A27 Head Plumbing Question

[SkipRocks]

This is a follow up to my recent "A27 Holding Tank Question" post - and many thanks to those who responded. The head is in the garage & the tank is in the mail!!!

Because we use our A27 Sport Cruiser inshore, offshore and also visit the Bahamas I will plumb the head with both the holding tank (pump out) and through hull discharge. I have seen three different diagrams for the plumbing:

#1. The Y valve is before the holding tank allowing the choice of A) waste going directly to the through hull or B) waste going directly to the holding tank for pump out. Each option is isolated from the other.
#2. The Y valve is after the holding tank. Waste always goes into the holding tank and then from the tank the choice of A) pump out or B) thru hull.
#3. Two Y valve's: one before and one after the holding tank. I guess this would allow A) waste going directly to the through hull or B) waste goes directly to the holding tank for pump out or C) waste going into the holding tank then to the thru hull.

I am definitely leaning toward #1 with the Y valve before the holding tank. #2 is what I think was original construction with the Y valve after the tank. #3 just seems like unnecessary overkill and confusion to me. Regardless, before diving in I'd like to hear what others have done and hear your thoughts & experiences as well.

I should also note that we have plenty of room to mount the Y-valve in the head before the aft bulkhead. I removed the sink & cabinet allowing full width in the head... for the head. I never did use that teeny tiny sink when the larger galley sink is 3 feet away. We didn't loose any storage as I installed two small hatches on the horizontal "shelf" accessing the void along the hull and glassed in a "bottom" (the TP is always dry ). Also, the original layout could be a tight fit!!! Since I'm on the subject of head alterations, we also epoxied the entire head & painted it white to use as a shower. It's much brighter in there now, but I ultimately chose not to plumb the shower and installed one on deck instead.

SkipRocks

[tego]

#1 is the original layout from the factory. If you use #2, you'll pressurize the holding tank and all sorts of bad things can happen! Don't forget the holding tank needs a vent line also. Ben

[DesertAlbin736]

As Ben says, regardless of which plumbing option you use the holding tank must have an overboard vent line, not only to prevent pressurizing but also to prevent "imploding" from vacuum created when pumping out at a dock facility. FWIW we have option #2, toilet discharging direct to holding tank and the Y valve selects the option of dock pumpout or direct offshore discharge overboard. Valve is always lined up for pumpout unless at sea 3+ miles offshore and then only switched to overboard discharge when needed to drain the tank. Regardless effluent always goes to the holding tank first. The thing to consider with Option #1 is pumping out at a dock would be the only way to drain the tank. So what do you do if the holding tank were filled inshore and you wanted to drain it at sea? How would that work without a 2nd Y valve? Wouldn't Option #2 be more KISS? Otherwise I'm not sure what difference it makes if any but depending on your plumbing set up with overboard discharge direct from the toilet I wonder if you could have sea water backing up into the toilet? That decision is above my pay grade. When installing a Y valve or valves it's a good idea to have one that's capable of being locked or sealed in the holding tank/pumpout position. Some jurisdictions may require that. Here's what our setup looks like on our A25 (recently revamped and updated with 20 gallon holding tank and lockable Y valve). Actually two separate projects, first swapping out the existing 9 gallon holding tank for a 20 gallon one in 2016 which opened a whole other can of worms which is another story, and last year replacing the earlier PO inherited non-lockable Y valve with a lockable one as seen in this photo. Reason for that was we had anticipated doing the Rideau Canal in Ontario, Canada last year and I read their no discharge rules require Y valves able to be locked or sealed in the pumpout position.

New Y valve & plumbing setup. The location of the overboard through hull is so close to the bulkhead that it required some Rube Goldberg plumbing contortions to make it work. Our toilet is an HF model Groco.

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Upgraded 20 gallon holding tank under the floor by the helm seat, old vs new tank. The tank is from Ronco Plastics of Tustin, CA. They can install custom size & located thermo welded inlets and outlets. 2016 cost: $325 delivered.

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As an aside about making the head compartment shower ready unfortunately with Albin 25's there's the little problem of all the house electrical distribution terminals being located behind an wooden access door inside the head compartment, not to mention how small that compartment is. You don't want water or moisture getting in here. This is right above where the original vanity sink was installed, also removed and disposed of by previous owners of our boat.

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[dkirsop]

#2 is pretty much the requirement in our waters where overboard discharge is only permitted either 3 miles off-shore or in the centre of main channels with strong currents where the distance from shore cannot be met. This rules out discharge at anchor, in all marine parks and when tied to any dock. So we use our holding tank when close in-shore and the tank out when in appropriate water. For our setup this requires a pump to discharge overboard from our holding tank.

[DesertAlbin736]

Dave, you know what I mean about finding pump out locations in the Gulf Islands. I think the closest one to you is by the Coast Guard dock in Ganges on Salt Spring? Locally we have a pumpout dock on Lake Pleasant, but previous owners also made a PVC pipe rig that can channel the waste into a bucket through the overboard drain when on land. We park our boat on land in a storage lot & trailer back & forth from the lake 15 minutes away & for single overnights & small amounts of toilet use will stop at the house on the way back, drain the tank into a 5 gallon and dump it in the house toilet before taking the boat back to the storage lot. We live in a cookie cutter tract home neighborhood so we don't have room to keep the boat at our house.

[dkirsop]

Pump out stations in the Southern Gulf Islands are few and far between. Sidney, Brentwood, Ganges and Ladysmith are the ones closest to our area. Typically, most small boats discharge in areas of strong current flow such as Swanson Channel, Captains Passage or Trincomali Passage. This seems to work as many of the anchorages have seen significant improvement in water quality over the past few decades.

[Bob Noodat]

I am very glad that BC is so strict with those pesky boaters! Now, if Vancouver would stop discharging upwards of one BILLION litres of raw sewage into its waterways that drain into the Pacific yearly, with a plan to stop it by 2050 !! then the boaters' poop and pee production might be put into their proper perspective. Hallelujah that Victoria has, just this January, started treating the 40 million litres of raw sewage that it has been releasing into the ocean yearly, and that Covid eliminating 2020's Pacific cruise season between Seattle and Alaska has prevented the usual 30+ million litres of their raw sewage discharge (neither WA nor AK permit them to, but BC seems happy to let 'em dump). Shame on those boaters in their Albins!

[DesertAlbin736]

My first visit to Victoria was a port call on a Princess line Alaska cruise out of Seattle in 2007. I have some pictures of that I could post but there seems to be a bug in this new https upgrade that won't let me post a 2.7 MB jpeg file & bounced me back & wiped out everything I typed.