Marine Elegance from Raritan

mixman

mixman

Livin' the life.
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Joined
Feb 28, 2007
RO Number
25362
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3,996
The boat came with a manual head. I "upgraded" that to an electric conversion from Jabsco a few years ago. We call that the "grinder" considering it usually woke up the neighbors, no matter how far away they were. Here's what the head used to look like:

head_before.jpg


It looked like something out of the movie "Brazil", didn't it? It did work, but we'd had enough of it. Via this boating forum, I'd heard so much good feedback on Raritan's new Marine Elegance head, that I decided to try one. BillyIII has one and loves it, so I thought I'd give it a try. Here's what things looked like during the process this week:

head_during.jpg


And this is after:

head_after.jpg


Now, I did have some issues. My water maker was tied into the raw water intake for the head. I broke the darn raw water pump when I moved some hoses. But, the part is only $9, so I'm not worried as I've got 2 on order (yeah, I'm not taking that chance again!). The other major problem was that I, after many, many hours of effort to do this conversion, wasn't allowed the privilege of having the first use of it. Bosun beat me to it!

head_bosun.jpg
 
Nice job Kurt to clean up the holes cut in the fiberglass for the hoses I used wire loom around the cuts. I'll send you a picture.
It really cleaned up my installation and protects the hoses from chafing.
Bill
 
Well, Bosun had been in that box for a loooong time, he is pretty well "potty trained" though ... I take it there were no "baby mooses" inthe box!!
 
No, there weren't any little ones in there. But we think Mrs. Bosun might be a witch. I finally got around to letting her out of the box in the cockpit last evening. As soon as I did, my starboard outboard started backing itself down. It wouldn't stop until I held the "up" switch. I fixed her outfit and straightened her out (and sprayed the heck out of the hydraulic switch on the engine with WD40) and it seemed to be okay. Now I'm scared to put her back in the box.
 
Bill,

I hope this is better. Bosun did it after he read your post about wire loom.

head_trim.jpg
 
Excellent my wife realized I spelled your name wrong and corrected the post Kurt! It looks much better now. I would have sent a picture but my camera has a non standard card and I forgot the tether cable.
Good job buddy, I wasn't trying to be critical just helpful, but you already know that.
Bill
 
OK, OK, enough of the kudos on how nice it looks (the final picture with the hole edges covered does look good!). Howzit work? Are you happy with it? Waddaya think of the sound level when it's runnning? How's Kristen like it? C'mon, lets hear all the dirty details!

P.S. - sorry to hear of the problem with your watermaker, but you can't blame that on the new head - the old one maybe, but not the new one.

[:-jump][:-jump2][:-jump][:-jump2]
 
Sorry Vic, I somehow missed your last post on this thread. I acutally just looked it up to post that after 2 months, we're very, very happy with the head. We've been living aboard for the month of May while we're in the Bahamas, so the thing has been working pretty hard (and I had some bad conch the other day, which really gave it a work out!). We've noticed a side benefit is that our Hold-n-Treat (Purasan-based) system doesn't have to work as much. It seems that using the "water saver" flush fills up our 20 gallon tank a lot more slowly than the manual head did. And as Bill told me while I was researching, the water-saver flush works 90% of the time. Always for #1, and most of the time for #2 (except fof bad conch that is).

Oh, and the changes I had to make to the water maker were worth it. It runs better now than it did before. All in all this has been one of the better upgrades I've done to the boat.
 
Kurt a little secret when we have a large dump in the head, tap the evacuate button then hold the manual water fill button, repeat as needed then finally hit the water saver flush about 2/3's of a bowl of fluid will eat and clear anything in the bowl. The Elegance is by far the best head we have ever used in a boat. I'm on season 2 and it shows no sign of losing the same flushing and chopping abilities it had when installed on day 1. Combining it with the H-N-T and PuraSan was the best set of upgrades ever done to the head. The other plus has been the limited current draw with the PuraSan over the LectraSan. Since I have a 36 gallon holding tank we can run for almost 4-5 days with heavy use before we need to start the H-N-T/PuraSan.
The entire combination has been trouble free except a freshwater fitting from improperly winterizing the freshwater valve. Vic sent me the part and I was back in business within 2 days. This wasn't Raritan's fault but my marina and I for not checking. The fitting only effected the PuraSan freshwater fill for the canistor. It still worked only sprayed freshwater on each treatment cycle of the PuraSan.
Bill
 
Same here. I'm on season 2 with my Marine Elegance. By far the best marine head I've ever owned/used/heard of.

Kurt, where are you now and how long will you be there? I'm heading out on June 10th.. will you still be there or back home by then?

Bob
 
Thanks for the "large dump" handling tip, Bill. :-)

Bob, we're trying to get back now. We're just waiting for the annoying northern winds to die so we can cross the stream.
 
Saturday and Sunday look really nice right now. Of course that's always subject to change. :)

Bob
 
We're thinking Sunday. We'll let the stream calm down on Saturday. It's not like we can do much loading-wise until Tuesday anyway with the holiday (we have to use a travel lift to put the boat on the trailer). So I'm really sad to be "stuck" here for a few more days :-)
 
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