1975 Ericson 27 -Rebuilding Raritan PH Head

1975 Ericson 27

Rebuilding My Original Raritan PH Head

It's often the little things that make a big difference in cruising enjoyment. One of the little things that can be a real damper is opening up the companion way to be greeted by that oh so wonderful smell of an active holding tank. I had two immediate problems with the head. First, there was no water flow into the bowl when pumping, and even though the contents of the bowl would go away, they would also return without to much rocking at her berth. OK, quick look around and new marine heads are expensive. Looks like I can probably find a rebuild kit, but this is an old enough unit that it is not readily available, and a little pricey. Off I go to a local shop that specializes in used sails and other gear, and I found a complete OEM rebuild kit for $5.00.

Dismantling these are very easy, and they are a simple mechanism. If you are organized and work quickly, there is no reason why you couldn't do one of these in an hour. That said, I opted for really cleaning everything and that included soaking all pieces that were going to be reused in a bleach solution overnight. Not only did it disinfect everything nicely, but it did a nice job of reversing the yellowing which had occurred on the pump housing body. I am assuming bleach is safe on this type of plastic. So far, no signs of ill effect. One of the changes I made when reinstalling was to setup a simple fresh water tank dedicated to flushing the head. It is simply one of the multi-gallon detergent jugs with a hole drilled in the cap so the intake hose fits snuggly into it. This way I am pumping fresh water into the holding tank and don't have to battle the odor caused by all the dead critters from the sea water on top of everything else.


This is an exploded view showing all pieces and tools used
Bottom shot of flapper valve Note that flapper is elongated and off center. This prevents proper alignment and sealing.	Top view of flapper. Note weight which holds valve down and "closed"
Note how new flap is centered	Top view, again not how centered new flap is compared to the old above
Flapper valve fits on right hand side, bowl on left, joker valve in the elbow	The reason no water flowed into the bowel was that the check ball was frozen in place.
Original inlet check ball looks bronze and was highly irregular	had some other epoxy work, so decided to coat the ball with epoxy Cab-O-Sil mix and reshape. So far so good.
Original knob for inlet valve was badly pitted.	Wire brushed and hammer painted. We'll see how it lasts

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Last update: 6/13/04