Discovering my freedom in Slovenia - start of a long book

I am prepareing a detailed report for you guys soon, but for now, what do you think about my new temporairy toilet?


It was a coincidence the parasitic vine grew on the willow log at that exact spot but l decided l will leave it be :smile:

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You have a much more understanding wife than mine. She would beat the crap out of me , if I took a picture in that position. TomC

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sawdust toilet?
just a few more charactersā€¦

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Thatā€™s a beautiful piece of furniture. It would be my no1 choice for no2 :smile:

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Would not hurt to add some charcoal to the mix. :rofl:

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Welcome to the exciting world of human waste in plastic buckets! My toilet system uses 55 gallon drums, and after 2 years I am finally starting to feel like I am getting it figured out. What are you planning on doing when the bucket is full? (it will take less time than you think).

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Hereā€™s what I do:

https://humanurehandbook.com/humanure_basics.html

About as simple and as good as a toilet system could ever be.

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Well she is not in the midle of the ā€œbuisnessā€ here just to be clear :smile:

Yes this is a temporairy ā€œsawdustā€ toilet however since l dont have any sawdust l use lime of now.

Thats great to know you guys have experiances with the stuff! I will most likely build a composting toilet in the house later on. But l am thinking to digg a shaft and a room under the wall of the house and have the composting action there, with acess to the pit from the outside. Shuld hold a conciderable amount of composting material, maybee only requireing emptying every second year or so.

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Before I moved to my new house, I was planning to make a biogas digester that could take both food waste and toilet waste.

About 20-25l of bio waste should make about 1m3 of gas a day and could maybe be used for cooking?

Just a idea, but I think you are able to make all the gas you need without fiddling with biogas. :grinning:

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Biogas digesters in principle are quite good. They are reliant on higher temperatures for gas production though. So this requires insulation, solar or other heating or a big tank to conserve heat. H2S gas will be produced in smaller quantities, but can be scrubbed by passing over steel wool / cuttings (according to what Iā€™ve read).

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That does burn if itā€™s dry or mixed with enough dry biomass. It should work in a gasifier. And that would be very sanitary, depending on exactly how it is done.
My grandparents had a farm up in northwest Illinois. My grandfather would pull the can out of the back of the outhouse, sprinkle a little diesel in there, and burn it. Might be a simpler way to do it.
Rindert

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If you read the info on the humanure website, he makes a compelling case that the composting process (1 year, then left to rest for another year), renders the ā€œwasteā€ into completely safe, and high value compost. Itā€™s the missing link to permaculture, plus eliminates all issues with water contamination and disease propagation associated with our present sewage disposal concepts.

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Iā€™ve been out of the loop for a few weeks and missed this excellent toilet picture. Kristijan has given ā€œnature callsā€ a whole new meaning.

We have developed an effective Urine Diversion Dry Toilet (UDDT) for our friends in a remote farm village in Rwanda.

Since our waste streams come out separately, here are some reasons for keeping them separated AND for adding charcoal to each:

  • we excrete 10 times more pee than poo

  • Pathogens live in poo not in pee

  • combining pee and poo creates a cess pool

  • Almost all of the soil nutrients (especially nitrogen) are in the pee

  • charcoal is a good soil ammendment IF it is first inoculated with a good nutrient source like urine

  • charcoal aDsorbs instead of aBsorbs so it does not expand like sawdust

  • pee saturated charcoal does not slosh and spill like a bucket of liquid pee

  • The front pee bucket (full of inoculated biochar) can be conveniently emptied and added directly to the garden. The poo bucket remains in place and is emptied at a much longer interval

  • charcoal controls odor in both the pee pot and the poo pot.

  • poo is an excellent and energy dense binder for charcoal briquettes (heat poo to 165* F to kill pathogen nasties) Alternately, heat treated or composted poo can be used as fertilizer.

The UDDT trick is to form a flap to go over the gap where the pee pot and poo pot join. This holds pots together and keeps waste from falling between pots. Our friends in Rwanda use a 20 liter plastic water can sideways in front of a 20 liter round bucket. With the handle section of the plastic can carefully removed, the front side becomes a pee shield for boys and the back side is heated and bent over to form the afore mentioned ā€œflap.ā€ An elongated toilet seat allows convenient aiming for men and women. The seat rests on a wood frame a few inches above the pots. This extra space keeps scrotums from touching the connecting flap.

Apologies in advance for those who think that this is too much information.

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nopeā€¦ Iā€™d love to see a picture Bruce

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Since were on the subject, and thanks for that information,informitive knowlege, i have a questain obout putting a gardon over a septic feild. Is that safe or not, i was told that it was not safe too grow food on, my tomatos grew well but i was afraid too eat them.

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Sorry, I donā€™t have a good picture of the insides.


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Kevin,
E. coli is possible for plants to pick up over a septic field. I donā€™t consider poop safe unless it is heated to pasteurization, carefully composted or dried in a chamber for a year. Also, pharmaceuticals can be a problem in urine.

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With all respect for the efforts described, the ā€œhumanureā€ system developed by Jenkins is superior, charcoal could be used as part of the biofilter cover material, given the absorbent cover material there is zero possible sloshing, the composting process addresses all pathogen issues, and could doubtless be abbreviated in the tropics, plus itā€™s as dead simple as imaginable, one bucket, regular cleaning and change out.

Plus, I can speak from personal experience, there is no offensive odour issue even if left for months, composting gets underway right in the bucket, (a bucket of pee in the tropics or anywhere will develop a ā€œdistinctive aromaā€ in no time flat), and there you have 100% nutrient recovery and pathogen chain break. I canā€™t speak highly enough about the system, it should be used everywhere, poor countries and rich. This completely eliminates the possibility of water laden sewage backing up in a basement, never a happy day, or contaminating well water or surface water.

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Garry, Iā€™m a long-time fan of the humanure system. As a fellow container based system (CBS) advocate, I agree that humanure is the best/simplest approach for breaking the pathogen chain in most contexts. Bacterial and fungal composts are wonderful.

Since our UDDTs use charcoal, they also have ā€œno offensive odorā€ (years of personal experience). They are appropriate where compost-resistant crop-ā€œwasteā€ is abundant and ends up as smoke. This alternative CBS helps supply poor families with cleaner and cheaper fuel, plus biochar. It thereby slows deforestation, sequesters carbon, and abates household respiratory disease.

A bucket full of charcoal fines is a great urinal for anyone who appreciates the benefits that biochar can bring to the microbiome in soils and compost piles.

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Kevin, You would probably be fine eating fruit or leaves I would avoid root crops. The problem isnā€™t that though the problem is root depth and evaporation. They usually plant shallow rooted grasses so that they absorb water that wants to permeate up and evaporates it better then other choices also grass gets more sun which also helps with evaporation. As a bonus the grass layer holds the aggregate layer in place avoiding erosion and mixing of the layersā€¦

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