Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey TLC, when composting human manure can you use charcoal for the carbon instead of leaves and paper?

Dan,
Hum, not sure on that one. I suppose it might work a little provided it is charcoal from regular logs and not from barbeque briquets or pressure treated wood. I don't think charcoal could successfully replace all other cover materials in compost though. The carbon in the composting cover material needs to be in a form usable by the microbes in order for everything to break down nicely without smelling bad.

Why do you ask Dan? A major shortage of carbon material or just an over abundace of charcoal?

Well, I have a shortage of dead leaves or any other dead plant material. Also, our septic tank is having troubles. I was thinking that a composting toilet would be cheaper than fixing the old system; and more environmentally friendly too.

I do have a lot of small trees here and I can make charcoal from it by firing it in a sealed container. It is great for making mass amounts of hydrogen too.. So I though that a little of that would go a long ways. When it gets on the ground its so oxygen hungry that nothing can grow there for a long time.

Molasses is a good carbon source,,,usually cheap.

Any excess can be used to feed your AP system,.....,

http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/cps/rde/dpi/h ... _Print.htm

lol, and here i am struggling with the N ratio for my worm farms......................

If thinking about going for a sawdust toilet system, here is a good place to ask questions
http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/messages/
If you want to read the humanure handbook for free, you can access the 2nd edition online here
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/default.html

Really a good book. There are many threads on that forum about cover materials for in bucket toilets as well as for the compost bins.

A really badly failing septic system might still need to be repaired since you still need to deal with gray water and stuff but if the septic system is just not quite handling the solids load, using a bucket toilet will probably help out quite a lot. (Remember that way back when in the past, people didn't flush or dispose of nearly so much stuff down the toilets and skinks, now there is all this flushable stuff and garbage disposers in the sinks, yet most septic systems were not designed for all that extra gunk. I am completely floored by people being required by law now in some places to have their septic tanks pumped out on a schedule of like every 4 years or something! I had always been under the impression that a properly sized septic system, never needed to be pumped out but then again, I was taught not to put excessive stuff down the drains or the toilets.----anyway, that's all kinda beside the point.)

I don't know for sure if charcoal would work as compost cover so you might have to ask about that one. I do know there are lots of things that can work as cover material. Sawdust is the primary one for in the bucket. Shredded paper and cardboard too of course. Here are some others I've heard of;
Rice hulls
straw
peat
chipped up wood/bark (is not as good at covering odor unless you use more than is good)
Most organic mulch materials work
shredded phone books
Hay even though it is rather high in Nitrogen
Some people will get shredded office paper from work or a local business.
Pine needles though they are slow to break down
shredded up palm fronds (I call it palm straw)

Hopefully you find something that will work for you.

Steve? too much or too little N in your worm farm?

My gray water is not going into my spetic it goes to a grease trap then down its own field line with many things growing on it.

I guess I need to build a 'out house' I do I dont think the wife will go for a stack of $#!T that she can see though..

I wouldn't build an "Out House"! A sawdust toilet or bucket toilet can be where ever you want to do your business! If there is space in the bathroom, stick it in there. Our bathroom is only big enough for what is already in it so the bucket toilet is in the spare room (when we had company, the bucket toilet moved into our bedroom.)

As far as the actual compost pile goes, It looks like a big pile of (whatever your primary outdoor cover material is) Leaves, straw, weeds, wood chips, whatever......... Some people might not like the looks of any compost piles. Some like them to have nice lattice or wood plank sides. Others are quite happy with a fence or wire containment or even just a pile on the ground though some sort of bin is usually a good thing. I usually advice against trying to compost in any sort of plastic composting bin or trash can with holes. While it can be done, (we had our humanure compost in two trash cans on a 9 foot by 9 foot patio when we lived in an apartment) it definitely is more difficult to manage.

As to if the wife will go along, it takes some people more time to warm up to the idea of humanure composting. Some methods for testing out the practice before getting the reluctant involved include;
Set up a humanure urinal for yourself in the office or shop or perhaps even a bucket toilet just for you until others see how handy it is not to flush!
Some people will accept urine in composting even if they think poo is gross so maybe the flusher only gets used for #2 and the sawdust buckets for pee.
All tissue, paper towels, paper plates, wet wipes, and even toilet tissue can go into the compost buckets as can wood or paper Qtips, tooth picks, and of course any food scraps or waste. If using plenty of urine in the compost pile, you can usually manage a nice hot pile that can handle most of the so called "compost No-Nos" like human poo, pet poo, meat, small dead animals, fish guts, dead fish, eggs, dairy, bread, diseased plants and weed seeds.

