By Francesco Lo Presti
Just picture it — the excitement and relaxation of a vacation. Escaping your daily life by spending time at a resort or even on the water in one of those beautiful villas. What if I said you didn’t have to fly to the Caribbean or Maldives to experience it?
In Chambly, Que, a neighbourhood called Eau Villa offers a floating house experience. Eau Villa has four floating mini houses, each with over 245 sq. ft. of space and a panoramic view of the Richelieu River. Now, you’re probably thinking one of two things. One, where do I sign up? And two, what the heck does this have to do with plumbing? Well, the answer is that these floating mini homes, while luxurious looking, presented some challenges regarding its plumbing setup.
The Eau Villa project enlisted the help of Mathieu Hamelin, an installation contractor with Bauhaus Habitat. To date, Bauhaus Habitat has worked on six floating homes, and they are in the process of working on 20 more. They have also done projects regarding tiny homes on trailers and plumbing systems on boats.
Before beginning work on a floating home, Hamelin and the team at Bauhaus Habitat start by “constructing a 3D model of what the homes look like. We then order the structure for the home and assemble the structure, panels, and roofing. We then will do the plumbing and electricity simultaneously,” explains Hamelin.
As you can imagine, projects of this calibre would challenge any contractor. Regarding the Eau Villa project, “The first challenge we faced was balancing everything correctly since these homes would be on a deck on the water. Secondly, arguably the most challenging, was the programming of the black, grey and fresh water,” explains Hamelin.
“Both of these forms of water are contaminated, but blackwater is far more contaminated than greywater. In this project, the challenge was figuring out how and where we could store the black and grey water,” says Hamelin.
The solution
To solve this problem, Hamelin and his team found their solution utilizing a Saniflo toilet. “We decided on the Sanimarin 4 toilet due to the ease of use and compatibility with black and gray water,” said Hamelin.
The Sanimarin line of toilets is an automatic marine toilet typically designed for boats and floating homes. The toilets “operate with a macerating and pumping system that grinds waste into small particles and pumps it through a small pipe into a blackwater holding tank,” explains Matt St. Louis, product manager with Saniflo.
St. Louis also adds that the “toilet features a half horsepower board inside the bowl, which connects to a little control box on the wall. The water supply, which is a half-inch hose, is then connected to all the other plumbing connections. This toilet is also automatically vented and can work with 20 psi.”
These toilets have the same bowl and motor design as the SaniCompact, but as St. Louis explains, “The difference with the Sanimarin is both the circuit board and parts are glazed and coated with rust-proof chemicals.”
In this project, the Sanimarin 4 toilet allowed Hamelin to place the blackwater tank on a floating deck outside the house. The floating deck featured two large barrels that the toilets plugged directly into. This system was then piped back to a bigger tank located on the marina.
In Hamelin’s application for the Eau Villa mini homes, the unit receives water from the home’s water supply. Waste is then macerated and pumped out of the unit 12 ft. into a septic tank via a small-diameter PVC discharge line. “Additionally, users can control water consumption with a two-position rocker switch that commands the unit either to add water with the built-in freshwater pump or to macerate and pump out waste,” explains Hamelin.
Since these floating homes’ plumbing systems won’t be connected to electricity, “The Sanimarin was the best choice for this project because of the 12-volt operation. Using this product in the home was a no-brainer because the plan for the home is to utilize solar panels,” said Hamelin. St. Louis also adds, “The benefit of these toilets is that they work on portable batteries, which is ideal in these projects where no electricity is connected. These toilets can easily remotely power a two-piece bathroom.”
Dealing with space constraints
According to Hamelin, the Sanimarin 4 toilet was ideal because they had limited space in the 36-inch by 72-inch bathroom, “The Sanimarin fixture is a sleek, one-piece macerating unit that makes installing plumbing a simple task in tight spots. The fact that it flushes and resembles a traditional toilet was also very appealing,” explains Hamelin.
For the shower, Hamelin chose to use a Sanipump because it also used 12-volt and was size-friendly. “Since these homes are tiny, we needed to figure out where to place the pump. We needed the pump to be in a spot that can work well, and we also needed to be able to push the water out of the house and not have all the pipes be seen,” said Hamelin. “All the plumbing was done in the walls. In this project, it was easier for us to have the wall plumbing go up and down, hence why the Sanimarin toilet was selected.
The reason is that the toilet will be placed next to the wall with all the piping. From there, the piping would go up the wall to the ceiling, under the beds and outside.”
When installing toilets in boat or yacht projects, the contractor must take into consideration sea level. “You must ensure you are piping high enough over the sea level. But in these floating homes, all you need to focus on is having the plumbing high enough if there’s a backup, it won’t back up into the water.”
Since installing the toilets, Hamelin adds that there are no issues with the units and that the toilets operate very quietly. However, Hamelin acknowledged that, “Since these are rental homes, it’s sometimes hard to manage what people flush down the toilet. So, there have been times where we’ve had to go, disassemble the toilet, and clear the blockage.”