'nuther question for the poo-bucket (sawdust toilet) crowd.

Does anyone still have a link the site where they created "packets" by
putting paper towels in between the layers?
It was a site from europe somewhere...
It was an interesting way to do it. I wonder the newspaper idea would work the same...

They also had some very interesting ideas about insulating old windows...

__________________
Hut on the Hill Farm
http://www.hutonthehill.org

What a great tip! I never thought of that! Perhaps now I can get someone to assist in that chore.

Thanks!

__________________
Hazell

Some pursue happiness--Others create it ~Unknown~

What follows is my history of human waste disposal rant...

I work with groundwater contamination problems and septic systems as part of my living. One day it occurred to me that pumping 3 or so gallons pristine water from deep in the earth, pooping in it, then discarding it below the ground where the plants can't get to it and letting it carry the nutrients down to the groundwater was a good way to prevent disease for humans but was a pretty blind and arrogant thing for me to do to the rest of the planet. Those nutrients don't dissappear. They move with the groundwater and discharge into a stream or river within a month or a year or a decade or a century. I looked at the rest of the community of life. All the other creatures have left thier waste on the surface or slightly buried since time began. It works pretty well, although I imagine some animals get sick and die from this process.
We human animals are unusual. We have it used our found energy supplies to provide ourselves with lives of comfort and leisure and food delivered by trucks and ships and many of us can live in a small area (way more than the land could support) and our waste can pile up to the point that the environment can't keep up with it and it creates disease problems for us and overconcentration of nutrients (pollution) in the environment.
We humans invented the water based waste removal systems to clean up the deplorable human waste problems in cities when we learned how to pump water with electricity. It works. I mean it works in that it decreased disease for the humans who stayed out of the rivers, but it created problems for all the other aminals because we dumped the waste into rivers, but we cared more about ourselves than we did for our life support system (the earth).
The expansion of this water based waste treatment system into private homes came along with rural electrification after WWII and the ability to pump (and waste) water with no effort. It was a status symbol. But that didn't make it a good idea. People began dumping waste directly into water out in the country, too. Brilliant. There have been many improvements in the septic system designs, but at the most basic level, it still is a bad idea to put nutrient rich wastewater below the ground or into rivers. It just is.
Granted, the pit privies aren't a great idea either (outhouses over a hole in the ground). They lead to flies, odor, and groundwater contamination, too.
Having a slop bucket in the house and dumping it in the privy just made matters one step less pleasant.
So we have an old system that didn't work and now we have have a new system that is better for humans but wasteful and disadvantageous for the rest of the planet.
I want something better...safe for humans, respectful of the planet on which gives me everything I need to live. Money has absolutely nothing to do with it. (Although the costs of a water based system does require a good well, pump, pressure tank, electrical service, energy to create the electricity, transmission lines, ceramic fixtures, piping, a concrete tank, periodic removal and dumping of the waste with trucks, a waste dispersal system (drainfield) and periodic replacement of all of those things and on and on and on.)
When we pretend it's a good idea to poop into water in our house and shame others who don't do it, the amount of resources consumed and the amount of disconnection required to continue to believe it is a good idea is staggering.
I quit. I'm not doing it anymore. A 5 gallon bucket and a basket of leaves and a composte pile made of bales of hay and some common sense is all that is needed for us humans to stay disease free and for the Earth to get to reclaim our waste and put it back into the cycle of living things. No amount of shaming or flying off the handle is going to convince me that I should desecrate the Earth so I can pretend I believe flush toilets are a good idea with all my friends...
Wshew. So there's my rant.
ray

Wow, I just want to thank everyone for this informative thread. I have learned so much! I will admit when I first heard about "humanure" I was a bit horrified but I was also willing to put aside prejudice and learn.

So much of what you said makes so much sense, I'm going to read the book and give it to my husband. I just dearly wished I had had this info. about 6 years ago when we had to live in a one room cabin with three kids and no plumbing! At that time we just went outside and froze our fannies off! Or we asked to use our friends bathroom (they were very generous!)

I am wondering though, does using this system make the bathroom stink more, at the time of use, because the waste does not fall into water, but sits on top of sawdust, until you are done and more sawdust is put on?
Sorry if that question is to *personal* but i'm wondering........

