How to Clean a Sailboat Toilet

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Ches Rainier, welcome to Expert Village. Today we're going to be talking about some techniques used to clean a fiberglass boat. All right, most boats are going to have a marine head, a sanitary device that consists of the head, which is a toilet. And we call it a head here on the boat, because it's usually at the head of the boat which is at the front of the boat, and it's going to consist of the head and a holding tank system in there. The waste goes through the head and into the holding tank and then you come to the dock and there are pump-out stations where you can pump the waste out and then it goes through the treatment process on shore. And for some special considerations with a marine head, it's going to have lots of rubber o-rings and gaskets and grommets, which is a little different from your head at home. So you can't go dumping harsh cleaning additives down the head, otherwise you're going to end up with a leaky head, and nobody wants that. So I use a really distilled solution of Simple Green and that gets the outside nice and clean, and then the inside, I've got a toilet brush and I just scrub that around the inside to get that nice and clean. Some marine head manufacturers, they'll ask that you put some vegetable oil down the toilet and then pump that through and that lubricates the seals and keeps everything pumping nicely. And while you're here, you can, this is also the shower area on this vessel, so mold can start growing and things like that in areas that don't get dry quick enough. So make sure you want to hit that with some Simple Green, or if it's really bad, bleach water solution and definitely get all the mold off because that could become a health problem if you don't keep everything super clean."