Wag Bag Stench Removal

[Guest]

I came back from a trip last week in which I needed to use my wag bag toilet system. I did not need to use the storage bucket for the feces filled wag bags, just the open topped bucket that is lined with the wag bag that supports the toilet seat. And only briefly, for a couple days use.

Wag bags, despite being in a double zip lock bag inside an outer bag, stink, and so did the plastic 5 gallon toilet seat stand.

Not of feces, but of the wag bag and activated poo powder within the bag liner. It stinks with a disgusting odor akin to a recently disinfected porta potty. Not a problem in use, but the empty plastic bucket itself stinks long after it is emptied.

Herein lies the stench dilemma, I needed to transport the support bucket home in the truck. I do not want it up front in the cab for a nine hour drive, and I do not want it in the back under the cap where I make my bed while travelling. This is even more of an issue when driving home on cross country trips, especially taking driver and sleeper shifts.

I had access to an outside utility sink for a couple days before I returned and tried to destenchify the bucket using a variety of cleaning products available where I was staying. Dish soap (nope), car washing soap (nope), bleach (nope), bleach and stain remover (nope). I let it sit full of bleach and water for several hours before scrubbing it. Nope.

Whatever that stench is it has a miraculous ability to cling to plastic.

In the end I found some Febreze antimicrobial spray and doused the bucket with that. It actually seemed to work. Granted the bucket had already been washed five times, but it smelled mostly of Febreze for a day or two and is now essentially odorless.

I need to try this on the gasket sealed bucket that holds the filled wag bags in the canoe. That bucket does not stink with the lid screwed tightly on, but woo wee does it stink inside even months later. Years later; I just opened it.

EDIT: I am learning how to channel my inner Mattie Ross and use no contractions. Can nots, I wills and it is do not come naturally. The urge to use apostrophes and quotation marks is hard to overcome.

 

[DanOver]

Shakley Basic H2. It is a biodegradable surficant and cleaner that does about 100 things including keep the mosquitoes off of you. comes in a concentrate. 2 tsp. will make 20 oz. of spray. It will take care of the smell if you let it soak overnight. I take this with on every trip to clean me, my gear, etc. I use it on my dog instead of frontline. Nontoxic, you can spray it in your mouth. A bottle of concentrate will go for $14.oo.

 

[sweeper]

vinegar?

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Never used the system. Are we talking about 5 gallon buckets? If so, my tenth solution for a stinking bucket would be to tie it on top of my vehicle. My first through ninth solutions would be to throw it away and buy a new one. Five gallon buckets are readily available at Walmart, Lowes and Home Depot for less than $3.

I strongly disagree about the use of contractions. They make reading more friendly, fluid and hence easier. I even began to use contractions in formal academic writing upon the urging of my legal writing professor.

 

[Guest]

Vinegar! I shoulda thought of that.

I was cleaning the toilet seat bucket stench while at the Tortoise Reserve, and there

 

[Guest]

Note. This post was also a test to see if apostrophe and quotation mark posting complication can be overcome by writing a reply in Microsoft Word, copying that text to Notepad, and copying and posting that to Canoe Tripping.

(Nope, but I will now channel my inner Mattie Ross and try to finish that post sans any contractions. It will take me at least one beer to go back and try to find and remove them all. And I have yet to find them all on the first removal try.

To continue, uncontracturally:

and there is always household cleaning vinegar there that for scrubbing scale off aquaria.

I will try the vinegar experiment soon. The gasket sealed bucket that nestles inside the open topped toilet seat stand bucket absolutely reeks of porta potty disinfectant stench. Enough so that I keep the lid screwed on tightly even in storage.

Vinegar would be a ubiquitous solution (pun not intended), available and inexpensive in the nearest grocery or country store to the take out, and something I would not be leery of dumping out on the ground when done. Seriously, driving that stanky bucket back home has been a Tripping Truck issue, even when it was tightly wrapped in a plastic bag.

Some groceries and big-box stores sell large plastic jugs of Household cleaning vinegar for less than 4 bucks

I also need to see if in Word to Notepad various length dimensions will post as fractions, or one point fives. One and one half inches test written below as one point five inches and as one backslash one half inches.

1.5

(Nope, cut off at the quotation mark after the 1.5

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I'm behind the upgrade times and must've missed that there's a problem with "quote" marks and apostrophe's. We'll see when I post this.

And I guess we're not talkin' about $2.75 "five gallon" buckets.

On edit: no problems.

