Home made composting toilet

I'm a bit confused about this separating thing, apparently, ladies most often do both at the same time so how does it separate them?
 
Pudsey Bear said:
I'm a bit confused about this separating thing, apparently, ladies most often do both at the same time so how does it separate them?
Click to expand...
Compost-Toilet-Urine-Separator-Diverter-for-Eco-Composting.jpg


What would usually be just the toilet pan is separated on a dry loo....
Urine into a urine bottle /solids through the the big hole and into a larger container....
Usually lined with a compostable bag for cleanliness/ease of handling and, option to bag and bin.
 
Wee drops into the funnel/separator and the poo drops into the bucket.. ladies "exit holes" are spaced a bit apart?
Sorry post crossed with photo!
 
REC said:
Just come back online and thought I would put in my two penneth ( wait for the comments:ROFLMAO:) We have a composting toilet in our barn in Portugal. Contents go onto a heap and break down over a couple of years. Wee is separated and piped out directly onto compost heap.No smells, no flies, rats or any other issues. We had a cassette in one van and I hated emptying it, seemed so much more unpleasant. Personal choice but we decided to go for a dry toilet in the van. Home made using a separator from kildwick, a six litre container for urine. No fan, stirring..just an occasional shake of the box and good cover. The urine gets emptied every couple of days, the "box" every three weeks or so depending on how much it is used. We use compostable bags (many supermarkets sell green compostable bags which hold quite a lot.) Empty onto compost pile at home or barn. Rarely bag and bin. We have had a long trip where we filled the bag and nowhere to empty so just tied the bag securely, put it in another bag and left it in bottom of the "box" till we got home. We " bury" the bags into the centre of the compost heap and cover with weeds or cardboard. The heat produced kills any pathogens (left for more than a year and they would be dead anyway!).
BTW tractor funnels make a good, wide urine separator and very cheap.
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You got me with 'tractor funnel' ! What is one of them ?
Lots of questions arise from your post .
Where do you empty the urine ? You have a bag full of 'stuff' lying there for weeks on end and no smell ?
Each to their own but struggling to understand how all of the above is more pleasant than simply emptying a cassette
 
Tractor funnel. https://www.toolstation.com/plastic...CA4z0fMXgRjSj0QVPyBoCTekQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Urine emptied down toilet, drain under bush ...it is sterile when passed. We put vinegar or citric acid in the bottom of the bottle which neutralises it too. Don't usually leave bags for "weeks on end"...it was two weeks and no smell...same as when in the loo itself. If it smells, needs a bit more sawdust on it. The smell is when urine is mixed with the solid. Which is why it is best to separate. Unlike the cassette where it is all mixed together, and we found smelled and was unpleasant. But each to their own. Might not have tried it in the van if we hadn't had such an easy time with one in our off grid home.
 
Have just been looking at gel powder/sachets for thickening 'substances'. Some were specifically for camping buckets and some for care homes.
Has anyone tried any of them?
One or two said could be emptied into toilet but most said to be put in bin. All seem to neutralise smell....
 
alcam said:
You got me with 'tractor funnel' ! What is one of them ?
Lots of questions arise from your post .
Where do you empty the urine ? You have a bag full of 'stuff' lying there for weeks on end and no smell ?
Each to their own but struggling to understand how all of the above is more pleasant than simply emptying a cassette
Click to expand...
Simple explanation try smelling a dog turd that’s been left in the sunshine and dried out or even a coat only wet poo smells. 😂😂
 
  • Funny
Reactions: REC
Debroos said:
Have just been looking at gel powder/sachets for thickening 'substances'. Some were specifically for camping buckets and some for care homes.
Has anyone tried any of them?
One or two said could be emptied into toilet but most said to be put in bin. All seem to neutralise smell....
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've used one of these for canoe camping;

Popaloo | Portable Toilets - Unique, Compact & Eco Friendly

A lightweight, compact, durable, eco-friendly, chemical & water free highly portable toilet with optional pop up toilet tents available. Made In England. Free Mainland UK Delivery.
www.popaloo.co.uk www.popaloo.co.uk

The loo folds down nice and flat and goes in a bag in the canoe as does the pop up tent. The sachets work well but unfortunately work out a bit pricey - not exactly spending a penny!
 
Whilst we are on the subject of poo and the wild....

2 of my fave 'wild' poos.....

One deep in a moss coated Welsh Pine forest on a disused mine exploring trip....
Spagnum moss makes for THE best toilet paper EVER

Second on the very far tip of a boglike uninhabited tip of a Scottish Island that shall forever unnamed whilst camping...
Treck accross a boulder field with shovel to said deserted bit overlooking the sea...
Miles from civilisation....
Crouched down after minor excavations and concentrating on the job in hand ONLY to be met gazewise by a small fishing boat appearing around the corner....
 
Robmac said:
Yeah, I've used one of these for canoe camping;

Popaloo | Portable Toilets - Unique, Compact & Eco Friendly

A lightweight, compact, durable, eco-friendly, chemical & water free highly portable toilet with optional pop up toilet tents available. Made In England. Free Mainland UK Delivery.
www.popaloo.co.uk www.popaloo.co.uk

The loo folds down nice and flat and goes in a bag in the canoe as does the pop up tent. The sachets work well but unfortunately work out a bit pricey - not exactly spending a penny!
Click to expand...
Did the sachets neutralise the smell?
 
Debroos said:
Did the sachets neutralise the smell?
Click to expand...
I had some gel capsules for neutralising smells. Got them from a stoma nurse who had been sent them as samples. They were really designed for "loose motions" in a stoma bag. Care homes can get capsules which thicken urine to prevent spillage from bottle...very expensive. In our house lol we use tablets called " biotabs" which neutralise the uric acid and stop it building up in pipes. Used in male urinals. We bought a big tub of 150 years ago and still using them! The link shows out of stock but gives an idea!
 
Whilst on the subject of poo and the wild...
The environment is expert at dealing with poo and pee, it has after all got millenia after millenia of experience. The new problems it has to deal with are toilet paper and antibiotics. Toilet paper may " only " be tree, but tree takes a lot longer to break down than pee and poo. Pee is so full of nutrients that if you put it on plants and active soil it will be grabbed very quickly.
I have been back to previous sites I used a month later and carefully excavated. There was no poo visible but the toilet paper was just a bit dirty! Modern toilet paper also has been bleached and maybe coloured. These chemicals will slow the decay of the paper and faintly pollute the environment, much more than the poo. If you have the luxury of sphagnum moss use it!
Modern people take antibiotics sometimes, these are poisonous to bacteria (obviously) so the environment takes even longer to deal with them. Remember many domestic farm animals are given antibotics routinely, so all that muck spreading may be worse than it smells.
Now just imagine if you perversely coated your poo with formaldehyde and or detergents and then emptied your cassette behind a rock. It will stay there a long time before it breaks down. The only worse thing you could do is empty it down the wrong manhole. Many manholes just carry storm water to watercourses. When this lot gets untreated to water it pollutes what might be later treated as drinking water. When the nutrients in the pee and poo are released they cause increased algal growth, an algal bloom. These kill fish. The best thing to do with nutrients is spread them on soil, water should be left pure.
On the other hand from a human point of view there is a good reason we find poo disgusting. It may have pathogens dangerous to humans. However if it is buried in active soil so it is out of sight of humans, not available to flying insects like house flies that might carry it back onto someone's dinner, and not likely to be encountered by humans in the next month and not going to be washed into a watercourse, then humans are safe from those pathogens.
Pee does not usually have pathogens, it is after all filtered blood. Poo is very different, it has only been in our guts, in some ways not really inside us at all.
 
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