People again!

Finally on Tuesday night everyone came back from the epic trip.  It is so nice to have people around again here at the house.  It defo was a relaxing week, but now I am glad to have company again.  That night we had another spa bath.  It is an awesome thing to be able to have it basically whenever as long as we plan ahead a bit and start the fire early.  Before everyone left we filled up the vat with water from the river and filled the fireplace with wood.

Then the first day everyone was back we finished up Jorge (the composting toilet).  Put up the door, added stairs, and varnished the inside.
Now we have our new
place to poo
with a view.
Shitty poetry, huh?  Below here is a picture of the finished product:

Then two days ago we tried out the earth oven for the first time.  I dug out the sand in the middle of it which was holding the shape while it was built.  Then I got a fire going in there for a couple hours.  Laura and Dani had spent most of the afternoon making pizza dough and bread to bake in our new earth oven.  And then when we go to bake... its barely hot at all.  I think that first fire was needed to dry everything out, and right now we've got another fire going that will hopefully heat up the oven this time.

Other than these couple projects its been a quiet few days here.  Today was a free day, and we went to the beach even though its been slowly getting cooler here.  I was the only one to get in the water.  I also went for a very light jog to test out my leg which has been feeling better.  I doubt it is back to 100% yet, but I might be able to stop worrying that I will strain it at any moment now.  Tonight is the end of daylight savings here and so tomorrow there will be 8 hrs difference to the east coast.

 Fijoas are my new favorite fruit.  And here's some to the left.  Yesterday Jon went over to the neighbor's house and got 2 huge bags of them.  I have eaten about 40 of these in the past 24 hours.  Yum.

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?