[Greenbuilding] Building Composting Toilets

[Stephen Collette]

Someone asked about building composting toilets. I'm a fan of the  
Centre for Alternative Technology's books on composting toilets. One  
is called "Lifting the Lid" and I forget the name of the other one.  
They are pretty thorough and pick up where the older humanure left  
off. They really get into the details of how to effectively deal with  
our wrongly labelled waste. Good stuff. My library actually carries  
these books, but worth purchasing, along with their other books.

The other concept with sewage is the ability to treat it before it  
leaves one's home. Constructed wetlands or living machines are really  
what we could consider. The ability to purify water onsite to either  
return to the system cleaner than it came in, or to put it into a  
weeping bed so as to not ultimately contaminate your groundwater, is  
well, logical. Of course education is the key to all of these  
successes. I had client who wanted a living machine installed into  
their straw bale building. Great said the building inspector, as long  
as you have the septic tank after and the full sized weeping bed as  
well. Thanks for not listening. They never installed one, unfortunately.

My two cents worth.

Stephen

Stephen Collette B.B.E.C
Principal

Your Healthy House
Indoor Environmental Inspections & Building Consulting
www.yourhealthyhouse.ca
stephen at yourhealthyhouse.ca
705.652.5159