Portable toilets.. How do do they work?

[fmctm1sw]

You know... Those camping and RV toliets. I see some that flush with water and some that use chemicals. I guess it's inevitable you will need to remove this "waste" though. Is it anything high tech or will I be toting crap at one point or another?

[Abbadon]

Hi,

I think you need to pour gasoline on the main containir and burn the "stuff" several minutes to get rid of it. Avoid inhaling the gases though.

Sorry, it is a terrible joke. :P

[gadgetguy]

In general, those toilets have a waste outlet on the outside of the vehicle with a large diameter hose attached. Most campgrounds have a "dump station" that you connect that hose to and empty it out.

[smearbrick1]

I think those chemical toilets are just a bucket with that blue crap in it. I don't know how a bucket of blue crap is supposed to make cleaning out a plastic bucket full of fesces that much more enjoyable, but whatever.

If you check around, you can find toilet seats that are custom built to fit right on the top of your average everyday five-gallon bucket. Just what I've always wanted to do; take a crap in a plastic bucket in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not a fan of camping.

[Guest]

Airline forced to pay for dropping blue ice on boat
Vessel owner wins $3,236
By JONDI GUMZ
Sentinel staff writer

SANTA CRUZ — When two chunks of airplane toilet waste, euphemistically known as "blue ice," smashed through the skylight of Ray Erickson’s boat this winter, he wanted somebody to pay for repairs.

So he tracked down a probable culprit, American Airlines Flight 1950, and sued in small claims court.

He got the court decision in the mail Friday. A judge ruled that Erickson had proved his case and ordered the airline to pay him $3,236 — almost the full amount he had requested.

Mike Fergus, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, was surprised to hear of the decision Saturday.

"I’ll be darned," said Fergus, who hadn’t heard of a successful suit of this nature before.

The airline has 30 days to appeal the ruling.

Airline officials could not be reached to comment Saturday.

Meanwhile, Santa Cruz resident Gus Zesati, who had a chunk of blue ice crash through his roof into his daughter’s bedroom in January, is considering filing a claim, too.

"Hopefully I’ll have the same luck he did," Zesati said Saturday.

Erickson, 73, white-haired and tan, is a no-nonsense retiree who lives on his Chris Craft boat at B dock in the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor.

After his vessel was damaged by blue ice Feb. 10, he expected those responsible would apologize and offer to fix it.

"It just kind of made me mad," said Erickson, who sits on the board of directors for the highly regarded Pasatiempo Golf Club.

He could have been hit on the head, he claims, but luckily he had just stepped away to answer the phone.

He figured he was due $3,486. That’s $1,969 for the skylight, $497 to have the boat hauled out for repair, $150 for five days of storage fees, $120 for a subcontractor and $750 for five days of hotel and restaurant bills.

Then he played detective.

He found out that planes leaving Los Angeles for San Francisco fly over the harbor, so he checked with a travel agent to find out what flights matched the time of the blue ice episode — about 6:15 p.m.

The one that fit was American’s Flight 1950, a plane that takes off from Los Angeles at 5:20 p.m. and arrives in San Francisco at 6:32 p.m.

He called the FAA seven times after he originally reported the incident but never got a call about the outcome of the agency’s investigation.

He also called the airline, which is based in Fort Worth, Tex.

"They never would deny it," he said. "They just didn’t return my calls."

To file the claim, he had to identify American’s "designated agent," an obscure piece of information that he located on the airline’s Web site.

"I was going to give up many times," he said.

Friends persuaded him to stick with it.

Filing the claim cost $28.

He made his case to Judge Stephen Siegel in four hand-written pages May 22. He attached the airline schedules, repair quotes, newspaper accounts and a letter from Steve Schneider of the county Environmental Health Department confirming the chunks as toilet waste.

A few days before the court date, he says he got a call from American, offering to settle the matter for $1,700 — half of what he wanted.

Erickson refused, insisting on the full amount.

"Why would I want to go for less?" he asked.

In court, he wondered if he made the right move.

George Warner, who represented the airline, argued that the plane arrived early in San Francisco that day and presented computer printouts as evidence. He also presented maintenance records to show that no leaks were reported or repaired that month.

The judge did his own research. He found that the DC-9 in American’s fleet, according to airplane manufacturer Boeing, was inferior to the newer 717 because it eliminated blue ice problems in the older jets.

He ordered the airline to pay for everything but Erickson’s claim for meals.

The standard in small claims court is "a preponderance of evidence," not proof "beyond a reasonable doubt," the judge’s ruling pointed out. "Logic suggests no other reasonable explanation for the damage done to the plaintiff’s boat."

Erickson wondered why he hadn’t heard from the FAA, but Fergus said "it’s very difficult" for the agency to "nail the aircraft" that drops toilet waste.

"They have to figure out what aircraft was over that area and the altitude and speed," he said. "Hundreds of other airplanes fly that route, too."

Fergus did not know whether the investigation had concluded, deferring to the FAA’s Flight Standards office in San Jose, which was closed Saturday.

He insisted that the agency’s top priority is safety.

"If the end of our investigation shows the boat owner’s finding is confirmed by the FAA, then they will have the feds on them," he said.

[ZAPPER]

Better than the blue ice, is the idiots that tried to siphon gas out of the RV toilet tank! Not just an urban legend anymore.

[smearbrick1]

Better than the blue ice, is the idiots that tried to siphon gas out of the RV toilet tank! Not just an urban legend anymore.

I bet they were both surprised and severely disappointed.

[Guest]

What's the last thing every redneck says before dying?

"Watch this"

for some reason the rv story reminds me of that joke.

[Doramius]

Blue ice is technically sanitary. Just wash thoroughly. Its not the normal blue chemical you normally see in buses and johnny-on-the-spots. There's another chemical that gets added to it and it hardens the waste matter. There's a bay that opens and contains this solid matter. Some of the older Douglas airplanes had some malfunctions on their waste bays and fragments of waste had been sucked out. If the plane is high enough of one of these pieces to reach terminal velocity it can cause serious injury if a person gets struck by it. Or damage to property in this case.