Bulletproof marine toilet— Marine Elegance or ???

Without a doubt the best system is headhunter. Problem, besides the price, is that from the head it has to go downhill to the tank. This means that long hose runs to a far away tank just do not work

that said their are pretty bullet proof. In 5 years of heavy use of 7 heads, I had one failure of one check valve. Standard check valve available everywhere

on my personal 53 Hatteras I replaced the VFs with Raritan Elegance. One standard size and one household elongated bowl. Easy install and they work very well. Fresh water of course. The larger bowl uses significantly more water than the standard bowl. No big deal unless you have a very small holding tank.

got both from Defender.

i ve heard many good things about the Raritans. Seem easy to repair if needed.

VFs served me well but they can be more finicky

in any case, after having dealt with diapers, I find marine sanitation to be a (less smelly) breeze

One more thing. When I replaced the 11 year old check valve on that headhunter I was amazed to see how clean the valve and hose were. No deposit whatsoever.

Because HH uses water pressure, and more water, you don’t get all the calcium deposit you get with low water consumption heads like VF.

that has prompted me to use longer flushes on my Raritans.

I think the HH's work best with a water pressure tank very close to the head. Recall this was in their installation instructions.
I still have Raritan Crown heads on Da Bertie. When the time does come (if ever), HH is what I will install.

You can do worse than checking out Planus toilets.
Feadship, Amels, Benetti, Ferretti, Perini (just to name but a few builders using them as OEM installation) can't be all wrong.

That is why a water pressure tank installed closely to the HH system comes to great play.
It charges at the ships 40+psi and when needed, gives up that great woosh wanted for great HH operation.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Water-Worker-2-Gallon-Vertical-Pressure-Tank/1000990872

Unless your talking Black water tank. Then you just need all down hill from the head. BTW, there is a S trap also behind HH seats that raises the incline height if needed.. Contact HH for more install details.

Working on a 72' Hatt, the master heads were below the black tank top.
In the forward engine room, Behind the master heads, near in the bilge, is a black water lift pump (From HH) that transfers from the masters heads up to the ships black tank.

Same on the 84 lazzara. Master and crew go to a 5 gallon tank with a HH transfer pump activated whenever either head is flushed. Complicated but it works. The 110/116 has two 40 gal tanks in the lazarette for both crew heads. The master goes straight to the main tank

I ditched my vacu-flush system this past off season and installed two of the Raritan Elegence units. So far, I am really happy with them. They are a huge improvement over the vacu-flush and fewer components installed under my floor. I went with the option of sea water or fresh water at the flip of a switch. When out multiple days I put them on sea water then flush them with fresh water several times when we are done with our trip. So far, seems to be really working well.

Only 9 blocks away from HH.

gr8trn, I see that you found their US distributor.
I wasn't sure if they had one, so I didn't post their main website.

Just for the records, Planus was established by the founder of Tecma, some time after selling the business to Thetford.
And for many years, Tecma used to be the very best and more reliable/durable marine toilets money could buy, at least on the Eastern side of the Pond.
Just to give an idea, I retrofitted their integrated toilet+macerator in my previous boat in 2000, and 21 years later they are still working as when brand new, with zero problems and no maintenance whatsoever. My current 2004 boat also has Tecma toilets (original installation), and the very same still stands: all working flawlessly, after 17 years.
OTOH, since the takeover some years ago, the new owners of Tecma just milked the business without any further development, so the former owner established Planus, raising the product quality even further.
You really can't go wrong with them, regardless of boat size and constraints - they just keep working, day in, day out.
And also the design, which is crucial when talking of proper gin palaces, is outstanding.

I'm not saying that the other brands mentioned aren't also good - I barely heard the names of some of them.
But I struggle to think in which way they could be better than Planus, or the former Tecma.

Raritans are pretty inexpensive, about $1000 or so. A little less for the standard marine size, a little more for the household size. Probably a lot less than the Planus.

what I really like about headhunter is that there is no pump, no motor, no impeller. Pretty much nothing to go wrong besides an electro valve and an adjustable timer to set the flush durations The only moving part is a 1 1/2” standard check valve. But as stated they need gravity to the tank and about 55/60PSI of water pressure.

they ve used by Hatteras, Viking, Lazzara etc for years