Composting toilets

I've only ever seen one composting toilet (and this was years ago) and I was not impressed with it. It had some sort of tank in the basement that you had to crank to stir everything up in there. Then it had to be removed yearly, etc, it all sounded messy and awful. Their basement smelled a bit...dank and there were FLIES EVERYWHERE.

The sawdust toilet sounds much cleaner and easier. Now to talk the boyfriend into trying it...I've got a few years to work on it before we build Barbie's Hippy Dreamhouse...wish me luck on this one.

Friends of my older son have moved into a Cabin with no heat, no water, no electricity and no toilets. They are using an old Potty Chair with the plastic potty in it and sawdust. They keep a compost pile on the back side of a pasture. When I saw it there was no odor, it was clean. They did use one bag of the cedar chips you buy for dog/cat boxes but they usually get free sawdust from a mill.

We have an Out-House here, actually three but only one is used full time. Did you think of building an Out-House? It is clean, no odor (we built a vent stack from the bottom of the seat area and up and out the back), we keep the seat down when not in use. I see the other posts where someone said they saw a composting toilet with flies all over it but there is not a fly problem in our Househouses.

Good luck

Hmm all the 'sawdust methods' use various carbon rich items. Would stove/fire/pit ash function aswell?

Ash is a separate issue to the compost pile.
The two should not be mixed, ideally.
Ash reacts with nitrogen, driving the latter back into the environment.
The same applies for lime.
Both would likely eliminate odor to some degree.
That is why the old timers put lime in their outhouses.
They should have saved the trouble of digging the hole to begin with and built the bench over a space for two leaf and sawdust buckets..... not too far from the compost pile.
If he'd done that FIRST, then he could still get some mileage with the Missus when he decided to build the bin/bucket assembly IN-house, a few months later, say, in January.....

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III

Thanks for the info, everyone. I think I'm pretty much sold on the sawdust version of the composting toilet. Cheap, easy, and no septic tank nightmares to deal with. We still have flush toilets, but plan to use them less and less.

LOL @ Nappingonthejob...poopsmith....rofl

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If you are going to use cat litter (while camping or whatever) get the paper kind, not the clay kind. Dirt or clay will NOT prevent odors with a sawdust toilet. Been there, done that. They sink and soak the stuff up, but there's no organic material to soak it in. I've used peat, bought by the bale, when we couldn't get enough sawdust. Finely shredded paper, any organic material safe for the compost pile should work (shredded corn cobs if you live in Iowa, perhaps?!).

And another vote for the sawdust toilet over the composting toilet. Personally, I would even prefer the sawdust toilet over a regular water-flush toilet, but that is only because my DD will sometimes stop up the regular toilet, while there's no way to stop up a sawdust toilet.

It helps to have several buckets for the sawdust toilet, and leave them out in the sun for a couple of days before bringing them back inside.

Kathleen