Alternative toilets?

[Gardenarian]

Does anyone have a compost toilet, incinolet, outhouse, or other alternative toilet arrangement? I'd love to hear about how it's worked out for you.

Our water is expensive, and to precious to be flushed away! Also - maybe TMI - but pee is rich in nitrogen and good for gardens!

BTW, when my dh was a kid they had an outhouse but they called it a "chick sale" (sp?) That was a new one on me!

[Merski]

We had a Bowli NE composting toilet at our camp for years before running water and sewer lines came through our area. It served us well for several years. We did have to drain the liquid into a gravel filled dry well and sometimes there were little black flies. This still was an improvement over a poorly built outhouse though none of us minded the concept of using one. Once we got running water in we sold the Bowli to someone to take to Maine and install in a cabin.

[herbgeek]

My brother has an incinolet at his camp in Vermont. My big beef with it is that it takes about 90 minutes per cycle. If you don't wait the full 90 minutes before someone needs to go again, you risk overflowing the containment device. I have to go every 90 minutes just me, never mind if there are several people staying in the cabin too. Its loud and it smells "off" (not like pee, but still unpleasant). He has a chimney for venting, but that just means it blows down to the beach where everyone gets to smell it.

[pcooley]

For several months a few years ago, we were using a bucket toilet system a la Joseph Jenkins "The Humanure Handbook". I believe if you Google it, you come up with his website, and there's a free PDF of his book there. I'm convinced the bucket toilet and the hot composting is the way to go.

It was neat, fun and didn't smell, except for that one moment of emptying it into the compost pile before covering it with straw.

The only problem was our toddler son couldn't remember to keep the bathroom door shut, so our dogs would go on little excavation trips into the buckets. Now THAT wasn't pleasant. Our son was also a little squeamish about it. My wife and daughter were fine with it. For some reason, it bothered my son.

And then we got chickens and keeping them out of the hot compost became a chore too.

So we abandoned it. But if it were not for dogs, toddlers and chickens, we would probably still be using Joseph Jenkins's system.

[loosechickens]

We both used and built composting toilets in Mexico, have a number of friends with commercial composting toilets, and have even had experience with the humanure systems. We volunteered in National Forests with commercial sized composting toilets.

They are fine.....scientifically designed, they bear little resemblance to the old "outhouse". Properly maintained, they produce pathogen free compost, with virtually no odor or unpleasantness.

The one thing that I can see that affects many in the "mainstream society" is an ICK factor, but anyone with an open mind and actual experience with a well designed system seems to become a fan. And, in this country, most seem to prefer the "flush and forget" system, regardless of how ecologically unsound and wasteful of water it may be. So that attitude needs to be overcome before people are usually willing to install or use a system.

In some areas, building codes and requirement for septic systems can be a problem,and an impediment to installation of a composting system, so be sure to check with your local government.

Personally I prefer the designs that do not require fans or heating elements, which are factors in many of the commercial systems, and in extreme climates with long, cold winters, composting is slow and sometimes absent unless the bins can be located in at least a somewhat heated area, but even those limitation can be overcome.

Lots of info out there on the internet, and I think even some forums....good luck.

[rodeosweetheart]

Not a chick sale, a "Charles "Chic" Sale (August 25, 1885, - November 7, 1936), was an American actor and vaudevillian. Named at birth Charles Partlow Sale, he was a son of Frank Orville and Lillie Belle (Partlow) Sale, and brother of writer, actress Virginia Sale-Wren." (Wikipedia)

Outhouses were named after this actor because he played the rube in early films--rural humor.

How do I know this, you ask? He was my grandfather's uncle, or maybe it was his first cousin. One or the other.

