Uggggg...Clogged Head

Noah · Post by **Noah** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 8:00 pm

Ok folks, time to help...

I had a bunch of people out on my boat yesterday, and one clogged the head with a #2. This is a brand new Lavac head. I think the problem was the first person pumped the head dry before the second used it. Yes I'm pissed that nobody read the directions clearly printed on the bulkhead.

Anyway, I took the cap off the pump (really nasty) and it was pretty clear there. I don't know which side of the plumbing the clog is on, but you can't pull the pump handle.

I have since added water to the bowl in hopes that it might loosen things up if the clog is at the bottom of the toilet. I also had the holding tank pumped out.

So what do I do now? Plunger? Please help.

Noah

Figment · Post by **Figment** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 8:18 pm

um.... I didn't even think it was POSSIBLE to clog a lavac, short of dropping a lacrosse ball in the bowl. I can't imagine a human body passing anything large or solid enough to make that happen. Perhaps I need to broaden my imagination.

As with any really baffling problem, start with the stupid stuff.
The discharge seacock is open, right?
oh, wait, you're inland, you probably don't even have a discharge seacock. Still... check all Y-valves and such. Check all hose runs to see if the vacuum pulled a kink somewhere.

Having the head pumped dry prior to use shouldn't cause the pump to lock up like that. (speaking from too many experiences) that usually just causes things to get airlocked for a bit until you can suck some water into the bowl to get things moving along again.
In my experience, when that henderson pump locks up, it's usually because of a blockage on the positive-pressure side (hence the seacock suggestion) not the negative side. On the negative side, you can keep pumping that handle until a hose collapses.

Beyond that, I think you're doing all you can do. Get some water in the system and give it some time to soften things up. If push comes to shove, you might want to disconnect a hose from the "vented loop" fitting (because it's the high point of the system), and make sure both sides are liquid.

Rachel · Post by **Rachel** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 8:46 pm

Figment wrote:um.... I didn't even think it was POSSIBLE to clog a lavac, short of dropping a lacrosse ball in the bowl. I can't imagine a human body passing anything large or solid enough to make that happen. Perhaps I need to broaden my imagination.

Well, Figment, that got a laugh out of me (of course I'm sitting in a house right now and there are two fuctioning toilets, and all the water you could want...easy for me to laugh)

But I agree with you on the Lavac, for the most part. I lived on a boat that had a Lavac for a year-and-a-half and it was pretty darned hard to clog. The couple of times we did manage to clog it, the "problem" was just past where you could see - in other words, just after it disappeared from view in the bowl. We used a combination of standing water (as you mentioned, Noah) and a plunger to get it going again.

Hmmm, difficult to talk about this delicately, isn't it? But sometimes a collection of particularly solid solids would form a sort of gridded clog, and the result was that the flushing water would just pass right through without actually taking ... anything with it. That's where the standing water added later can help.

Okay, I got through that whole post without saying poop! ;-)

--- R.

Robert The Gray · Post by **Robert The Gray** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 1:28 pm

perhaps as on board snacks you could serve prunes on whole wheat crackers. gets things moving and and adds some bulk! sorry there are so many very bad jokes in this thread.

R

Peter · Post by **Peter** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:41 am

Following the advice from an old Swedish gentleman ... he said "breek it up mit a coat hanger ... sheesh"

Noah · Post by **Noah** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:23 pm

Plunging didn't work...I suppose I'm going to have to open some things up...but it's plugged and full of stuff. I'm really not looking forward to this.

Figment · Post by **Figment** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:06 pm

When you took the face off the pump, did you get any sense for whether the blockage was on the head (vacuum) side or the tank (pressure) side?

Well, wherever it is, it's going to be the least fun day of your summer, that's for sure.

Rig some sort of exhaust fan so the stench doesn't completely permeate the entire cabin. Put some vick's vaporub on your upper lip, and have at it.

May the force be with you.

Noah · Post by **Noah** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 8:08 am

Ok, so the head is fixed. For whatever reason, as soon as I pulled the hose off the intake side of the pump, it relieved the suction on the system, and things "burped" into the bowl and it was clear.

Thanks for all your help,

Noah

Noah · Post by **Noah** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 4:23 pm

Hmmm, just thinking to myself on this some more.

Do most of you have a vented loop on the waste side of things? I didn't install one because it goes straight to a holding tank. I wonder if a vented loop would have released the suction and I wouldn't have had a clog? Does opening the cap on the pump do the same thing?

Figment · Post by **Figment** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 7:01 pm

Interesting thought. I can easily see why you didn't bother with the vented loop. It doesn't seem that it would make any difference. The tank is vented, right? and that's on the same side of the pump as the vented loop would be, so one would think the loop to be redundant in terms of pressure-relief.

But you said that things cleared when you relieved the INTAKE side of the pump, so I have a hard time imagining how a modification to the outlet side of the system would have an impact on your recent problem.

I dunno, man. I'd pump about ten gallons of water through that thing before I called it "clear", though.

Noah · Post by **Noah** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 7:16 pm

I dunno, man. I'd pump about ten gallons of water through that thing before I called it "clear", though

Done! I used a bucket to fill the the bowl a couple of times. Plenty of water through that baby...

I suppose you are correct that a Vented Loop on the discharge side wouldn't have done any good. The tank is vented.

Post by **Tim** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 8:46 pm

While it's difficult to plug a Lavac, it is indeed possible, and, like anything, will happen from time to time. We've had this unpleasant problem twice in 5 years of use--far better than any other head (including home toilets, not to share too much...).

One of the clogs happened at the 90-degree turn at the bottom of the bowl. The other time it plugged at the pump discharge nipple. Neither time was fixing the problem a fun or clean experience.

I already have plans for bettering the whole setup bouncing around inside my head (noggin, that is). That'll happen when I install the Lavac on Pixie at some point in the distant future.

The Vicks Vaporub idea is a fine one. I shall add a jar of that to my unclogging kit. For some reason, we don't have a small plunger either, nor a plumbing snake. Both will be aboard before the next cruise. Rubber gloves, added after our last clog in 2002, were key this time around. But it's a nasty, disgusting job no matter what you do.

Post by **dasein668** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:53 pm

Tim wrote:We've had this unpleasant problem twice in 5 years of use--far better than any other head (including home toilets, not to share too much...).

oooooo. So are we to take it that something happened between the 2nd of August and the 16th?

Tim wrote:I already have plans for bettering the whole setup bouncing around inside my head (noggin, that is). That'll happen when I install the Lavac on Pixie at some point in the distant future.

Do share. Some of us are installing Lavacs in just a couple of months...