Illegal immigrants, whom I suspect pick the majority of the fruits and vegetables in US fields and orchards, are not given toilets of any kind, and are usually in somewhat of a hurry to pick as much as they can in order to earn what little they are paid for this. They poop right in the fields amongst the spinach leaves and the tomatoes and the strawberries...and I'll bet there's no sink and soap or even a baby-wipe anywhere in sight, either.

I wonder what they wipe their bottoms with?

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http://thissmallfrenchtown.blogspot.com/

http://thefrenchneighbor.blogspot.com/

How do these differ from composting toilets I've seen advertised?

TX, I am beginning to feel insulted.

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http://thissmallfrenchtown.blogspot.com/

http://thefrenchneighbor.blogspot.com/

If you feed trolls, it only encourages them.

Whoever this T.A.M. person is, s/he/it is not here to learn or to share. S/he/it only just signed up this month, and the majority of her/his/its posts are in this thread.

I recommend the good ol' ignore function.

Pony!

I was gonna say something, but now I need to poop. So I'll just go with the flow.

I have found the information on this thread very useful

I have been without running water for an extended period of time twice and it was not a nice experience. I still use a "normal toilet" with running water going to a septic tank but because of the information given on this thread, with no judgements, I am ready to have a much better time the next time the water flow stops.
Just because you chose not to do every idea that is offered does not mean the experiences and information that are shared are not important



Keep the good information coming.

If there is ever a pandemic, and no water available with which to flush, you will be very happy for a poopbucket.

__________________
http://thissmallfrenchtown.blogspot.com/

http://thefrenchneighbor.blogspot.com/

Once or twice a year.

Ok....let me explain. I keep a container in the barn which is several miles from home. It is used for emergencies. I purchased a bale of wood shavings just for the purpose. On occasion when there is a non-cooking fire for cleaning up around the h-stead, the container is turned out on the well established fire and burned.

What a luxury!

I don't even like to eat my own words. I would not be afraid to use composte after three years if it was my compost. I will only resort to this after I have expired all of the calf manure compost and I don't think I have to worry about running out of that.

TX, I get that you experienced slop buckets, mistreatment, poverty and the feeling of needing to climb up out of all that. And yep, slop buckets sound nasty. I have no desire to have one. If I did wind up in that situation, though, I'd line my slop bucket with leaves and have some leaves in a basket so after I used it, I'd cover it. Then I'd cover it with a lid. I'd take it outside and bury it if it smelled just as soon as I had a chance. Turns out, amazingly so, that in my experience, it won't develop an odor at all or have any flies find it for days or more, so emptying it every day would be found to be completely unnecessary. If it bugged me, though, I'd empty it everyday, at least at first.
There is nothing magically awful or permanently dangerous about human waste. It is the same as the waste of other omnivores. Well, maybe a bit more preservatives and chemicals, and whatnot, but essentially the same. All the omnivore waste that has fallen on the ground has been recycled naturally. It doesn't stay nasty or dangerous for very long. It is gone. It has turned back into other things. Most animals spread their waste out by walking around a lot. We could spread ours out and have no problems with disease, too, but it would require a lot of walking and a lot of land and fewer people. We concentrate our waste and have paid for it with disease problems. We human animals have had the time to observe those processees and learn good ways of getting the earth to break down our wastes and kill the dangerous bacteria for us.
I don't know if anyone has clearly stated the idea of a sawdust toilet yet.
Get a bucket, put a layer of leaves or sawdust, etc on the bottom, drop in your waste and cover it with leaves or sawdust, then put a lid on it. When it gets full, put it in the center of a big pile of organic material...like hay and cover it. make sure there are at least 12" of material on all sides (to keep out flies and vermin). then leave it for a year or two. Then do with it as you please.
Come to think of it...it does sound nasty. Not the kind of nasty I would associate with a slop pot, but nasty, nonetheless.
I heard of humanure ideas and thought "that's nasty", too. Then I went into houses that had them and asked the people about them and saw the composting methods and realized...geez, I had this idea in my head that just didn't stack up to reality. AT all. No odor. No flies, no vermin. Beautiful compost. It was easy, albeit a bit weird to start to do it in my own house but I did it anyway. Now it feels extravagent when I use a standard water based toilet. I feel like I'm selling out the earth.

