Thinking about Crap: Should Houses Have Composting Toilets?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05. 4.07
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown"-even Jack Nicholson could not beat the political forces around real estate development and water. All development depends on its delivery and the removal of its waste. In Ontario they spent $ 800 million of taxpayers money so that real estate developers could build surburban sprawl all over our best farmland and dump it all in to Lake Ontario a few miles from our drinking water inlet. You can drive a bus through this thing. Most of the money in developing suburbs is the underground infrastructure, the veins and arteries carrying water and waste.
Yet most of our waste water need not go to the sewer, gray water from showers and sinks could be used in gardens for irrigation. The only water that is a problem is that from the toilet- so why don't we try and get rid of it? Perhaps we should have composting toilets in our houses.
One of the problems has been the design of composting toilets; most are simply not as carefree or comfortable to use as a conventional toilet, and many people are used to the porcelain bowl with water in it. Composting toilets also require some care, daily maintenance and upkeep.
However the major manufacturers are getting closer and closer to making the composting toilet experience more home-like. Sun-Mar makes the Centrex system with a flushing china bowl, Clivus Multrum makes a foam-flush unit, but both need space underneath for the composter.
That is why I am intrigued by the new Envirolet VF vacuum flush system. An electric pump is connected to a Dometic vacuum toilet, mascerates the waste and toilet paper, and sends it to the composter, which can be in a closet next door, out of sight, out of mind, out of smell. The bathroom experience is unchanged from the current pattern.
Someone still has to go and add sawdust and peat moss once a day, and there still is a bit of liquid that has to be dealt with, but with proper gray water management a house or an apartment does not have to be connected to the big pipe any longer. Once the process of adding the material is automated it will be almost carefree. If the closet had acess to the exterior or a corridor in multiple unit buildings it could be maintained by an outside service and the homeowner would never know.
It also uses a lot more electricity than a flush unit like the Centrex to run that vacuum pump and mascerator, but compared to the resources used in building the systems and dealing with waste now, it is probably a net saving on energy. If you have a basement or a two storey home, a straight gravity system is probably more appropriate.
If we are truly going to develop a zero waste society and protect our water resources, we are going to have to start thinking about dealing with all of our wastes and not keep flushing some of them down the pipe. Perhaps houses should all have composting toilets; certainly the toilets are almost good enough to do it. ::Envirolet
Mr. Lloyd did you know that in my province of Québec they have this narrow minded regulation from the Minister of the environment that stipulates you are not aloud to install this type of toilet (composting) in any new construction.
You are aloud only in certain condition to install a composting toilet.
I've discovered this to my regret when i started my designing project of a cottage.
No one will want this inside their house. I know this, because I still have a few teeth in my head and a few friends in town.
This thing should be buryable, like a septic tank. A neighboring tank could hold the recovered water, which could be siphoned off for some grey water application use.
Composting toilets are NEVER going to make it into the main stream market. Debating it is silly. If you take a no maintenance toiled and make it so people have to empty it... it isn't going to fly in today's world of convenience.
I stand by my long time position that building codes should REQUIRE all buildings - both residential and commercial to have separate black and grey water piping systems. The incremental cost of construction would be very minimal, the home owners or office workers wouldn't know any different and the grey water could then easily be recaptured for irrigation. Simple, easy, no fuss. It would work. It would be adopted - by the masses!
Houses with slab foundations CANNOT be retrofitted for greywater catchment without digging up foundations. Change the building codes, address the issue in a fashion that will be adoptable.
Or it could be hidden in a shed at the back of the house. I would think a system could be developed to add the sawdust and peat moss.
Picture a shed like structure on the back wall behind a house with the unit in it and bins above it for the peat and sawdust. The bins are connected to the unit with some automatic feeders, could be as simple as a worm screw in a short pipe. Homeowner fills the bins every week or so. Keeps the waste outside the house to reduce that yuck factor.
People used to run their washing machines out into the yard back when they first came out, I guess for a lack of wanting to run a proper drain. Had sprinkler systems been widespread back then would have been more useful and might have caught on.
Just a thought, is there anything in the building code that PREVENTS me from installing a black and grey water system?
I know from experience that this is good on paper, not in application. I went to a high school that had compost toilets and the upkeep is extraordinary. The idea was to have the waste be emptied out in a leech field and have it convert into usable soil.
Since it was a school and a lot of people used the bathroom, the toilet system broke down a lot...It is hard, very hard to clean and required a lot of repairs.
A lot of the times, it left the bathroom to smell bad, like an outhouse, which required the window to be open. In the summer, if the toliet seat was not down, it attracted hundreds of flies. Yes it is good for the environment, but definitely not sustainable for a large institution.
Almost everyone above whines about those who won't accept composting. My issue is how about those of us who are barred by law from doing this? The innovators have to be the first. We are the willing ones. And if society isn't ready for mass use of them, then they should have that choice (speaking as a Libertarian). But we should have the freedom and the choice to do so also, like we had at the founding of the country. When and why did this type of lifestyle become illegal? I have heard the arguments on safety-bugs reproducing, e coli etc. Anyone who has worked with a compost pile (or even too moist hay bales!) knows that compost gets hot! Too hot for bad bugs to survive.
I was wondering if anyone had any experience installing a composting toilet in Maryland? I would like to do this and am not sure where I need to begin....Any info is appreciated! Thanks!
Hi there, any advice for me? I am living in eastern Tibet and would like to install a low-cost composting toilet - we have a very dry climate, and it only rains in summer. The premises I am retro-fitting currently has a concrete slot for a toilet, and possibly hungry pigs would tidy up the rest.
Any suggestions or ideas?
ps i am not looking for a high-tech expensive solution
We have a composting toilet...an Envirolet...and we love it.
The fan and small heater do run all the time....BUT...there is NEVER ANY bathroom "smell" ...even immediately the toilet has been used....you can't say that about the tradional bathroom fans.
We have a composting toilet...an Envirolet...and we love it.
The fan and small heater do run all the time....BUT...there is NEVER ANY bathroom "smell" ...even immediately the toilet has been used....you can't say that about the tradional bathroom fans.