.