Forget about water saving toilets. I think no water or composting toilets are the best way to handle human waste. All that manure needs to get back to the earth. There are amazing systems that actually do this. The cost depends on how much work you want to put into it. At the low end is Jenkins' bucket system as described in his book Humanure (available free online). But I could see that taking out buckets of the stuff would get old fast. And it reminds of the untouchables caste, whose job was (and still is in some parts of India) to take out buckets of feces from upper caste homes.
I like the Envirolet. They have normal looking toilets that have a duct that takes the stuff down to a floor below where the composting takes place. The cost is quite high, but then if you compare it to installing a septic tank, it is reasonable. Only problem is getting the building inspector to accept your not putting a septic tank in. There are lots of composting toilets to choose from for example Sun-mar, Biolet, Phoenix, and I believe the Clivus Multrum has been around for a long time.
And then you have to have a system for handling grey water. That will be in another post.
Hi! Interesting and thanks for the info, I just downloaded the Humanure handbook, can't wait to start reading it later tonight. Anyways,I'm in the fortunate process of designing my very own dream house. I want to use a composting toilet based on a owner built system, I have ordered the "Composting Toilet System Book: A Practical Guide to Choosing, Planning and Maintaining Composting Toilet Systems" from Amazon, this book seems to be quite popular and I hope it would help me along the way. My main concern so far is the separation of dry and wet waste, I was thinking of using a bidet/pissuar solution in combination with the toilet but you would still have to separated the waste while using the toilet, I heard the some solutions concerning this problem but so far I haven't found any, so if you happen to come across some info about it don't hesitate to let me know.
ReplyDeleteWe're thinking about something like this for a cottage in the hills for part-year use. One of the manufacturers (I think Envirolet), advertises one tank-removal per year. We just need to decide whether to spend the $1500 on the thing or build one.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand one recent blog from Canada indicates some city regulations do not allow for compost toilets, so users should check with their city before going forward with purchases or design, if a building permit is required. On the other "end", there's a recent example in the UK of the larger use of compost toilets for a mainstream office building, so obviously that city has no problem with the use of compost toilets.
Thanks for share this article, it very useful for me.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to your new article.
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