Anyone ever unblocked a saniflo?

[Muststopeating]

Help! DH left at 5.30am and won't be back for 2 weeks.

We are in the middle of an extension and our only toilet is now a macerator that we've never had a problem with in 3 years.

Obviously because I'm now 33 weeks pregnant, on my own with 2 very young children and down to one toilet its decided to pack in.

I suspect a blockage (likely me with too much toilet paper when I cleaned the toilet yesterday, we are dilligent about not putting anything else down it).

Anyway. I have turned off the power and have access to the box directly, have removed the top pipe, taken off the lid, scooped out some of the delightful water but now I cannot for the life of me figure out to get the lid off the blade housing (none of the videos show how the clips work).

Does anyone have any ideas? I do have pictures but they are gross so won't attach in OP.

Please help, otherwise I will have spent my morning covered in poo for nothing! (Cannot phone a plumber... literally no spare money given extension and these things cost a fortune to have fixed cos so disgusting).

Hopefully you have it fixed now, what a horrid situation! Do you regularly descale it with an appropriate macerator product? If not, a soak with the solution might help free it if you are unable to take apart.

Thank you! I have fixed it! Honestly, the hardest thing was getting the initial lid and then the lid for the blade casing off! That was horrendous!

The first time the whole thing was full of water and so really hard to see, but could see that it didn't appear to be choked. Put it back together again and sealed it up to test. Still didn't work properly. Started to panic that the pump had died and after all that disgustingness I'd have to get a plumber out after all.

Went back to try something else, by which point it had drained off (presumably after the initial lot I'd cleared, but was draining rather than pumping). This time I could see properly into the blades and found a small cuboid of plastic. No idea what it was and can't even blame the kids as we haven't been here while the boiler and water filters etc were being replaced. My money is on something that fell out a builders pocket!

But it works! And as disgusting as it was (oh the wretching)... especially given I currently can't even go into a toilet after someone has done a poo at the moment thanks to the pregnancy, I now am feeling quite pleased with myself.

Well done, after looking on YouTube I was too scared to do mine because of the blades - I'd absent mindedly cleaned the toilet seat with a Detol wipe and flushed it. Cost me £270 to get it fixed!

Well done @Muststopeating I was going to suggest you googled the make and model instruction manual.

@Salome61 oh goodness. That was exactly what I was afraid of... and would only have been worse on a Sunday!

For future reference, as long as you turn off the power and use a tool/implement to remove the blockage the blades are perfectly avoidable. But I can safely say it is one of the nastier DIY jobs that you can do!

@redastherose i did try that and Googling videos but apart from one exceptionally helpful video the manuals etc seem to be very thin on the ground.

Unfortunately, the very useful video's one downside was that it skipped the part where you take off the blade housing lid (it was just sitting lose on top).

This is a bit late - but the one piece of advice given to boaters who have macerating toilets is to have a lidded bin beside the toilet. Nothing that hasn’t passed through your colon goes in the loo. I do mean nothing. The rest goes on the fire or in the black rubbish bag.

Glad it is sorted now op.

Oh well done you!

Gosh, well done. I was going to suggest burning the house down and claiming on the insurance, but you won't need to now!

OP we keep some caravan toilet chemicals to hand, i know it was plastic but like you say, even paper is sometimes too much
Also, i don't clean clean it (pisses me off so much) as putting bleach in makes something shrink or something and then the toilet repeatedly runs the macerator.
Just spray bleach and flush it almost straight away - use pink caravan chems to clean