Composting Toilets: Why do people use them?

In my opinion, it is a total waste of time, energy and money, to buy a composting toilet.

Okay, so maybe I have been watching too many homesteader / prepper videos, where "composting toilets" was the topic of the day. But, I like simplicity in my life. Having to deal with one of those seems like a complete waste of time. In fact, I saw where one guy was forced to install a proper water run toilet in his home. (I believe it was a fairly recent video on the "living Off Grid McGarvey style" YouTube channel, if memory serves.)

Granted, I don't have to go through a lot of the regulations that are in place in the US, as well as in other countries. But, I can't understand why people would install them in a remote, BOL, when it is so simple to install a proper toilet. I mean, do you folks, who reside in very remote (however remote that may be) locations, still have to have some government inspector to come out to your place, just to make sure it is within their rules & guidelines?

I would think that, when building a place in a very rural location, one would not have to necessarily follow every rule and guideline set for their urban counterparts. For me, that would be a big part of living in the middle of 20, 40, 80, or 100 acres. To get away from all the government red tape and the pr*cks that enforce it.

Here, you just dig a hole in the ground, install some concrete sewer / drain rings, the number depending on what size you may want it to be, fill in around it and put a concrete lid on top of it. Run a water supply to it, or not - and have your operational proper toilet.

For me, as I am fairly sure I have stated in the past, a bum gun is also a (very) necessary item to have. So, pressurized water to my toilet is a must. Not to mention, all the monies I have saved on not having to buy toilet tissue over the years.






Sorry for the rant. I am going to build an outhouse now, and take my Sears catalog with me, and a few corn cobs.

 

It all depends on your health inspector. I have a neighbor who put in an outhouse, he wanted it to be fully legal, so he got the health inspector to help him. It cost him $500 in inspection fees.

I have a septic tank and leach field, which is 100X more work than a composting toilet. We were using a composting toilet our first couple years, they can be very simple.

 

There are probably some situations where a composting toilet may be a more practical solution than a long drop or a septic system, even in non urban areas. In places where water is expensive, there may be an advantage to having a composting toilet than relying on a septic system..

The Benefits of Composting Toilets - Composting Toilet World

http://www.nesc.wvu.edu/pdf/ww/publications/eti/comp_toil_tech.pdf

 

I have used a composting toilet before it was the dig a hole and cover it model.

 

Sorry that model was outlawed by the EPA, and is now discontinued, it polluted the environment, and was a bad example to bears that do it in the woods and don't bother to bury it. Course they don't use APTP (all purpose toilet paper).

Rancher

 

I just poop in a bucket and throw it over the fence into my mother in law's yard.

 

Air Head Composting Toilet

Found this recently on an RV site. This device separates urine from 'solids' - I do not agree with the instructions of 'merely pour the urine out on the ground as it it harmless" Not so sure about the harmless, but it sure stinks.

I suppose its better than a bucket and bag, hard to say how much better....

 

I pour mine out routinely around the ranch, I try to hit the gopher holes, heard it will make them move on... Sorry ladies, for men, the world is our urinal.

Rancher

 

To answer the OP...

There are very few places in the US any more where a building and/or health inspector won't find you soon after you start building. Even in the mountain wilderness or the middle of an Arizona desert, they will show up. If you do get lucky enough to avoid them and reach a point where you wish to sell the property, there is about a 99% chance you will have to raze any structure without building and health permits and "purify" any "toxic materials" (like human waste). In the US these days, citizens do not own land they buy, they merely occupy it on government sufferance.

 

Markin' yer territory, I see.

I reckon I will stay in this Third-World. Seems I have more freedoms here, than in my own homeland. Sad.

 

I've given this a bit more thought.

1) A composting toilet really = 21st century thundermug.

2) Having recently survived a really nasty bout of the flu, a weeks worth, I cannot imagine how a 'composting toilet' could cope with the sheer amount of liquid from a sick person without flushing.

3) For the young and healthy - these may seem like a real alternative. For an RV full-timer, I can see where it would save (a little) on stops at a dump station.

YMMV, but like the OP, I'll take a pass, thank you very much.

 

You know a bag of lime, a 5 gallon bucket and a toilet seat have worked just fine for me for the last 10 years....... Just too lazy to dig a trench to the lagoon, put the pipe in, install a real toilet and pay a bigger water bill. Of course summertime the bucket and seat get stored and the old outhouse goes back into action.

 

The amount of water wasted so people don't have to look at their own crap. I recommend the Humanure Handbook, Just look it up.

 

Here, they use Google Earth and a program that detects the changes. Anything above ground gets a visit from the building inspector. They tell me it is a now common method of adding to the tax base.

 

Wasted water? No pun intended, but you have to be shitting me. Currently we use rainwater harvesting at the farm. I can't supply enough storage to contain all of the water that we get throughout rainy season here. It takes about 15 minutes, under just one of our monsoon rains, to fill thousands and thousands of litres of storage tanks haand Cambodian "water jars" that we have here. For my mother-in-law, we just purchase another 4000 liters worth of storage. I can guarantee, it will be filled completely within this next week.

And, no thanks, regarding humanure. I have all the feces I will EVER need from cows, chickens, and soon to be pigs.

 

I don't know how to move the link but in china and Japan they are using humanure for making methane gas, and the villages that have it share the gas for cooking.
Seems to me that if some one was determined, you could do the same thing.

 

I have been researching biogas for some time now. We may do that, if we end up with enough livestock to produce the source product.

 

I heard they use rabbit fur, while it is still attached to the rabbit.