Flush and Chemical and Compost, OH MY!

The first time my husband brought up us using a composting toilet and I mean the “throw a toilet seat on a bucket and cover your business with stuff”, I was adamantly against it.  I, like others, visualized a large litter box and couldn’t imagine how this wouldn’t just REEK!

 My experiences with toilets include regular house flushing toilets, outhouses when I was young (where I was permanently scarred when I realized I had peed on a turtle), and porta-pots.  In our motorhome we have a typical RV chemical, flush toilet with the large black water tank underneath that gets emptied at a dump station.  Like I stated in an earlier post, my husband bought us another chemical toilet for our home to use.  Honestly I thought it was due to the fact I love to take really long baths and he hated holding it that long but looking back, I know he was working me step by step towards other options.

I remember reading once on a TH blog that if the shows about Tiny Houses you saw on TV were truly geared towards people that were going to be living in them they would have a whole season on toilets.  I believe that to be true.  Choosing your toilet and let’s face it, like the book “Everybody poops” is something you have to tackle at one time or another.  We had emptied our RV tanks before we headed South earlier this year and had to empty during our stay as well as upon on return.  Our tanks are not very big so we only get about 3-4 days using our black tank.  If you do not use an effective chemical, this is VERY GROSS AND SMELLY!  We were dumping one day and another RV came up from the other direction and was dropping at the other side.  WOW, I don’t know if you just get used to your own stink or what but when they opened their tank we both about passed out!  We realized they probably had the same reaction to us and also were concerned with how quickly we had to empty. 

We were debating about trying out a pre-made composting toilet and also looking at those that separate the solid from liquids.  We ended up ordering a small toilet seat that snaps onto any large bucket (think Lowe’s, Home Depot, etc.) and Adam ordered some coconut shells for covering.  Apparently there are multiple items you can use including sawdust, coffee grounds (both great smelling if you can get them cheap or free from area businesses), peat moss, and ground up coconut shells.  I am not sure why he did the coconut shells but we got a large 10 lbs. brick shipped to us.  From there, you wet it and then let it dry.  It becomes very easy to crumble and feels soft, almost like a nice potting soil.  You place a bag to line the bucket and put a small amount of the coconut in the bottom.  Then you go and cover with a little.  It’s important that you maintain a good moisture ratio to avoid smells. I was really hoping it would smell like coconut but it doesn’t really have much of a smell at all.  However, it does REALLY WORK!  The bucket is much lower than a standard toilet so we will make adjustments but surprisingly you just go, throw your toilet paper in and cover and no smells!  You can order biodegradable bags to use that you could then just toss the whole bag into a composting pile.  Right now we are using garbage bags and disposing of them in with the trash.  I believe the plan is to go ahead for this leg of our trip and continue with the chemical toilet.  Later we will switch over to a composting bucket but utilizing the raised area where the RV toilet now sits.  Since we want our TH to be built so it can be off grid, this method will allow us to do that and not utilize precious water.