A boggy affair!

Guess what? It’s flooded again!

But you know all about floods. We are lucky enough to be moored next to a water tap and against a floating pontoon, so all is okay. It’s a bit hair-raising at night when the occasional tree collides with the boat making an almighty clang, but at least it makes a change from Mr BBB’s nocturnal nasal noises!  So I’m not going to blog about the water. Sitting on my boat which can’t move anywhere because of the flood, with the fire going and rain blowing against the windows, I’m going to stay in the warm with a cup of tea and blog about the bog!

Not that type of bog- although there are plenty of them around- this type!

The BBB was built with a pump out toilet. That means we have a loo (above) that looks a bit like a house loo, which is connected to a macerator. The macerator chops up the waste, and then it goes into a tank under our bed.

Once every couple of weeks I hook up a device that looks like a large vacuum cleaner to the boat and it sucks out the contents of the tank and deposits it into the sewer. This system worked okay for a while although I had a few niggles with it. The hose fits into the hole very tightly, which means that when I am trying to disconnect the machine I often fall over backwards and land in a pile of goose poo! The hose drips and dribbles when I disconnet it, which is not pleasant. But by far the biggest problem is the shortage of pump out stations. Where we are currently moored, the nearest is a 2.5 hour cruise away. That isn’t too bad. Unless the river decides to flood when the toilet needs emptying. That’s what happened to us- so we bought a portapotty. This is a little chemical loo that people often use for camping. It needs emptying more often than the pump out but there are a lot more places to empty it. Most marinas or boatyards have a disposal point as do most campsites. But- as we found- they freeze when it’s cold! So we have two portapotties! After a prolonged freeze/flood period, I found that if I’m very careful I can empty it into a public loo. But I have to be very careful not to make a mess! And I must look rather odd, taking a toilet into a toilet!

While the portapotty is generally easier, I have had disasters with it! One lovely sunny day the loo needed emptying so I thought I’d put it in the trolley and walk it to the nearest emptying point.

This was through a cow field, over a humpbacked footbridge and down 5 stone steps. I thought it would be a nice walk. As I left the field, one wheel on the trolley was stuck- it wouldn’t rotate. It turned out that the bolt that holds the wheel to the trolley had fallen off (in the cow field- somewhere). I couldn’t find it and couldn’t move the trolley without the wheel nut. I decided I had to abort the mission and head back to the boat. If I lifted the end of the trolley so the front wheels were off the ground I could move it, but I had to take tiny steps and put it down every couple of minutes because it was so heavy! After about half an hour, the broken wheel (which was jammed in place) fell off completely. Eureka! The trolley worked much better with only 3 working wheels than it did with 3 working wheels and one broken one! I put the broken wheel into the trolley and headed back to the disposal point! With careful pulling, I got to the bridge.

I was a bit worried about the bridge- if the trolley gained momentum I might not be able to control it and end up being run over by a trolley load of poo! A terrible way to go- what would people say at my funeral?! As I got to the bridge I bumped into a guy and we started chatting about his plans to move onto a narrowboat, which distracted me wonderfully- and the bridge was fine. Then I got to the steps. The guy I had been talking to helped me lift it down the steps and off I went to the marina (with the disposal point). I emptied the loo (a relief in all senses of the word!) and the guy at the marina gave me two nuts (one to fix the trolley and another in case it came off on my way home)!

I ached for days after that! 

But no more! No more two toileting! No more walking miles to marinas in the freezing rain, with a toilet in a trolley! We are going to move to a different system. We are going to have a nice shiny new Kildwick toilet. It will need emptying less and will be much easier to manage. I will regale you all with details in a future post- you lucky people!

I had better go and work out how to remove the pump out toilet- roll on having only one toilet!

Wish me luck!