[puglogic]

Cool, rodeosweetheart!!! :)

Gardenarian, we're moving into a house where I think I can finally have a bucket system like the one described in The Humanure Handbook. I detest the idea of using many gallons of perfectly good water to flush away perfect good fertilizer. Ridiculous. But at this new house, there's a door from the house to the garage, and a door from the garage to a large garden shed, which would be the perfect spot to locate one of these units. I'm dying for a non-flush toilet!! (does that make me a geek? probably :) )

[redfox]

We used a Sunmar for about 3 years, and it was not a good system. Do not recommend. After quite a bit of research, I would go with a system that separates liquids & solids.

I think it's criminal that we dump human waste into drinking water. We're now designing a grey water catchment system to utilize that in a traditional toilet.

[Mrs-M]

Additionally, check out this story (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/safe-affordable-sanitation-110719.aspx) I listened to on the radio a few weeks back Re: toilets and bettering them. Very interesting.

[Gardenarian]

OOh, so many interesting replies! I think what will work for us is the bucket/sawdust system. I'll need to get a good source of sawdust (I wonder if the local lumber yard gives it away?)

Some neighbors have an incinolet in their guest house/office, and I guess they don't use it that much because they seem to like it. Definitely doesn't sound like it could replace a regular toilet (at least not in our house!)

My main motivation here is to save water and $, but we also need more organic matter in our garden (we just don't generate enough compost) and I also would like as little carbon to leave our house as possible. Why flush it away when you can use it?

My dd won't use a pee cloth so I have her put her toilet paper in closed bin and then we feed it to the worms (along with a lot of other stuff.) This means we flush less, and less carbon is leaving our site. I'll have to go to the Joseph Jenkins site to see how toilet paper is handled there. We are planning on getting chickens too, so I'll have to give this all a lot of thought.

For those who have tried the bucket system, where did you put it? Our bathroom is too small to accomadate anything. I was thinking of outdoors somehow.

Mrs M - will have to check out that show when I'm off work!

[pcooley]

Our bucket toilet was wedged into our bathroom between our toilet and our bathtub. I kept threatening to take out the flush toilet and move the bucket toilet into that space, but we never got around to it for the reasons stated in my previous post.

[Marianne]

Interesting thread!
We had a bucket toilet for a brief period. I didn't mind it at all. The diluted whiz went into the garden and the tomato plants just shot up!

Thanks for posting the links. I too, would like to have a different system in our next house.

[Zoebird]

i would love to do this in an urban setting, but i can't figure out how the bucket system would work when you don't have space for hot composting.

i've looked at different systems, but most have pretty hefty installation, and we are renters, so that won't work.

we have put a stone in the tank to decrease water use and do follow yellow/mellow, brown/down. still, i would prefer a composting toilet.

[Mrs-M]

Originally posted by Gardenarian.
My dd won't use a pee clothIf you could just get her to try it, just once. Pee-cloths are so comfy, so natural....... This reminds me of when I was trying to get my oldest daughter on board with reusable cloth pads. After much coaxing and assuring and prodding, she finally gave the reusable cloth a try. She wasn't entirely taken with cloth at first, but it took her no time at all in appreciating how much more comfortable they were compared to the paper disposable ones. She was sold after that!

[freein05]

The Bill Gates foundation is funding research into new types of toilets. The study is designed to help poor countries but who knows what the results will be and they may come up with a replacement for our current water wasting toilet that was designed 2 or 3 hundred years ago. I believe the foundation is spending millions of dollars for this research.

[jp1]

OOh, so many interesting replies! I think what will work for us is the bucket/sawdust system. I'll need to get a good source of sawdust (I wonder if the local lumber yard gives it away?)



I recall reading an article somewhere shortly after the housing market imploded which talked about someone who had been getting free sawdust for this purpose from their local lumber yard, and how even they were being effected by the economic downturn since now the lumber yard wasn't cutting nearly as much wood so they didn't have as much sawdust to give away so the family had gone on a sawdust diet, not using as much in the toilet as they would've preferred. I guess that's a long way around of saying "yes, lumberyards will probably give the stuff to you since they have no use for it and there's not enough demand for them to likely be able to sell it."