I've found one of the greatest parts about having good hot compost is that the trash bin doesn't stink since I never put stinky things into it, like meat scraps, bacon grease, old nasty produce that turned squishy in the back of the fridge. The compost bin takes care of the smell quite nicely while having such things in a plastic bag in the trash bin for a day or two usually means that the entire area around the trash bin will smell for days or weeks. My uncle used to (after going fishing) clean the fish and wrap up all the guts and stuff in the paper, then wrap all that in several layers of plastic bags before putting in the garbage. The whole area around the corner of the house would smell terrible for ages even after the offending material was long gone with the garbage truck. I got a good hot compost going with leaves and the urine of three people for a few weeks, the next fishing trip and we stuck the fish guts and nasty paper into the hot middle of that bin and guess what? No stink!!!!!!! We let those fish guts rot right there in the middle of that hot pile of pee and leaves and no problem.

Need any more stories of encouragement?

As resident composting expert, any recommendation for preventing hoards of flies from colonizing the compost?

Always keep it well covered with plenty of cover material. Flies are not that great at digging through lots of dry material to get at the wet stinky stuff to lay their eggs. If the compost is hot, active and well covered, flies are generally not that attracted to it anyway, they are drawn to the smell of ammonia and poo, your compost should not stink that bad though and if it does, it needs more cover material.

Easy rules of thumb for compost, if it smells bad or looks nasty, add more cover material (leaves, straw etc.) It should only be as moist as a wrung out sponge. If it is too wet, it will likely start to stink. If it is too dry, it will probably not break down very quickly.

If you are just composting standard "safe" compost stuff there is little to worry about. Throw it on the pile and let it be for at least a year and you should have compost. If you are composting any of the "no-nos" you should make sure you get hot active compost and make sure you age it for a long time after you quit adding to that pile.

I don't turn compost, I don't use any purchased additives, I don't get too technical about browns and greens or my C:N ratio. I add to the hot top center of the pile and cover with more cover materials. Then jab the temp probe back into the top center of the pile so I can see how hot it gets over the next several days. Sometimes we put a big piece of cardboard over the top of the pile and weight it down so the pile doesn't get too soggy during the rainy season. When the bin is full, we stop adding to it and let it age till the next bin is full too, then we use the first bin so that we will have a bin we can start filling again.

TCL, too little N

it seems to be running fine though, so textbook ratios or not i'm happy

a major component of my input is coffee grounds and with the chooks not much green matter goes in there really.

have started puttng a sprinkling of aged chook bedding in which i think will balance the skew.

For worm composting, I don't think you want to get too worried about c:N ratios. I use shredded corrugated cardboard and because of the glue, it can not only act as bedding but as a food source for the worms as well. Since we don't have any chickens yet, the worms get quite a lot of green garden waste. Coffee grounds are great for worms and they seem to love them. Coffee grounds are pretty close to a perfect ratio all on their own. You don't really want your worm bit to hit the perfect ratio overall because the hot composting through an entire bin would either kill or drive out most of your worms. They should always have an area of plain bedding to escape to if the food areas all start to heat up.

If your worms seem happy and the bin doesn't stink all is good. So long as you have enough but not too much moisture and you are able to harvest what you need from the bin and the bin consumes what waste you want it to, life is good.

A worm herd is really easy livestock to take care of.

yep i'm learning...........slowly..............worm bins are another of the "the less you do the better"

has been running for a few years now no probs after "trying" to keep them happy to much water and such.

it copes with feasts and famines of input material

glad to hear about coffee grinds, you've just given me the reason i need not to cut down

I think I will build a composting toilet for mt shop and if it odes not stink then I might be able to get the wife to go for it. Especially if I don't fix the sewer..

Dan,
What kind of composting toilet are you talking about? The Humanure Handbook type of sawdust bucket toilet or something different?