Composting toilet designs for skittish wives and city slickers?

Yeah, I'm the same way. I know it's probably OK, but I still err on the side of caution. I spread it on my horse pasture to fertilize their grass...and use their manure on my garden. Just an extra step to separate it a little more. I'm more concerned about heavy metals than pathogens, but that isn't even really a big issue.

I've used chopped hay and it works great. Smells nice, too. Another good material if you can get it free or cheap is ground up corn cobs.

I figured it was too obvious to be original. Know any way to make chopped hay without a hay chopper?

Yeah, humanure is creepy… so is a garden full of horse manure. The creepiest is a city “treating” a million gallons of waste a day and dumping it into the river to be used as drinking water for the next town. Who came up with THAT stupid ideal?

Exactly!

The only time you really run into pathogen issues with humanure is when you introduce it into the drinking water system. That's what causes things like typhoid and nasty little cryptosporidium outbreaks.

Composting ALL manures is working WITH the ecosystem, rather than against it (like "modern" sewage facilities - ugh!)

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Je ne suis pas Alice

http://homesteadingfamilies.proboards.com/

Same here. For every positive review I read, there were half a dozen negatives! We decided to give the Humanure system a try first since I read almost no negatives about that one and figured if nothing else, it was a WHOLE lot cheaper.

Fundamental difference: The above is not composted!
Once it's sat for a year or two, hits those nice, hot temps and broken everything down, it's just plain dirt.
That's composted.

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~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

But you know what? It does break down, without pathogens, even when it's just spread under the trees like that.

We don't do it that way because we prefer to break it all down, but let's face it: The wild animals don't go and potty on the compost heap, and their stuff breaks down just fine.

And for those with gardens, do you really think that the cats in your area aren't using your garden beds for litter pans?

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Je ne suis pas Alice

http://homesteadingfamilies.proboards.com/

Very true.
Personally though, I'd rather have it break down in the compost heap than on the garden, though.

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~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

Same here. Bucket system beats all the others and not just on cost.

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Idleness is leisure gone to seed

We've been on the bucket so to speak for almost a year . I built a cabinet to house the bucket at the desired height it has a "tank" of sorts on the back where sawdust and a scoop are stored we have 3 buckets in our system for my wife and I and we just go empty them when they get full or when the weather permits, our compost pile is in the back of our acreage so if its really wet or snow drifted its hard to get back there. We have in our community a business that builds rafter trusses for pole barn and housing construction its a family owned small place but we can go get a barrel of sawdust whenever we need it for free sometimes I just drop off the barrel on monday and go pick it up on the weekend full !!
My wife was not really fond of the Idea at first but she's a smart gal and after reading several articles about the bucket system she agreed to try it so I just got a bucket and a snap on seat at the camping store . Once she realized that 1. It did NOT smell and 2. as long as you cover any deposits adequately then the "view" isnt an issue either.
Then she was ok with a more user friendly set up and we built the cabinet we have now.

I run it through an electric leaf shredder, sometimes twice. It's slow, but I can probably do a square bale in 20 minutes and that'll last a while.

I will have to check out that book (Humanure). Sounds fascinating, though I'm content with my indoor plumbing for now. I read a book a few years ago (can't remember the name) where this guy fertilized his lawn with raw sewage and hundreds of tomato plants grew in his grass. Oops!

Thank you to those that gave great info to my questions.

I was planning to use the bucket for non-urine only as much as possible (definitely in my case, my wife is not sure yet if she's going to be THAT dedicated to make separate stops haha).

On a related note, I was excited that a local place we frequent for lunch was selling their empty 5gal pickle buckets (with a tight fitting lid) for $1.50. I was able to stock up!!!


We'll be about 45 min. from Ballinger so I'll be interested to hear what you find out. We're moving to Lawn. Not there yet, but hope to be by the Fall.

Thanks for the info.
Rob

In the 60's dad worked for a sewer utility in Washington state. There was a Japanese gentleman who came with his truck and picked up loads of processed effluent for his truck garden. Dad visited him, and said that he had never seen anyone grow so much on so little land. The farmer had raised and in-ground beds, and got at least 3 crops off each bed each summer in Western Washington, where it's cool and damp. He brought gifts of veggies, some of which dad brought home to us.
Of course, that's all illegal now but it worked well at the time.
Kit

Seemed to work just fine - I'd spend each summer out of school with mamau, and by the time fall rolled around you couldn't tell anything was ever dumped out there. Being exposed to the sun and rain made the waste disappear into the ground. I'd assume there could still be pathogens in the dirt around the fruit trees, but it wasn't a problem since we weren't digging up vegetables from it. Fruit was picked off the trees in the fall and any rotten or fallen fruit was given to the pigs.

Dumping the waste in a pile and composting it would be more exact on pathogen-killing, but you'd also need to keep an eye on the temperature and later distribute the compost where you wanted it. Dumping it in the orchard worked fine for small-scale, and was a lot less involved.

I agree with this. I was really not sure about a sawdust toilet but found it to be just fine with zero smell. If she is really not comfortable with it, then have a flush one for her and a composting one for you! LOL There are incinerator ones too that you might want to look into.

OLF

KIT.S, my FIL used to work for the city sewer system and every year he would take the tanker out to his mothers place and spread the 'special stuff' on her garden, she had a very bountiful garden! My husband dreams of having garden soil as 'fertile' as hers.

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"At The Worlds Beginning There Was A Mother"
~ Chinese Tao Te Ching~

Get her a latter and a bucket...next time she needs to go she can climb up on the roof and aim for the bucket...problem solved.

Great info, can you post pictures of this?

I'll try to get around to getting some pics posted.

Until then, at the humanure site, they show pics of other builds, one of which is what I based mine on:
http://humanurehandbook.com/album_to...m_toilets.html

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~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

I'll try to get around to getting some pics posted.

Until then, at the humanure site, they show pics of other builds, one of which is what I based mine on:
http://humanurehandbook.com/album_to...m_toilets.html

__________________
~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop