Our Outhouse is Verbotten!!!

A shallow hole in an area of high bedrock could be a direct conduit to an aquifer contained within fractured bedrock. Groundwater within fractured bedrock can move very swiftly to yours or anothers drinking water well.

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

We really appreciate the time you've taken to help us out. Do you think the warm water would freeze into a mound after a few uses(just the two of us)? Our hole is very shallow because of rock. We're thinking a bucket and pail inside. We never knew this system is odour free till we received all this wonderful help from this forum.


Diane and Warren
http://www.frombeyondthegrid.com

Hi there!

The reason for a RV bowl is so I don't see the Dung Beetles we get here.
I certainly don't want to feel one... remember our hole is only a couple of feet deep.


Diane and Warren
http://www.frombeyondthegrid.com

Well, it would have to have better luck than we did finding water around here. We just had a 400' well drilled and came up dry. You can read all about that one in our 'well from hell' blog. Seriously, though, your concern is a valid one but, if you knew the kind of rock we have here it's pretty much impermiable. To get any volume of water out of our well we have to get a 'fracker' in...read big machine... to fracture the rock enough for water to flow...and it's not guaranteed. Also, when I say we live on a rock, I should clarify that there is variable amounts of topsoil but when digging a hole for an outhouse you might go down 8 feet but you might also go hit some kind of rock at 2 feet...the more likely senario. So, you dig a few holes and pick the deepest, otherwise we might still be digging.

Diane
http://www.frombeyondthegrid.com

dung beetles can jump(just kidding )

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5-star double-rated astronavagatrix earth girl

Thanks Rose,

Reserve bucket... great idea
Diane

A place I visited many a moon ago; On northern Lake Huron . . .bed rock and very little soil on top. A hole was blasted in the rock. A "nice" outhouse was built over the top of the hole. . . all painted white . .you would never know that it was . . . .a poop shed.
These folks had a good relationship with the local "honey wagon" person.
I was told that blasting a hole was very common in that area . . .because of the sparse top soil.


food for thought for you...............................

Diane,
I loved your website, I think the sawdust toilet is the best idea. If you google the humanure book you will see many videos about setting one up and disposing of the waste etc.. I learned alot from that site.

the dynamite sounds like a great idea I know my husband would enjoy exploring making that work

__________________
THE BEGINNING IS NEAR
5-star double-rated astronavagatrix earth girl

maybe that's a thought on getting rid of the frozen poopsickle.

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"Only the rocks [and really embarassing moments] live forever"

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands..." tick-tick-tick

A couple M80's


better have a long fuse tho

a rain slicker would be in order to.

Hey Wild Thang,Farmer Willy2, Jim-mi,

You're hilarious... you crack me up!



Diane
http://www.frombeyondthegrid.com

If I were you I'd use the sawdust one year around. You turn a "waste" into a nutrient and don't have to make trips to an outhouse. You can filter the water from your outhouse roof for something else.

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I was born [upon the prairie] where there were no enclosures, and where everything drew free breath. I want to die there and not within walls.
--Ten Bears

Ummmm....yeah. I'd never consider boasting about an outhouse like that anywhere in Ontario. Just keep it to yourselves. Just BEGGING for harassment from the MOE and friends. No way on earth it's anywhere near legal. Even "dry" outhouses are borderline.

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The internet - fueling paranoia and misinformation since 1873.

Before you invoke the MOE on me let me assure you that this is a benign little system. It uses very little water to function. I'd say we went through about 60 gallons of rainwater all summer. How is this different than going in the bush and letting rainwater wash it into the soil? Compared to a septic system I think this is much more environmentally friendly. Where do you think the solids from that system end up? That's right...spread on some farmer's field in high concentrations. The MOE seems to be able to justify that.

I gotta say, we live where we live precisely so we don't have to deal with the 'legalities' of where we poop.

hey, nothing ain't worth doing unless it involves gas/diesel, matches, fire, a truck, a new tool, mud and beer (it seems like around here...)

but seriously, DaleK does give good advice about keeping quiet about certain things. If the code Nazis get a whiff of one thing they can slam you on, they can make your life a living hell. especially if you have kids in the mix.

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THE BEGINNING IS NEAR
5-star double-rated astronavagatrix earth girl

It is different between going in the bush(which you should be taking a trowel, dig a shallow small hole and bury it back up--the poop) and you using your shallow(? dunno how you are exactly set up there?)hole for multiple uses, at least enough that you're getting a frozen "pile"(?). It's concentration of stuff, less stuff does wash away quicker, more stuff takes longer and is just a bigger pile of what can be very bad germs. The more poop you have pile up the worse it gets--many many people died coming west because so many people were pooping everywhere, out in the open, on top of the ground and not being careful about cleaning up/washing hands(if they had dug little holes for individual loads and buried them far away from potable water it wouldn't have been such a problem...). Cholera and dysentery are not stuff to mess with. People poop out in the open on Mount Everest and there is a problem with mountaineers getting sick.

THAT is why the code people are concerned.

Or put another way, I read an article that researched cases of giardia, and it found that a significant number of sickness that was attributed to giardia(people who thought "it must be giardia") were actually illness due to not washing hands and keeping stuff clean enough to not crosss-contaminate stuff(like you wipe your butt with a leaf, then dont' wash your hands, then touch your spoon, which you then dip into your choclate pudding(heh).

So what did people do before indoor plumbing in your area?

Septic vs outhouse, both are enviro-friendly(as long as your not putting chemicals down there, just poop), a septic *is* just a contained outhouse hole, both work the same way, except septic uses more water. BUT the septic is "healthier" (unless you fall in...toxic gases), because it's contained, just less room for error.

On the other hand one could argue that exposure to germs helps make you hardy, well, to a point, but if that were robustly so then Africans would never get cholera/dysentery, right(you have NO idea what it's like over there...basically in many cities they go in a bucket and throw it out into the street, if not just go in the street and skip the bucket). In the wild poop is scattered very widely(except for places like bat caves)broken down by rain and sun and organisms, and anywhere there is a big concentration it is a breeding ground for all sorts of disease(bigger the volume of the mass, the slower it takes to break it down--another reason why spreading poop *is* different than a pile of it, legally). I'm not getting into cooking piles of compost to kill germs, yada yada, just speaking of concentrated hordes of poop just left to sit on the ground (or allowed to runoff). It's common sense not to let poop pile up under contained livestock is it not?

that's enough poop for thought, poop poop poop poop!

BTW, do you burn your TP? not put it in the hole I mean--that will cut down on volume in filling up what you got.

__________________
THE BEGINNING IS NEAR
5-star double-rated astronavagatrix earth girl

Yeah, the author has a YouTube page.

__________________
I was born [upon the prairie] where there were no enclosures, and where everything drew free breath. I want to die there and not within walls.
--Ten Bears