[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Composting toilets

[Leslie Moyer]

Reuben Deumling wrote:
> I'm also specifically curious how much of an issue smell is with your composting toilets--of any variety? I get the idea that with a well designed stack and a tight fitting lid/seat it is fairly easy to reduce this to a minor inconvenience. 
>   

With the biodegradable bag, I hand-twist the top closed as I remove the 
bag, so there is no offensive smell in emptying the bucket.  There 
shouldn't be, anyway, if you're using enough cover material.  We put the 
bags into a garden-variety composter with a lid (but not at all 
airtight--it's this one: 
http://www.planetnatural.com/site/garden-gourmet-composter.html  
).....there is *no* smell at all in our composter, perhaps because we 
use plenty of carbon (sawdust & newspapers)?  The lidded compost bin 
also keeps the pile from staying *too* moist.  We also periodically add 
some dry leaves and a scoop of soil for the beneficial organisms. Even 
in August (in Oklahoma), there was no smell.  We have a window & a door 
in our home that is about 30-40 feet from our compost bin and we haven't 
detected ANY odor.  It composts very quickly and by the time the 
composter is full at the top, the compost at the bottom is completely 
unrecognizable--not even the full sections of folded newspaper we use. 

We do have smell one time during the process and that is *while* you're 
using the "toilet".  At first, your body is sealing the hole and there 
is no smell.....but because the feces doesn't drop down into water right 
away, there is smell between when you are done and before you add the 
cover material. 

We separate some of our urine, but we don't save the urine--it goes out 
through a floor drain with our graywater or just out into the forest.  I 
have another home-devised system for that.  I bought another seat from 
Cabela's (shipping is the same for 3 seats as it is for 1) and took 
another 5-gallon bucket and cut the bottom out of it.  I set it over the 
floor drain and use it to urinate, putting the toilet paper into the 
bucket composter.  However, I'm the only person in our 4-person 
household who does this....my husband urinates outdoors. My 2 daughters 
both use the compost bucket for both urine and feces.  Excessive urine 
does seem to make the bucket smell more than a dryer compost would, 
which is why I use the graywater drain.

Because there are 4 people using our bucket toilet (including 2 at home 
most of the time), we probably empty it faster than a smaller household 
would, so it has less time to "smell" indoors. 

Our kitchen waste also goes into the same compost bin once we take it 
outdoors.

It is my hope that, because this is an inexpensive system to try, that 
others will try it, too, so I'm glad it interested you, Reuben.  :-) 

We had actually planned to build a mouldering toilet 
(http://www.sunnyjohn.com), but we ran short of time to build it before 
we had to move in here, so we started using the buckets as a "temporary" 
solution. They worked so well that our mouldering toilet never got 
built.  (My husband still wants to build it as another experiment--I'll 
post about it if we do.) 

We started out with the bucket and the Cabela's lid, but adding the 
biodegradable bags as a liner really perfected the system--took the only 
unpleasant task out of the equation.  I had purchased a few 
biodegradable trash bags when they were on a clearance table at my local 
Wild Oats.  I'd had them over a year and never used them.  Amazingly, I 
remembered them and gave them a try.

--Leslie