 

[Robin]

I strongly disagree about the use of contractions. They make reading more friendly, fluid and hence easier.

I think Mike is referring to the fact that after the recent update he is having issues with using contractions. Seems every time he uses one it deletes his sentence, or something like that. Kim, the IT guy has been working on it, along with the cell phone issue and one other minor issue.
Anyone else having issues like this?

 

[lowangle al]

I came back from a trip last week in which I needed to use my wag bag toilet system. I did not need to use the storage bucket for the feces filled wag bags,.

Unfortunately I found out what a wag bag is while eating scrapple yesterday morning.

I like Glens idea to throw it out, it seems to me that you wouldn't even have to empty it that way.

 

[Guest]

Never used the system. Are we talking about 5 gallon buckets? If so, my tenth solution for a stinking bucket would be to tie it on top of my vehicle. My first through ninth solutions would be to throw it away and buy a new one. Five gallon buckets are readily available at Walmart, Lowes and Home Depot for less than $3.

I am sure you have a sense of how frugal I am, so repurchasing even a 3 dollar bucket every time I need to use the wag bag toilet system would be anathema to me. And, if I was planning to stop again a days drive down the road and wanted to have the toilet system available I would rather have that bucket already available.

The open topped toilet seat bucket stand that I have fits the snap on Reliance lid with some forcefully secure snap, some five gallon bucket openings vary a bit in diameter.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/ER-Emerg...-gallon-Bucket-By-Reliance-Products/240679778

I have that portable toilet system dialed in to my open boat storage liking, and everything needed except the snap on seat nestles together.

The open topped five gallon bucket is lined with a disposable wag bag while in use. There is a two and a half gallon gasket seal pail, used as a filled wag bag container, that fits snuggly inside the toilet seat bucket for nestled transport. The gasket seal is largely effective at containing the wag bag stank with the lid screwed on.

I only have a few of those ex laboratory chemical pails available, so those are not to be dumpster material. FWIW the two and a half gallon pail held a surprising volume of filled wag bags, all of the deposits made by four people over the course of an eleven day trip.

That two and a half gallon pail fits so snuggly that it will only seat down inside the bucket level with the top, leaving five inches of vacant space at the bottom of the bucket that contains a small dry bag holding the toilet paper, spare wag bags, bleach powder and hand sanitizer. Maybe I should throw in some reading material.

Everything except the slender lightweight toilet seat lid the whole kit nestles in one five gallon bucket and can be carried with one hand. It beats the heck out of the heavy, bulky, stinky diamond plate toilets rented by western outfitters.

While a toilet system is permit required on some western rivers I use it a few times a year even on the east coast. One of my favorite canoe camping places is Hammocks Beach. There is a fancy bathhouse building there, one which I have yet to visit. My preferred campsites are a good mile from that nearest crapter, and as a twice a morning guy I am not walking four miles before and after breakfast.

Oddly enough one of todays shop projects is to make a second nestling wag bag buckets system. For friend Joel to take to the Everglades. Some backcountry sites are quote partially open, which likely means the portapot is still missing post hurricane. Given the frequency of some backcountry site visitation, especially this winter with many sites still closed, having a portable toilet might come in handy, especially guiding clients.

There is not much to the making of that system. In order for the screw top pail fit properly flush I just need to cut off the bail and file down a couple little nubbins of plastic.

Pause, only took a couple minutes.

I strongly disagree about the use of contractions. They make reading more friendly, fluid and hence easier. I even began to use contractions in formal academic writing upon the urging of my legal writing professor.

Yes, writing without using contractions, quotation marks or other symbols is hard to do. Especially if you have been doing so for 50 years, and tend to type as you hear things as spoken word in your mind.

I am slowly learning how to do so, but I wish all of my previous posts did not post update appear screwed up by weird symbols.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Some groceries and big-box stores sell large plastic jugs of Household cleaning vinegar for less than 4 bucks

As a general principle, I think it's a good idea to explore different ideas for cleaning stains and stenches off plastic products. It could come in handy, for example, for my inflatable sex doll.

However, in Clan Cameron we were taught not to spend $4 on chemicals to cleanse a contaminated product if it can be replaced by a brand new one for $3.25 or $2.98.

Personally, if I were using a wag bag system when paddling in the desert paradise of Aztlan, the used bag and bucket would never leave Aztlan. Many disposal methods are available. The most archeologically interesting would be to bury the bucket a few feet under the surface. There, it wouldn't bother the resident scorpions, tarantulas, rattlesnakes or occasional wandering drug cartel soldier. More importantly, when it is discovered 500 years from now, it will be considered an archeological treasure of mythic 21st century paddling history, and would probably be put on display in a famous museum, thereby giving joy to millions of robots and the few remaining homo sapiens.

