Anyone use JUST a composting toilet for their home? - Page 4 - Homesteading Today
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  #61  
Old 08/17/10, 10:30 AM
 
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 3,567
Thanks Forerunner.

We'll have to rotate that bugget full or not when we dump buckets. We should probably dump every 10 days instead instead of waiting until we have 5 or 6 buckets.

I learned from the Joe Jenkins Haiti video that we should rake our cover back when we dump buckets to keep the core of the pile sawdust and humanure instead of thick layers of hay in between. We have had good results with the hay layers.

What do y'all do?
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  #62  
Old 08/17/10, 12:39 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Illinois
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We dump contents in an active pile and cover with partially rotted wood chips or weeds from the garden, or both.

The heat takes over within a day or so, and, a couple weeks later, the worms have already moved in to finish up.
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  #63  
Old 08/17/10, 02:30 PM
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We have one that looks almost identical to the picture Patt posted.

We're a family of 7. We go through a bucket a day. We have 4 buckets, as each bucket gets filled, the lid gets put on tightly and it is stored in an extra room off our porch. We have used sawdust and peat moss. I think the peat moss does a better covering job. We have also used fine mulch from the lumber yard, which is what we're using right now. Our next load from the lumber mill will be fine sawdust which we can buy for $8 for a trailer piled high. When the buckets are full we all go out to the compost pile to empty buckets. We take four 1 gallon containers filled with hot water and a few drops of Dr Bronner's with us. Each bucket gets dumped, rinsed with about a cup of water and then the rest of the gallon is added. The lid is put on the bucket and it gets gently shaken around to clean off the sides which sometimes need cleaning off. That water is thrown out on the bottom pasture that is currently not in use by anything/anyone. We use whatever is available for covering the compost pile. What we often do is take the bagged mower with us, and mow the area down to the compost pile. A few bags of grass cover or weeds and you're good to go. No smell and very, very minimal flies. The compost pile also gets kitchen scraps, etc.

The buckets are put out in the sun to dry. Rinse and repeat .

We have a flush toilet. We bought this property on foreclosure. It was listed as having a septic tank... county has it as having a septic tank. Our inspector couldn't find the tank when he came to do our house inspection, but the area was badly overgrown. So when we moved we had a company out to come tell us the condition of our septic tank, whether it needed pumped, etc. So they came out, put down a camera and guess what.. ? No septic tank! Our sewage travels in a big old degraded pipe far from the house and dumps straight out onto the land, the area was well hidden. Charming. The company we had out quoted us $8,000 to put in a septic. So we looked for alternatives. We were prepared to put down the money for the biggest Envirolet system, but after a lot of research we concluded that they really don't work all that well.

So far this system works great for us. And hey, guess what? There is no funky smell in our house.
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  #64  
Old 08/17/10, 05:13 PM
 
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 3,567
Is there anyone who scapes back their pile to dump buckets on top of previous buckets or do you keep your pile in lasagne type layers of

buckets cover
buckets cover
buckets cover

Thanks
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  #65  
Old 08/18/10, 01:04 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Piedmont Central Virginia
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Rick asked, " Has anyone ever found hundreds of maggots - not from house flies - in their buckets?"
I do not find them in my buckets because I dump my buckets every day or two. But I dump them in a black cylindrical compost bin and starting about mid-
August every year, YES, I sure do find lots of maggots. I took some samples in the the local ag agent. He identified them as soldier flies also known as outhouse flies.
Harvey Ussery had an article about feeding chickens where he used chunks of cut up beaver meat to attract black flies to feed his chickens some of which got sick. Black flies carry disease. He switched to raising soldier flies for "food free from the air," the implication being soldier flies are clean and don't carry disease. There is something called a bio-pod where these soldier fly larvae are raised and have a special tube they crawl out, ready for chicken treats. If you really want TMI there are some videos on youtube about these flies (no, I don't know the names, the bio-pod guys made the videos). One is of a darling little girl with a cup of them, writhing away, which she feeds the chickens.
As to how I layer my dooky buckets? Well, in a disorganized way because I am also composting non-edible compostables like cardboard, coffee grounds, banana peels. Yesterday I piled in a bucket of elderberry brackets (or whatever you call the little branches the berries are on) plus another bucket of the berry mash after I drained the juice out for jelly. Tossed in a watermelon rind and potato peelings, too.
The soldier flies are very cunning and clever. I don't know HOW they get in my composter but from now till frost, they'll be in there, chomping and digesting away. That's fine with me as long as they are in the composter and NOT crawling where Rick's soldier fly maggots were!

Last edited by Navotifarm; 08/18/10 at 01:10 AM. Reason: typos and misspelling
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  #66  
Old 09/21/10, 11:24 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: In the Woods of Idaho
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We are still building our off-grid cabin. We have a Sun Mar toilet for the main bathroom and a Sawdust toilet for upstairs. We store our sawdust in burlap coffee bean bags inside during the winter months to keep it from freezing.
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  #67  
Old 09/22/10, 04:44 AM
dragonjaze's Avatar
hating the 'burbs!
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: N. IL, wishing I was in W WA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nehimama View Post
Navotifarm, I, for one, am glad you "went into too much detail". You might be surprised at the number of folks looking for just this type of information. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
I second that!
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  #68  
Old 09/22/10, 02:34 PM
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Vermont
Posts: 274
Quote:
Originally Posted by HermitJohn View Post
Aerobic breakdown lot more pleasant than anaerobic unless you are fond of swamp gas... Also lot less wasteful of water. Using 5 gallon water to dispose of cup of gatorade and couple chocolate bars seems not so efficient.
Install a presby system (http://presbyeco.com/) and low water toilets. Helped a friend install one and it was easy.

He also lives by the "if it's yellow let it mellow" philosophy for water conservation.
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  #69  
Old 09/22/10, 03:46 PM
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: northcentral MN
Posts: 14,378
It doesn't look like people use any kind of vent on their composting toilet. Is that the case?

I used a friends indoor toilet once and when you lifted the lid a fan came on to pull air down into the chamber and out of the house through a pipe so there was no odor escape into the bathroom.
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