Installing a Natures Head

When we bought Harbinger it came with a head that must have been a 1970s staple. This little contraption is basically a fortafied seat connected to a collection bowel where on its side resides a hand pump. This pump effectively shoots recital mater out to sea with little effort. Times have changed a lot since the 70s and on Harbinger it's going to change as well.

Old glory.

In order to have a liveaboard spot at the marina we needed to pass an inspection and part of that inspection was to not pump sewer overboard. The 70's head was masterful at pumping overboard so we needed to either get a holding tank to store our organic mush or find another solution; the composting head. Our inspection date was closing in and so it became obvious that the head had to be our first area of improvement. Since we knew of composting heads from reading many articles and talking to people that had experience with them we figured we had to order one.

The new head arrives.

Quickly we found the first issue, at over $900 it was slightly aggravating, but in the long run its better than a holding tank and all the other issues associated with a conventional head.

Were to mount the new head now? 

Once the old head was removed (and it took many curse words to do so) we could not easily find a place to mount the composting head. It was slightly too bulky at the base to mount directly over the same spot. It stuck out over the base platform making for a sloppy instal, not good. Also it was to elevated so even if we were to forgive the sloppy instal option it would be mounted very high for my son and wife. Eventually we settled on mounting it facing aft and opposite the old head. We decided that mounting it facing aft would allow for a better flow of urine to the urine jug and not the composting storage when underway. The basic principle of the composting head is to separate solids from liquids.

Since the installation and passing our inspection with much curiosity, as the harbor police had not seen this type of head before, we have had a few accidents but we figure thats its part of the learning curve. We happen to pee a lot more than I imagined and when I say "we" thats being my wife, 3 year old son, and I. We overfilled the pee tank twice because its difficult to see if its full at times, unless your pee is yellow-suppose ill need more beer. A solution was to dump it every other day no matter what. If you don't know, when the tank overfills it will spill into the holding carriage so its not the end of the world. I just panic for a few seconds, curse briefly and clean up the mess. I would say it takes about 10 minutes cause urine does not get all over the cabin.

And a few other truths after a month of use.

The head works great so far and since its cheap for peat moss that's a huge bonus. We basically have a year supply of moss for less than 10 dollars. Peat moss by the way is used in the solids storage area to compost the waste. We have not installed a fan for ventilation yet and I tell you vertually NO smell yet. We will install the fan and ventilation as soon as we feel the head is mounted in the right spot, I am considering cutting out the fiberglass head mounting platform but that's a lot of scaring on our beloved westsail.

One small issue I have is teaching my strong peeing boy to hit the holes or sit down and pee. He is still three so thats not the heads fault, I'm glad I am not paying for diapers anymore. With that said at times a urine smell alerts me that the boy missed again. We do place brown sugar in the urine tank to neutralize the smell.

So far we have not needed to change the dark mater but I have peeked inside when changing the urine tank. Its look is of dirt and paper and smells like dirt and paper. Not sure how to remove it yet other than by hand or scoop.

An improvement would be - A better seat, this hard plastic is just to rough on the buttocks.

I forgot to mention that we use a small yellow flower print squirt bottle to sort of rinse the urine left behind afterwards. Going number 2 is simple and mess free.

Mounted facing aft.

Sorry I forgot the final instal photo-ill update it soon.