A few words on odors that I have made up from my brain thinkings: The waste of omnivores and carnivores smalls bad to all of us omnivores because it contains bacteria that can hurt us (we're made of meat and there are bacteria in poo that eat meat). On the other hand, herbivore waste isn't necessarily unpleasant to us because the waste is made of vegetables and microscopic things that eat vegetables, both of which can be food to us. We use and eat yeasts(beer) and molds(cheese) and bacteria (vinegar) all the time.
All organic material on the planet and every cell in my body has been through countless cycles of being eaten, becoming part of an animal, dying, being pooped and being eaten and being reformed into new stuff. It's not gross...well the way I just said it makes it sound gross, but it's still true. Every cell in my body has prolly also been part of kings and gazelles and the air, too. It's kind of marvelous, really.
I don't have to put my recycled waste into the garden. There is the waste of countless other creatures already there to supply the plants with what they need. It used to be foxes and leaves and then it died, was eaten and pooped out right there. That's just the way the world works. The addition of my waste would certainly make it more healthy and fertile (after the harmful bacteria are gone), though because it is made of the things that were previously in the plants, so it is exactly what the plants need to make more of themselves.
All the energy i previously put into pretending my waste was somehow worse than the rest can be redirected into other pursuits. If I wanna pretend my waste has properties that make it worthy of rebuke and dangerous in a magical way, well then I can give it to the lawn or the forest trees and the dung beetles. They'll take good care of it and appreciate it just the same. But I'm still not gonna go through all that work with the pipes and pumps and then put it into my drinking water, you know?

On a related subjects, some areas are now allowing 'green burials'. In one I read about the cemetary was wooded acreage with trails through it. Unembalmed bodies were buried here and there along them either in a cardboard box or linen wrapping, and not even 6' deep. Headstone was a natural rock into which had been carved the desired information on the deceased.

Personally when I had my pond built I left two islands in it. My cremated remains will be spread on one of them. I asked my younger sister to do the deed, but before my remains were spread I wanted an ice cold bottle of Michelob mixed in with them. She asked if I minded her drinking it first. Well, I guess I wouldn't know the difference at that point.

Apparently the old poop pail ain't everybody's cup of tea.
I say however you want to get rid of your....ummmmm...exhaust, more power to ya.
Personally, I'm happy with the gleaming white porcelain waste removal apparatus situated in that little room down the hall.
I'm not saying I wouldn't use a bucket of sawdust if the need arose, but until that time, I'm quite happy with what we have.

__________________
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
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Enforced tolerance is oppression

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Thank you to one and all for your posts - TxAprilMagic included. I've been in a bit of a depression the last couple days but, after reading about "slop pots" and humanure my little concerns have gone by the wayside.

For anyone interested, "slop buckets" were called chamber pots by our forefathers and are now collectible. But not to worry, sawdust toilets may one day be as collectible as outhouses.

Personally, I'd take the sawdust toilet anyday (and have). They're not as fragile as china - though some were made of metal. The sawdust toilets I've seen have more stability because they were a 5-gallon bucket tucked inside a wood box that had a toilet seat on it.


And then another thing to consider is all the bitching that's gone on about "low flush" toilets. So the powers that be recognize the need to conserve water but not one of the reasons it's contaminated! Go figure.

Although TXAprilmagic's posts are incredibly hostile , we can look at those posts as a blessing in disguise because her rudeness will prepare and sharpen the wits of the users of the humanure system to answer back to those who they will inevitably encounter in the future that will try to fight against the idea/practice.

I came to this conclusion after thinking about what some of my relatives might say if we eventually use this system.

Raymilosh, I love your well-spoken posts. Very helpful.

Goodness sakes lighten up every body. For poor much maligned TXaprilmagic, I too lived very early in life with a "chamber pot" for nights & extreme cold times. IT WAS AWFUL!!!! I REPEAT AWFUL! STINKY, TERRIBLE, NIGHTMARISH, had to hold your nose awful. However, lurking arround this & other web sites, I learned a little different. I inherited my mother's country house, which I sadly have sold. I did however research ideas to radically conserve water. I have not tried a sawdust toilet personally, I have however used the principle on dog flops. We had a lab in the house, completely house broke, turned outside to poo. I did the honors of cleaning up. Burying in the dirt would not work to keep smell down. Grass clippings& straw in a pile worked wonders. I would collect poop in a bucket, dump it on the pile, cover it with clippings (surprisingly thin layer), no smell, really none. Try it.

I made one and still use it and know of another that is used in a off grid, strawbale home, full time.

P.S. by the way, the strawbale house is owned and occupied by a Dr. and his wife.