Love/Hate: My Composting Toilet

I get alot of questions from readers, friends, and facebookers about my composting toilet system... which is really not an advanced system, but a fancy humanure toilet. Maybe you could even call it an indoor outhouse! There are lots of kinds of composting toilets, AKA bigger families might need a different system. This particular one is the right size for a boat, cabin, and RV that doesn't house alot of peeps (pun intended). If you still want this exact potty and have a full family be ready to dish out the toilet emptying chore schedule right away!
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Here is a lil' educational video (i even tried to use my education voice) I made this morning about what it's like to have one of these compoopster toilets, in reality. Not in a magazine or online looking all beautiful and clean- but with stains, skank and dank right out in the open.



Xoxoxoox

Composting Toilet: Potty Assist

Imagine this: Two men hanging up a grey sheet and placing a small square box underneath, then lifting a composting toilet in a big hug to place it up on the grey pedestal created and shooting some hawt photos of it.

Ya'll know how I love the humanure toilet system (simple potty in a bucket & cover with leaves and compost it), so much more then the mass scale sewage treatment plants and soil wrecking septic systems in rural areas.
In general the reason I love humanure toilets the most is you can build one for under $25 (we built one for $7 here in Big Sandy Mush) - while most other systems will cost you gobs more. In reality though many people just can't get into "roughing" it with such a homemade toilet system, and this is where the fancy composting toilet steps in. I have done quite a bit of searching, reading and observing of composting toilets that are manufactured over the years - I am the kind of nerd who would drool over the SunMar Compost toilets in the Real Goods Catalogue then look at the prices and wipe away my drool, shuffling over to my regular ole' septic toilet. I actually listened to neighborhood composting toilet gossip too "you know my friend so-n-so, he has a wife and three kids and he said the compost toilet stops working in the winter cause it gets too cold, the microbes don't work" or "you have to aim your pee cause you can't pee in the poop hole" ect...
And to be honest all this talk of having to add microbes you had to buy in a jug, and aiming pee was a big turn off for me - I just rathered the simplicity of Humanure via leaves.
Till i found this baby pictured above ::: The Nature's Head Composting Toilet.
Humanure simplicity meets composting toilet design. Yeah, I know it looks like something built for the nursing home, like some kind of potty assist chair, but in the world of composting toilets this one is looking like the freaking Taj Mahal - with it's fancy stainless steal parts meant to not rust in a wet environment, and it's almost regular toilet shape.
So here's some things I like about the Nature's Head composter...

• You can use peat moss or leaves just like in a humanure toilet (your not forced to buy microbes)
• You can add a solar vent to it and have it utterly off grid, or vent it with a fan
• It separates your solids and liquids, meaning no need to aim your pee (I know cause i wrote them and asked!)
• It's made totally in the USA
• It only needs to be bolted down, AKA you need no plumbing skills to install it
• The whole unit costs $850, which is about 1/4 of what you pay to put a septic on your land (not to mention you can put this thing in an RV, boat, or wherever you want to go from then on. Your own to-go toilet.)

Do any of ya'll have a composting toilet, and if so can your share your gossip - the design perks and flaws?!

XoXOoo

DIY:Simple Humanure Composting Toilet

Have ya ever thought about where your poop really goes once it's flushed away? My first hint of understanding this mystery was growing up in New Orleans and driving on the Earhart Expressway past the big, smelly and ugly sewer treatment plant in Jefferson Parish on my way to school - it fascinated me to no end that everything flushed ended up somehow at this steaming alien looking factory of steal & holding tanks. Everything, meaning all the usual bodily excrements plus I began thinking of my mom's toilet bowl cleaners, toilet papers treated with bleach, puke, tampons, needles, paint, firecrackers and gawd only knows what else the freedom of flushing gave to people to throw down there. It really hit home when as an adult I moved into a secluded cabin in the pristine mountains of North Carolina, which only had an outhouse for a bathroom, and the reality of what goes down the toilet goes into the earth became a glaring truth. As I not only prepare to move into a place of my own soon and refuse to be part of the land wrecking "septic" builder genre, I also presently live where no septic is available so I have been exploring what type of system works best for a potty.

Working 'best' will ideally follow these criteria:
1. I don't have to face coyotes and freeze my ass off if i have to go to the bathroom.
2. Gentle on the earth and my nose.
3. Doesn't cost me ridiculous amounts of money just to have a spot to poop.

The following video is a simple DIY project about how to make your own composting tiolet for $25 or less! Considering that a manufactured composting tiolet will cost well between $850-$3,000 dollars to install making your own humanure system is probably the most economical and truly the most earth friendly.



PS- Here is another link for plans to building a PASSIVE SOLAR COMPOSTING TIOLET! Woo, now that is neato!

XoXo