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A bathroom hangup

I'll try and offer some insight regarding my experience with composting toilets. I used a Biolet composting toilet for the first three years in my yurt. After the third year I stopped using it. Here are some reasons: I have my bathroom with a loft over it enclosed which takes up a little less than a quarter of my yurt, but in the winter it is was hard to keep the temperature in the optimal seventy degrees to insure that the composter was in fact composting. When the temperature drops below the optimal, the aerobic action slows and will stop in the fifties. At that point you aren't composting, you are providing waste storage. You can see the problem.

In the summer the composting toilet works great, unless you lose power to the twelve volt fan that moves the air up and out the flue, much like a woodstove, except it really stinks when your fan isn't working. I tried using a solar panel and twelve volt battery, but I've got too much shade in the summer and I couldn't keep the battery charged enough to run the fan 24/7. When it would stop it was awful. I was able to hook up a twelve volt step down from 110 volts and everything worked great as long as I didn't lose power from the grid. When the power did fail from thunderstorms, windstorms etc, the smell would run you out of the place and you wouldn't be able to go back in until the power came back on. In defense of the power company, this only happened a couple of times, but it was bad enough that I didn't want it to ever happen again.

Another problem with summer use was gnats. They are called fungus gnats and they love leaf mold. As an example, they are so thick right now that if you are outside long, they will swarm around your head and make it difficult to breath without breathing them in. Amazingly, they love the composting toilet and they will use it as their vacation paradise. Regardless of suggested ways to eliminate them (and I tried them all) you cannot get rid of them. No matter how hard you try, every time you open the door some of them get inside, and immediately head for compost heaven. They are miserable, so much so that I decided after three summers that I couldn't go on with composting.

Here are some possible solutions for you: If you go for an Envirolet, they have the composting chamber outside, which also allows the flue to be outside, which eliminates the odor problem I mentioned. You will still experience the problem with winter temps if you live in a part of the world that gets cold, so you'll need a composting toilet with a heater, of which I wasn't prepared to pay the electrical bill for that.

My solution was to switch to a 27 gallon RV portable tote. It's what people with RV's use to haul waste to the dump stations in parks. I live a mile from a Corp of Engineers campground, so every forty days I take the tote to the campground using a small trailer, pay five dollars and use the dump station to empty the tote. I'm currently using less than three hundred gallons of water per year for flushing. It's not the most ideal setup, but it works and it's lots cheaper that the electricity to power a composting toilet heater for a year. As a reference, I'm a single person and I use a very low flush toilet. With more people my solution would be much more difficult.

Sorry for the length of the message. I hope it helps in you decision making.
 
Of course, I am not living at my yurt so I just use an outhouse there. :) One note that might be helpful though, I painted the outhouse flue black so when the sun hit it, it would heat up the pipe, which also heated the air inside the pipe, the air would rise and pull any smell out. I haven't had any odor issues at all, but like I said, we only use it every other weekend or so. I think if you lived in a sunny spot, you might consider painting your flue black. :)

Thanks for sharing your experience cmwingfield!
 
I use the humanure system which is a bucket system. No smell, very simple and easy. No cutting holes for flues, or need for heating system in the yurt.
Check out the humanure site, read his book~very informative!
I compost on my land~simple easy and no wasting water or spending money on expensive systems. Hope this helps~been doing this for 2 years.
 
Ohh. Thank you all for the input! I never considered the issue with losing power to the composting toilet. The humanure looks like a good option at least for the immediate future, I think we may go for something that appears more conventional at some point down the road (we want to start our family soonish and quite a few of our friends have younguns so the input will increase substantially in the near enough future) Every bit of information is very appreciated! And all ideas are very welcome!
 
That Humanure Handbook looks to have some great info. Its going to take a shift in thinking for many to be ok with composting when compared with the carefree way most have lived their whole lives by just flushing the toilet. Then again, living in a yurt takes a certain kind of mentality as well.
 
