Composting Toilet

Another major project we've been working on recently, with the brains of it coming from Nico and I, is a composting toilet for the house.  I have so far really enjoyed working on it, and there are only a couple more things to until it is totally complete.  I just felt like writing about it now, since I'd like to be working on it in my solitude here, but cant really do much with a bummed leg.  I put a couple photos in here, but you can see more on my picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.dayan/CompostingToilet#

So why make a composting toilet when we have a perfectly good one inside?  Good question.  One huge reason is to save on water.  With 8 people in the house, flushing the toilet takes up a large amount of water and since water is still scarce around here it will be good to use less.  Also we will be making less waste in general by using an outdoor toilet.  Sounds counterintuitive to leave your shit where it lies, but I'll explain in a moment.  Another good reason for this toilet is; with 8 people living here it'll be good to have another place to take a crap when someone jumps in ahead of you.  And yes, it will actually smell better than a conventional toilet!

This is it here to the left.  It could still use some stairs and a door, but we're almost there!

So how is this all possible? Less waste, and smell better?  Simple - let worms eat it up!  The way that a composting toilet works is by pooping into a bucket with some worms and mulch in it.  We use the half barrels which are about 3 feet in diameter and about 2-3 feet high.  After each poop, the "flush" is a handful of mulch to cover it all up.  This prevents the flies from coming and prevents it from smelling.  As the bucket fills up, the worms go to work breaking down all the worm goodness in the barrel.  There are actually 2 barrels in the system, and once one fills up, it gets put aside while the other is put into use.  During this time the worms break it all down more until it just looks like some nutrient rich dirt.  At this point you can feed the trees with it as it is great plant food.

So there you go, you can even turn your poop into something useful instead of using loads of energy by sending it to a waste water treatment plant.  Ewww...  city water that most of us drink, could have been flushed down the toilet with your poop...

Not only was this a fun project in getting to do carpentry and having the satisfaction of seeing the progress on a daily basis (instead of monthly or yearly as it often goes with conservation), but now I have written down plans and can reproduce this fairly easily some other time in my life.

I do know that this all works, because we have a composting toilet on the land that we've been using the entire time we've been here.  That is also where I got the plans from.  Jon has had very little to do with this project, so I've gone to the other one a few times to study it and take a whole bunch of pictures on how it was put together.  So who else wants to poop with a view?