Warship Plumbing 

Those were called the good old days

A certain German captain comes to mind 😂

Never saw a failure, but a rather common practical joke was to pull the cover off of the Flushometer and crank the regulator wide open. If there were reducing stations on my ship, they weren't set very low. Seemed like you had the full 120-140 PSI available. With a urinal the flushing water would hit the lip on the front and go straight up, leaving both the victim and the overhead soaked with salt water. A "courtesy flush" resulted in an extreme bidet experience with enough volume and pressure to go horizontally between the seat and the commode. Flushing with your foot wouldn't save you from getting wet.

I'm a retired Army mustang officer and, obviously since we're meeting here, a Naval history geek. There's commonality among branches in a large number of things. Deployments for example. No matter the branch we know what being away from home for 6-12+ months at a stretch is like. But there are some things we in the ground forces never ever have to consider and that's plumbing on a ship/closed system like a submarine and the various potential hazards involved in going to the latrine/head. Wow.

From a damage control perspective, I never did like that we used FM to provide hospital flushing. It introduces unnecessary points of failure in a critical system and, as your story illustrates, it’s subject to sailor tampering. 😂 Still, it reduces weight and complexity while decreasing the demand for potable water, so I understand why it had to be done.

Is that the German submarine with a toilet that was so over-engineered and complicated that it required a trained person to operate it?

Wow, that’s a lot of steam! Holy smokes when launching a bunch of planes there had to be a pretty good tempering system to keep adding all that feed water. 😳 The scale of that kind of operation is mind boggling. When I think about a 150 HP low pressure boiler for comparison, that’s just crazy scale. I can’t even begin to fathom it.

A former HT, I'm quite used to using a fire hose to unclog urinal drains, and when that method failed, we removed the clogged section of pipe and replaced it

That's fascinating! I'd love to know the flow difference. I wonder if they use the same comercial model now that they did back then or if it's been updated to modern flow standard. Because that has me wondering the the old Naval version would just be a standard flow variety today 🤔

@@seldoon_nemar the Sloan Naval is a piston style rather than the visually wider diaphragm style you see used in most commercial applications. It is designed for saltwater operation, which would quickly corrode and disable the commercial units. It’s selectable for either 1.6gpf or (I believe) 3.5gpf, which is on track with commercial units. Older commercial closets would use a 2.4, 3.5, or even 4.5…Today, 1.6 is certainly most common, with some china being designed for less than a gallon (those don’t work great, FWIW). Hope you appreciate my toilet factoids!

@@TheSteelArmadillo I can think of at least one place on dry land that would probably benefit from Naval-grade Sloan valves. Work. Our water there is heavy with alkalai & iron maganese while the ground will eat steel & even concrete w/ enough time. We use the conventional diaphragm type & while they last okay the water can still be hard on the rubber. The vacuum breakers especially.

Sloan still made them and rebuild kits as of five years ago when I worked maintenance at a museum ship

I can remember a time like that! But it was on land, and the sewer was somehow pressurized! A crappy situation to be sure!!

They didn't have check valves installed to make sure seawater didn't rush back in the out pipe?

I was a pipefitter on an Essex class carrier in the mid 1960s. All sanitary plumbing was salt water flushing. The salt water eventually clogged the piping and we flushed it out by connecting it to the firemain.

There’s a high school in Florida that I go to community band concerts at, and they have the spring loaded sink faucets that make washing hands almost impossible.

These valves are pretty common in older campgrounds too. Same reasons, water conservation and not being able to flood the comfort station if some jerkwad piles junk in the sink

unless you work in engineering dept. We MAKE the water so used what we needed. I doubt I ever took a "Navy shower" in my 3.5 years on ship.

Every engineer on my ship certainly took sea showers ​@@kevinsantascott3688 . I 100% did. Water was scarce on my second ship, and no one was too important to not waste it.

Newer ships use RO units, which are far more efficient than the old vaps. I remember times when we had so much fresh water we were dumping it over the side, rather than shutting the RO units down (They hate being started and stopped for some reason)

to be honest, I do that at home sometimes because of the small hot water tank in my apartment... I live in the desert though, so water conservation is a big thing too... as for any time I spent at sea (purely civilian) was in rather old boats, so we only ever had salt water showers when under way... the plumbing was rather minimal too, so, no big issues with salt buildup as far as I know...

Hell yeah!

I'm trying to remember if the water lines were marked as Salt Water in some way.

@johnknapp952 I believe it was SW flush. Long time ago.

Flushometers take a beating from salt water. Urine and salt water calcify the piping. Duty HT to engineering head.

​@garybaudino2756 So true, and the p traps plumbing leaving the urinal, always clogging due to the SW. I remember it well.

This is the second tour of the head that Ryan has done. The first was an enlisted space, not nearly so cozy.

That would be quite the scene with "visiting dignitaries"! Nothing says diplomacy quite like crossed streams... or someone else's piss all over your leg

What is an "Omnipure"?

Most of the galley equipment on the USS Little Rock is unchanged from its time in service. Almost everything is how it was, apart from the refrigerators and freezers we still use.

I think what Ryan's referring to as modern is the 1982 recommission.

More like 1.2 G per flush.

Saw it last week when also seeing USS Massachusetts. Figured someone had topside duty for long periods and directed the installation.

Normally the hot water comes via a temperature control valve, so it is a choice of cold water or 40C water, not the near boiling water from the hot section of the condenser, that is circulated through a loop of insulated pipe, for both heat and hot water. Same for the showers, getting the hot water from that same regulated valve. Likely converted for a museum to have all water be fresh water, and run into a holding tank, with the tank then also having a float switch and a mulching pump to lift the effluent up high enough to flow out a flexible pipe to the municipal sewer system. You can bet they all have warning signs in each toilet, plus a bin, saying not to flush anything other than toilet paper and poop down, and not to flush any wipes or sanitary products at all. Those pumps are a pain to repair when they have been clogged with the remains of sanitary pads or wipes. Also there will be a second float switch, connected to a shut off valve for the main water flow, just in case there is a leak or the pump jams, so as to keep the tank from flooding the ship. That will also trigger an alarm hopefully.

When shaving step one is put the stopper in the sink (or a sock) fill sink with water.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-z-L6HqrfvRs.html

Okay I guess that video answered all my questions. Lol

Easier to simply cut the old pipe out, then replace with plastic. After all, on a ship you can generally get to all of the pipes, not like they are buried with a 400 year old building over them, like in Europe. However the most common thing is to replace old ceramic pipes with a HDPE one, using a hydraulic head that cracks the old pipe, ceramic or cast iron, and pulls a new line into place in the cavity, and then you drill down to connect the outfalls to it. The lining method is normally reserved for larger pipes, or where you cannot put the machinery in, as you have to flow the lining in, then fill with water, and heat it to set the thermoplastic liner to be rigid. Expensive to do, unlike the hydraulic cracker.

@@SeanBZA Yeah, I understand it would be easier to just replace pipes on a ship, but it is a museum piece after all. Relining would keep the appearance of an old component, while keeping it working like a new one.

@@MrJamesBanana Plastic and a coat of paint looks remarkably the same though. Plus does not involve welding, which is an issue with the tons of very flammable paint used there.

None, salt water flush for the heads and urinals, all going to the holding tank, and then discharged when outside port. Shower and sink to the tanks with no recycling. Museum all now fresh water instead, and then holding tank pumped to city sewer system.

@@SeanBZA Thanks. I thought salt water would quickly corroded metal pipes. Seems to me that would be a maintenance headache not unless the flush some descaler thru the system.

@@caminojohn3240 Cast steel and thick steel pipes, so corrosion is not too much of an issue. Plus all that pipe would be replaced as a matter of course during any yard work, as part of any maintenance activity, put there into the plan for drydocking. Remember only an issue on museum ships where they do not have the big spigot of money to do these sort of things. No descalers needed, just a regular flow so you do not have stagnating water. After all sea water is not like ground water in that it can still dissolve a lot more, and the only deposit it leaves is soluble salt, not limestone.

The destroyer is alright. The superstructure is mostly open. However almost all spaces below the quarterdeck are still under repair and maintenance. Overall, it’s still floating.

Officers may have had Hollywood showers, but on Independence, temp & press fluctuated so often and so violently, I was sfraid too use anything but straight cold. That meant some pretty brief showers.

Yes