I gather seaweeds.....I like the black papery eel grass......nothing too thick and pokey.....carry it back in bags from the shoreline.....and use a handful for every "flush"....keep it covered.....compost it in pallet en\closures.....let it sit for a year or two after you've piled it 3 ft or more high......keep it covered with more grasses....seaweeds.....compost from the kitchen.....my system has been working for 15 years.....no...the kids are 28 and 32......it's been a long time...The Humanure Book is the bible....read it thoroughly and you'll be convinced you ARE on the side of the enviro-angels....and yr doin' the RIGHT thing......Sawdust is great ( not cedar or locust....something that'll break down like maple or oak ( which will already smell like cat.....uh.....urine....there I typed it....lots of sawdust goes to waste....compost it....or "flush" with other soils.....switch buckets out often....I don't usually DUMP the buckets when the wind is blowing directly from the North...wait til the wind changes....if you cover it well with stuff that used to be growing....no issues...and ENJOY the process....you're a great part of the planet...make your deposits !!!

The picture is of my 88 year old mom..Betsy Ross...during my Underground sauna re-build project
 
I use sawdust in the outhouse and about once or twice a year I have to dump some ash from the wood stove in there to get that cat urine smell out of there.
 
It is unrelated, but sometimes so am I.

All this made me think of my great uncle Carl who lived in an old house "up the holler" outside of the "town" of Cashiers, NC.

When you visited his place, you probably got a chance to visit his outhouse. Written on one of the boards on the inside of the door about eye level when seated, with what looked like a piece of charcoal (perhaps a wooden matchstick, he was a pipe smoker) was an original poem entitled: Who shot the hole in the outhouse.

It always made me laugh, and Carl had a great sense of humour.... and a real live bullet hole through his outhouse. Perhaps I remember that more than the smell?

I wander what happened to his poetry when he passed some 25 odd years ago.

I am loosing a family member at the moment. Perhaps it makes me more nostalgic.

Rod
rod::email::yurtlocker.com
Home Page.
 
we have a humanure setup and it works well for our needs. I use pine sawdust, only because I do not have consistent access to hardwood shavings. With a household of more than two folks, I would recommend building an outhouse privy vs. a humanure toilet. You would gain back that dry storage/use space in the bathroom and obviously never have a second thought about odor. It would fill up too quickly anyways.

Composting toilets are prohibitively expensive; they require an electrical heat source whenever temps fall below 50F, some still require water to be plumbed to them, and most will require that you cut a hole in your yurt's roof to vent it properly.

Always seemed silly to me to cut a hole in a $5,000 waterproof membrane just to take a dump.

YMMV
 
cmwingfield said:
I'll try and offer some insight regarding my experience with composting toilets. I used a Biolet composting toilet for the first three years in my yurt. After the third year I stopped using it.
Click to expand...

The Biolet is called a MullToa in Sweden, which is where it comes from originally. We've got three of them and they work just fine. They do require some care and the right conditions however. Also, they are improving their technology (I believe they're on the 6th iteration).

What we have found is:

- they need to have a heated space. 15C seems OK as the minimum

- the moisture level needs to be monitored. If it's too wet, turn up the thermostat. Too dry, turn it down and if necessary spray some water in it with a mister.

- if you don't use it for a few days, close it with the supplied lid and shut it off.

- if it's used sporadically let the mixer work 5-10 times every other day or so.

- the compost needs to be emptied if the toilet fills up (that should be obvious!)

We've not had any problems with flies, but then we are on the west coast of Sweden and don't have the same insects as other places do.

So yes, they need a bit of awareness but they seem to work well enough even with pretty intensive use.
 
as winter is coming ON in New England ....and Sweden...as well....ALL should know that an Outdoor Outhouse seat made of rigid Insulation foam 1" or 2"....( I made mine from a discarded Ocean riding Boogie board)....changes the experience from brutal to comfortable/enjoyable. The actual feeling is that someone must have JUST gotten off the SEAT....because the seat FEELS HEATED !!! it totally reflects your internal body Heat....a remarkeable tranformation...Trust me....pass it on!!!
 
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