Things are getting desperate. This morning Nico brought Thierry (our plumber for the house renovations) to come to the barge to look at the toilet. After much head-scratching, he concluded that the outlet pipe was badly blocked (we already suspected this) and should probably be replaced entirely. Unfortunately the pipe size for that type of marine toilet (25mm) was not a common size in France where most pipes and fittings around that size are 32mm. Fortunately, Iain Noble had some 25mm pipe left over from another repair job, and offered it to us to do the job. Now all we had to do was find how to disconnect the outlet pipe from the blackwater tank. We cut a fist-sized hole in the bathroom floor under the toilet bowl and used the flexible tube camera to try tracking where the outlet pipe disappeared to. We also held the iPhone under the floor (and hoped we did not drop it into the bilge) to get a photo of the connection, at right, amongst many other pipes.

We had previously tried to find a trapdoor through the floor to the bilge area, but could not find one. So we concluded that we would have to make our own. From the various camera shots, we concluded that the blackwater tank connection was probably under the front bedroom, so we proceeded to cut a hole in the floor to make a trapdoor (after checking with pilot holes that no pipes or cabling were close to the underside of the floor). We were quite happy with the finished product (at left below), until we realised that the connection to the blackwater tank was further back in the barge. We then went searching for where it might be and, by chance, I tugged at the corner of the linoleum on the bathroom floor (which I had previously assumed was glued to the bathroom floorboards). After a bit of tugging, the linoleum lifted to reveal a trapdoor (at right below), directly above the connection to the blackwater tank!! So obvious in hindsight, but even the barge manufacturer, when asked, could not tell us where the trapdoor might be.

After that, the rest was all relatively simple. We disconnected the outlet pipe from the blackwater tank, cut the new pipe to length, cut a new hole in the bathroom floor for the outlet pipe (to allow the new toilet to sit closer to the back wall), and then connected everything up. Plugged in the 220v power, and everything worked like a charm (-:

The old outlet pipe was totally clogged with solid calcaire (limestone) and would have taken forever to clean, so we were glad that we finally decided to replace the whole thing, and very glad that Iain had some spare 25mm pipe in his storeroom.

In the afternoon, we went to pay BUT for the beds, but the new credit card still didn’t have enough credit to be able to pay by card - French banks seem very eager to take your money, but very reluctant to give it back! This was confirmed later in the day when Rita went to withdraw some cash from the bank and found that they had run out of money!! She was told to come back tomorrow after the money had been delivered to the bank. Last time it was the pizza shop running out of dough; now it’s the bank (-: