Composting toilets

[GoinBush]

Bloody hell, these are really getting a bad rap!

I have friends with composting toilets in their homes and they have no smell whatsoever. The well-composted waste gets put onto non edibles....and yes, I know not to put raw sewerage onto edibles Vik.

While on a Permaculture property tour I have used a home-made composting toilet, consisting of a 20 litre bucket, toilet seat and a bucket of sawdust which you cover your doings with....no smell.

Surely as the name suggests, the waste is 'composted' and so therefore can be used as compost/further composted in a vermiculture set-up? That was the reason for my question....how composted is the waste in a bus composting toilet?

They wouldn't have a very large capacity like the domestic ones have, which can take up to 12 months to complete their cycle/before you empty the bin.

Barboots, depending on the answer to my above question, no, that wasn't a joke, but I have no idea yet how composted the waste gets. Obviously I am notgoing to put a stinking, shitty, pissy mess under the nearest gumtree.

[GoinBush]

A positive article but does not say where they dump.

https://www.caravancampingsales.com.au/ ... let-50620/


Another, which helps answer my question.. from http://roadslesstraveled.us/dirty-littl ... ng-toilets



"Composting toilets are fabulous in a cabin or a house with a compost pile out back. Simply empty the toilet into the compost pile and watch it magically transform into beautiful gardening dirt! Compost toilets are wonderful for part-time RVers who have a compost pit in the yard where they can dump the toilet and actually compost the poop into dirt. Composting toilets are also great for part-time RV and boating use if the owner uses the RV or boat for a few weeks and then puts it in storage for months at a time, allowing the feces in the toilet to compost completely during that time.
Composting toilets are COMPLICATED for full-time RV use!

Why?

WHERE you are going to DUMP YOUR POOP when the toilet gets FULL?

A kitchen sized trash bag full of human poop is not something that is easy to dispose of LEGALLY, and most campers don’t want to camp in a place where someone has left a bag of it behind. If you have not done much boondocking yet, it may come as a shock that many dispersed campsites on public land are filled with trash, much of it extremely disgusting (used diapers, used condoms, used toilet paper, you name it). We routinely fill a grocery bag or two with trash when we set up camp on America’s public lands.

We don’t want to be hauling out other campers’ poop too!

Digging a hole big enough to bury a kitchen bag of poop properly (at least 6″ below the surface) will take a lot of work, especially in places like the western states where the ground can be as hard as cement.

Also, poop from an RV composting toilet is TOO THICK to stuff down an RV dump station sewer pipe.

Dumping conventional RV holding tanks at an RV dump station takes 10 minutes
and it puts the poop in the sewer or in a septic system where it belongs!"

[T1 Terry]

From the research we did many yrs ago, they require the compost pile to be kept above a temperature high enough to cause the moisture to vaporise if a permanent urine/liquid separator system could not be established with its own soak drain.... there were instructions on how that was set up. These heated systems do break down the waste faster but they were still talking 12 mths before it was suitable to combine with the other compost and there were all sorts of recommendations what to mix with it for different plants. As you can guess, the heated systems tended to generate the greater level of smell, so set up in a warm climate would require good ventilation.
There were articles in Earth Garden magazine yrs back about how to build a slide set up that had the throne at one level, the kitchen scraps chute further down and the run off fed an aquaculture pond along with the drain from the chook yard. Three yrs I think it took for the first load of compost to arrive at the end of the slide ready for mixing with straw and newspaper and weeds/grass clippings and animal droppings and then that went into another tumbler system before it was suitable for the vegie garden. It looked like a massive amount of work, fine for someone with nothing better to do with there time but I can't see it being practical for even the average eco property owner

[GoinBush]

Yes, it's a big commitment. I think, for use when static, I'd run the waste through a vermiculture set up or bio-digester.
Friends who own a boarding kennel put all the dog waste and hair from grooming through worm warms for eventual use on the (food) garden, it works well.

I am starting to think they, composting toilets, would be a waste of time for when travelling. A PITA even.

[native pepper]

Check out this video and the many others on youtube about bus composting toilets and how to build them,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z3PVNhdRLA

[GoinBush]

Thanks for the link, will check them out when we go to town. Limited internet out here. I don't think we will go that way though due to the inability to dispose of illegal waste.

[nedskelly]

I saw these at The caravan camping show in Newcastle a couple of years back and was sorely tempted.
http://www.enviropro.com.au/wastewater- ... ng-toilets