As for the more serious issue, Punctuationgate, is your operating system and browser up to date, and have you tried different browsers? It's common for new application programs such as vBulletin not to be compatible with some older versions of operating systems and prerequisite browsers. I'm also not clear why you would go from MS to Notepad to here. That could introduce incompatibilities between MS and Notepad. I'd try going from those word applications directly to here.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Mike, try the repasting-while-in-edit-mode workaround solution that is mentioned by jwagner in the OP in this thread:

https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=300356

The interesting thing is if you go back to edit your post (which was cutoff) and repaste the original text, it now saves in its entirety.

If that works, then the vBulletin solution might be the one jwagner states in post #6.

 

[Guest]

However, in Clan Cameron we were taught not to spend $4 on chemicals to cleanse a contaminated product if it can be replaced by a brand new one

In Clan McCrea we were taught not to spend four dollars on a new bucket when we already had a perfectly good one in the truck. And, not wanting to stop and shop, to avoid Walmart or Home Depot unless absolutely necessary, especially when roaming from wild place to wild place. The fluorescent lighting kills any remaining vibe.

Personally, if I were using a wag bag system when paddling in the desert paradise of Aztlan, the used bag and bucket would never leave Aztlan. Many disposal methods are available. The most archeologically interesting would be to bury the bucket a few feet under the surface.

The poo filled wag bags go into the first dumpster or trash can available, even if that means cruising through a Mickey D parking lot. I have asked before disposal at Texs Outfitters on the Green each time and been told Nah, just put the wag bags in our dumpster.

Filled wag bags are transported as briefly as possible. The just so nestled bucket system, meh, I may need that again before I see home. I have started travelling with that 5 gallon bucket system in the truck most of the time.

Last trip at the Tortoise Reserve there were 13 friends present and one toilet. I would have woken half of them with my O dark thirty mornings, so I set the comfy wag bag bucket up in the back forty. And then the overused toilet broke.

Heroes come in many styles, some pack their own toilet.

In RV world folks who not have an on-board waste storage system do the same, wag bags into the dumpster. It can not be any worse than a million Pampers or Huggies .

There, it wouldn't bother the resident scorpions, tarantulas, rattlesnakes or occasional wandering drug cartel soldier. More importantly, when it is discovered 500 years from now, it will be considered an archeological treasure of mythic 21st century paddling history, and would probably be put on display in a famous museum, thereby giving joy to millions of robots and the few remaining homo sapiens.

I do not think you will get 500 years out of a plastic bucket. Or even 5 years.

Last trip out west we drove 70 miles of dirt road to collect a couple 5 gallon buckets left buried in the desert. My companion had done a 28 day self-supported backing trip in Escalante two years before, depositing sealed 5 gallon cans of food, water and supplies at access points along the way before hand.

He reburied the mostly empty buckets after resupply, and some stuff he left within was still viable, including lithium batteries and powder drink mixes. The buckets, despite bring buried, were on their last brittle legs.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Testing a sentence originally written in MS Word with

On first edit, repeating same sentence but pasting into this edit box: Testing a sentence originally written in MS Word with

Second edit, writing same sentence directly into the edit box (no pasting from Word): Testing a sentence originally written in MS Word with "double quotation marks", 'single quotation marks', commas, and slash/es//.

Third edit: It seems that pasting from Word into either the Reply box here or the Edit box here cuts off the sentence at double quote marks and maybe single quote marks and slashes. I'd have to do more repeats just to test single quote marks and slashes. There is no problem with any of this punctuation if I just type directly into the Reply or Edit boxes.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Sorry to interrupt your thread, Mike, but this is interesting.

I will now paste this sentence from Word ending with the letter X surrounded by single quote marks

First edit: X didn't show up. In this Edit box,

I will now paste this sentence from Word ending with the letter X surrounded by single quote marks

Second edit: The 'X' (which I'm now directly typing and not pasting from Word) got cut off both in the Reply and Edit boxes.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

One more test, of slash marks.

I will now paste this sentence from Word ending with the letter X surrounded by slash marks /X/

First edit: It worked, no cutoff. After the colon I'm pasting from Word a series of X's surrounded by slash marks and then asterisks:

I will now paste this sentence from Word ending with several letters X surrounded by slash marks and then by asterisks /X/X/X/X*X*X*

Second edit: the pasted slashes and asterisks didn't cause a cut off. Therefore, without testing all punctuation marks, it appears so far that, when pasting from Word, only double and single quote marks (apostrophes) cause a cut off.

Back to stinking wag bags.

 

[Guest]

The vinegar rinse worked very well on the truly stanky screw topped bucket that holds the used wag bags. Since I keep the lid screwed tight on that one the stench has nowhere to escape. It did smell of vinegar for an open topped day, but even that smell quickly dissipated.

The unused wag bags themselves do not stink. The stank occurs as soon as the first deposit is made and the enzymatic poo powder within the wag bag begins to work on the offerings.

Having a regulation permitted toilet system available while travelling is well worth the 5 gallon bucket volume for the full nestled kit. Now that the residual stench factor is eliminated I doubt I will travel in the tripping truck without one.

I made a second nestled bucket toilet system. It needs only friend Joel choice of rope bails installed on both buckets, rope bails being much easier than wire or plastic bails in canoe bucket storage. I foresee that portable toilet being exceptionally handy given his freebie campsite preferences.

I also realized that there was something missing in the nestled dry bag of toilet necessities. Some reading material, a slender paperback suitable for on the spot reading. Lets see, what should it be? Something we have multiple copies of, in case it is desperation used when the Charmin runs out.

The Little Prince? e.e. cummings 37 poems?

Maybe James Allens As a Man Thinketh? Wonderful little book, now 114 years old

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_a_Man_Thinketh

BTW, I had discovered the advantages of having spray bottle of water, soapy water and alcohol available in the shop. Now added to them, a spray bottle of vinegar. Thanks Sweeper.

 

[sweeper]

You're welcome, that'll be a quart'ah.

I don't need reading material. It takes me longer to do the paperwork.

 

[Chip]

Now that you have restored the bucket to spring-breeze-freshness, I have a suggestion, just in case the western-states' zebra-muscle police make you use all the vinegar to wash your hull. You mentioned the bucket has a nestling spot in the canoe. Perhaps the bucket can ride in the canoe on the tripping truck rather than within the TT. Figuring out a way to secure it there for highway riding shouldn't be an issue for a clever guy with ample supplies of cord, webbing, netting, and velcro.

 

[Guest]

Now that you have restored the bucket to spring-breeze-freshness, I have a suggestion, just in case the western-states' zebra-muscle police make you use all the vinegar to wash your hull.

I am not sure a vinegar wipe would do much. After a trial test using an attention to detail hot water power wash on a pontoon boat the testers found quagga mussels creeping out from crevices in the trim the next morning.

No joke, the zebra mussel, or worse quagga mussel, spread is a real concern. They will be everywhere soon, eventually including the Columbia River and drainages. That will be a gazillion dollar problem.

And who knows what other invasives? The local trout stream has rock snot,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didymosphenia_geminata

and now has New Zealand mud snails

http://news.maryland.gov/dnr/2017/09...npowder-river/

Crap, that is just my short stretch of homeriver. Those are both probably attributable to fly fishermans felt soled waders, but . . . . .

Having read how high the fines are for passing a boat inspection station, yes canoes and kayaks too, at State or Province borders I will try to do my part and be honest, not just Scouts honor swear that the canoe has not been in the water in the last 30 days.

I have read that some States now require a clean boat inspection permit before paddling. Double crap, which States, where do I get that permit?

A lot is known about the spread of invasives. Still the best book I have read this year, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...he-great-lakes

And a lot is not known, especially with new uninvestigated invasives showing up every year. New Zealand freaking mud snails? That That is a new one on me. I wonder if they would help keep my turtle tanks clean.

You mentioned the bucket has a nestling spot in the canoe. Perhaps the bucket can ride in the canoe on the tripping truck rather than within the TT. Figuring out a way to secure it there for highway riding shouldn't be an issue for a clever guy with ample supplies of cord, webbing, netting, and velcro.

The filled wag bag container has ridden up there briefly before being emptied, but I have a thing about tying stuff inside the canoe on the roof racks unless absolutely necessary. Especially on long highway trips when I have designed storage space available inside the tripping truck.

If it less stinky than me after a long trip it can ride securely inside.

Plus I want the entire nestled bucket and necessities available as a one hand grab and go. That may be a rule, along with setting up the portable toilet in areas where it is required BEFORE it is needed, and not scurrying around the first night with flashlight and clenched sphincter at 2am, desperately hoping to make it in time.

I was so close. I still blame the free continental breakfast at Motel 6.