poo

There are two main types of sewage management on narrowboats; one has the toilet discharging into a big holding tank, which, when full, has to be pumped out at a shoreside pump-out station, and the boat needs to be moved to that station. This is a bore, and costs about £25 a time.

The other system uses a small portable tank that slots in under the toilet; when you want to empty this 'cassette', you simply slide it out; the flap that closes off the top orifice should have a watertight seal, so it's quite mess-free (I had to replace the seals on my tanks, which was a fairly straightforward job and well worth doing, eccchhh). Then you can take the cassette to a sani station, which may be several miles from where you're moored, but at least avoids an unnecessary voyage.

I empty my tank weekly at the moment. Some people don't put loo roll down the hole, but bag it up and either burn it or bung it in a rubbish bin. I'm not really comfortable doing that.

I'm moored at Semington at the moment, and the nearest sani station is at Seend, which is about two miles away. On a summer's morning, it's a fine trip on the bicycle, even with the shit tank rattling on the trailer.

I take a plastic raincoat, a pair of rubber gloves, and a dedicated brush for cleaning up the mess. Here's the sani station at Seend.

Job done!

So now I can enjoy the towpath, where the meadowsweet and the spiked speedwell are now proliferating

and the heron pretends it isn't there

fixing a toilet that has stopped flushing

 When you have to pull the toilet flush handle several times to get it to flush, or if it simply refuses to flush at all, there's a good chance that the problem lies in the syphon diaphragm. This is a flexible piece of plastic that pushes water up the syphon tube, then flexes to allow the full contents of the cistern to flow through the syphon. The picture above shows a broken diaphragm that I removed from a toilet. That was one that I made out of one of those plastic document wallets, last year. So it didn't last very long. Mind you, the original diaphragms don't last very long either; so rather than replace the entire assembly (you can't just buy the diaphragms, of course!), I wondered what to replace it with.

What we want is something that's both durable and flexible. The heaviest polythene I could find was the sort used for damp proof courses; but even that doesn't seem particularly good. So here's what I did.

I took a piece of polythene (from a roll I got from a builder's merchant, to put up temporary double glazing one cold winter). I doubled it up, then doubled it again. So there are four thicknesses of polythene.

I sandwiched it in brown paper, then placed it on a flat board and ironed it

The iron was at a medium heat setting.

Then put a pile of books on the paper (to stop it crinkling) and allow it to cool off . If you try to peel the brown paper off too soon, the polythene will stick to it.

Here's the welded polythene.

I used the old diaphragm as a pattern and cut out the new one

...and put everything back together. Success!

Now, let's see how long this one lasts!