Composting toilets and Permaculture

once said..

the secund most stupid invention by man was the watertoilet.. nr one is the combusting engine car..

you take one amount of problem waste and dillute it with tenfolds amounts of water, ending up with a hughe amount of problem...

My family have compost toilet in the cottage, it works fine, no smell.
For regular houses I would invest in a modern and sophisticated system with large tanks, its the emptiing that is the problem..

for crisis there is easy cheap systems that fits into a small corner that will do fine for some weeks/months. With two chambers.  Get a sitting arangement that separates the wet from the dry before they mix. Mix with lot of tree bark, and let the proces finish in seperate chambers. Add some extension chambers (its just big buckets with lids) They have to have some heath (room temperature or more ) to compost.
  ...and make sure you have some place to go outside to get rid of the waste.. ( a deep hole in the ground...)

Dont use on vegetabels before many years have passed with composting.

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by: urdar @ Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 18:34:09 PM UTC

Here is some links :)

DIY:
http://www.weblife.o...

Biolet:
http://www.biolet.co...

Envirolet
http://www.envirolet...
http://compostingtoi...

Note that some of the DIY, laks the ventilation pipe, Its Essential! and very easy to build.. It makes the air go down the toilet seat and up the pipe above the house, no ventilator is needed, but it helps the process (small solar powered ones like the type used on caravans are fine)

Also the toilets seat that is shaped with a urin collector in front that prevents the mixing is a hughe step forward. It not that easy to build your self.. and it need to be in plastic or metall.

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by: urdar @ Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 18:45:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

not that hard

I've used a variety of home made composting toilets on and off for many years.  A good book is "Humanure", a second one is "The Toilet Papers".  Humanure is better.

A number of years ago I saw an urban house on a small lot in which they family only used composting toilets and had for some years.  They had removed the regular toilet plumbing, and used a white bucket with a toiled lid on it.  For composting material they got shredded stuff the city shreds up.  Layered that after each use, and when full, dumped it on a big composting pile sided with pallets and chicken wire.

THey had two piles. By the time the first pile was big, they started on the second pile.  By the time the second pile was big, the first pile had shrunk down to nicely composted material which they used on fruit trees (they had a few.)

Sawdust also works well as long as it's raw wood - not kiln dried lumber, since all the microbes are fried.  Leaf mold, leaves, or regular dirt with plenty of organic material in it work fine too.

Trench latrines work very well if one has enough property and a privacy booth can be easily constructed. 

There is no need to buy an expensive composting toilet unless one really wants to.  Also (we looked into them), many require electricity to function.

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by: Be Well @ Wed Dec 13, 2006 at 02:11:49 AM UTC

Sawdust also works well as long as it's raw wood - not kiln dried lumber

Is 2 x 6 framing lumber from Home Depot raw or dried?  Where can you buy the right kind of saw dust?

You want perspective. I want perspective. Let's talk. We don't have to agree on every thing. If we do, one of us is redundant.

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by: anon.yyz @ Wed Dec 13, 2006 at 02:33:07 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

finding sawdust

If you live anywhere near the country, look for a sawmill (there are a few still around) or anyplace that sells firewood (not the bundled kind, but where you buy it by cord).

Off-topic from toilets but on the subject of sawmills, if you do find one in your area, see if they have a junk pile you can take things from. There's one near where I am that has a large pile of bits and scraps. It's mostly oak and other hardwoods, not dried at all yet, often cut into fireplace-sized pieces. One year I got a good amount of this. It was free (just trash from the point-of-view of the sawmill), and after a year of drying it was fantastic firewood.

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by: gardner @ Wed Dec 13, 2006 at 04:33:41 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Sometimes those sawmills will give you free mulch! n/t

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by: Greenmom @ Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 02:53:36 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

now Would this scale?

Daydreaming again: what would be THE best page for people to print on newspapers on day one (or two) of the pandemic, so that millions will be able to use this stuff, for everyone's benefit?

You arm yourself to the teeth just in case.  You don't leave the gun near the baby's hand.

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by: lugon @ Wed Dec 13, 2006 at 09:43:11 AM UTC