Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

At our deer camp my brothers and I have rv trailers, and most are no longer road worthy. To properly empty the on board septic tanks require a little sloshing that goes on while driving, if not it smells up the living area. So we have sort of an out house. It is an old plastic port o let with the bottom of the tank cut out and it is set on a little mound with a 2' deep pit dug under it. In the winter it gets used more and very little bio action going on but in the spring the bsf larva go to work and the pile dissapears. It is surprising how little it smells. In the winter it only smells if you go right in behind some one and in the spring the bio action goes into high gear and it only smells like dirt. It has been in use for at least 5 years now and by summer the pit is empy. We have never had to dig a new hole like we anticipated. It is surprising how little is left as compost.

Is there any noticeable extra greenery or growth from worm decomposition activity?
5 Years, I would think there would be some change

Now that you mention it the young pines growing next to it are noticeably larger than the others.

Sweet so a benifit
I bet the grasses get munched too

The soil is poor there from years past clear cutting and replanting of pines. The tree roots are visable in the pit. They may be using up all the nutrients as fast as they are released. I know they are pulling out the water.

The original part of our house was built in the '50's. The toilet and tub had asphalt drain pipe. When that pipe colapsed and would not pass any soilds I had to do something. Rather than remove the tub and toilet, jackhammer out the cement floor I went shopping. The price of Sunmar or Biolet toilet was staggering. But on ebay I found a Biolet for a third of the going rate. I ordered it and plugged the toillet hole, have learned to live with it. The tub liquid will pass no problem thru the old pipe.
Here is what I have learned with the Biolet "composting toilet". The first problem was that I had to elevate the toilet to allow enough head to drain liquids over the sill plate. The already tall toilet now is elevated 3 inches on a stand. This allows all liquids to drain off to a little tank outside in a pit. That 4 gal. tank needs to be emptied every week. It goes to fruit trees or non-root veggie beds. If neglected the tank over flows and runs out into the chichen pen.
Another problem was the mulch that they want sprinkled on each dump. It is expensive to buy and even to make your own mix......peat noss, wood shavings, perlite, and potting soil. So after doing that for a while we found it a pain. All you are doing is adding to the amount of stuff to pack out. Also if mix is to fine it plugs up the liquid drain. We dont bother with this any more and get little stink.
Tiny flies would accumulate around the lid in summer. By adding a 12 volt DC fan we eliminated them. First we added the biolet patented venture stack top. That helped but not enough. Yes it has a stack. Yes we had a rafter in the only place the toilet could live and had to angle around it. Note that you may not want to run a bathroom vent or the stack wont carry away odor. Nor should you keep the door to the bathroom closed. That will reduce air flow across the affluent whcih dries and composts it. Of course with out the added carbon material it wont compost in place anyway.
The final problem is that the tray gets full and needs to be emptied every 60 days for our family of two. If you delay the solids will run over the screen and plug the liquid drain. There is a little sight tube to warn you when the liquid level is up. If so you need to take shop vac and suck out liquid thru that sight tube. then you can open the hatch and remove the tray of solids. Rather than do this every month I use a little scoop and remove all the paper and solids in the bowl first. I place them in a batter box and take them out, wash the batter box, and put the biolet tray in it for removal. The job takes less than an hour.
Currenly I am placing the wet solids in snap top pastic drums and storing untill I get my aneorobic digester going. This is the non-electric model of the Biolet that is now improved. The sale price I got was because they abandoned that model. The new non-electric has two buckets that you rotate. It still requires a liquid drain. Not worth the extra $1500.
We do have a guest room toilet that uses the septic tank. This septic has not been pumped for over 15 years. It is worthwhile to do something like this but it means maintenance and experimenting as do all sustainable systems.

thanks for the heads up spirit
sounds like a s%&^load of work
pardon the pun
so lime dust is no good to sprinkle over the
new borry bits?

It does sound like quite a lot of work for something that cost quite a bit in the first place. Bucket toilet cost us the price of a toilet seat. Probably takes 15 extra minutes a week to empty and wash buckets. Ya do need a compost bin and cover material but that can often be gotten really cheap or even free.

No smell problems from a sawdust bucket toilet. If it stinks, just sprinkle more sawdust (or whatever cover material that works for you.)

When bucket gets too full to use, put a lid on it and place another bucket in service. When you get 4 buckets full, take em out to the compost bin and empty them, wash and place in sun to dry.

This has been working very well for us for a few years now. The first year we did it, we were doing the composting in trash bins full of holes on our 9' by 9' apartment patio. It is much easier to do in big compost bin in the back yard.

I can understand the urge to come up with a toilet system that looks/feels more like the flush toilets most people are used to now days but most "composting" toilet systems I've seen that attempt that, just make things far more complex with rather marginal results. The bucket toilet might require actually carrying a bucket of poo out of the house on occasion but that really isn't so difficult.

Yes, you could sprinkle lime over it but then you wont have much to compost or digester material. The new Biolet non-electric is essentially the same thing as TCX talks about with rotating buckets. The pretty housing is not worth the extra $2000+ but the stack is good for carrying away odors. I dont know if packing out two loads every other month is more work than four buckets every month. It did take lots of effort to get this thing set up correctly.

BTW I understand that Santa has a copy of the Humanure handbook under the tree for me.

I like the idea of using one of those rv type ball valve toilets to drop the poo into a bucket under it, but outside the house where it can be taken to a compost bin, but then theres the problem of having to flush a quart of water to keep the bowel clean and having to dispose of the extra liquid.

Could BSFL be incorporated into the toilet. Using plants to get rid of the water and BSF to get rid of most of the solids.

There are companies doing just that with their sewer water!

G'day guys,

Interesting discussion on the whole human attitudes to waste and I wondered if a home made version of this might not what your after. As it gets a round the look and feel of a composting toilet by putting a dunny wrap around effect on your compost pile and if you don't tell anyone there hardly going to notice it's a composting toilet compared to a standard outhouse

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EteG_TvUBg

http://www.thunderboxes2go.co.uk/

TCL, what do you think of using a IBC? It does seem that this would reduce the handling frequency.

Also, anyone in the US know where to get those urine separating seats?

BTW there appears to be a third edition of the humanure book.
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/pdf/humanure_handbook_third_edition.pdf

I am intrigued by the idea of the 30 year compost toilet. Instead of using a 5 gallon bucket a container 3 times larger than a years volume of waste is used, and can function for 30+ years before needing to be emptied. Talk about low maintenance! A vent and fan is added to avoid smells even though there is no likely to be any smells anyway.


If I could add a way to remove compost form the bottom layer then it would be perfect. I seem to recall such a compost toilet system at a remote location in a Arkansas state park. I think it was designed on a slope so that the compost slowly moved down and by the time it go to the service doors behind the outhouse it was finished composting and ready to be applied to the ground.

Long Term Composting Toilet: