Health Water and Toilets

[Be Well]

I said I would start a thread about water and toilets as thread drift on another thread got some people aggravated. :-)

I will post stuff here later. Gotta go can grape juice. I will put a link to this thread on the B.S. thread where people were discussing water and toilets.

Come one, come all, let's hear ideas and what you've done - the good, the bad and the ugly -

 

[Publius]

Ok so what about water and toilets? Water is necessary for survival and when you gotta go you gotta go or your head will blow off.

 

[mala]

Toilets:

DH and I live off grid. We used to use a humanure system, but frankly we just got tired of lugging five gallon buckets of poop around. Can't imagine why.

Now we have compostable bags that we get from Amazon. We each have one of those large coffee mate cans with a lid and a simple chair with a cutout. Drop a bag in, do what nature says, tie a knot in the bag and drop it in a 3 foot deep pit that DH dug. After we have a layer of bags, we cover, and repeat. One 3 foot deep by 4 foot by 4 foot square pit will last over a year for the two of us. It's tidy, uses no water, and after some mental adjustment has served us well.

We can tell a lot about our visitors by how they handle that. So far, they have shown admirable courage and humor.

This would work well for a grid down situation. Until the bags run out.

 

[Be Well]

Interesting, mala. So one bag per evacuation? That's a lot of bags. Are they cheap? I know with the Humanure system (BTDT plus other ways) you're not supposed to add water so it's best to pee separately but being a girl, that is not always possible. When we got done with the composting via HM it didn't take long for the pile to become totally innocuous dirt.

I also like trench latrines but you need a movable privacy booth, with a roof for winter. Trench latrines compost very fast. I do not like pit latrines aka regular outhouses, they stink. I will be back with more hopefujlly useful info, at least a little bit.

Oh - another system that composts really fast, but you have to have a large property, is the "use your own trowel and make your own hole" method. I did that for about a year with my two adolescent children. I found that the stuff composted sometimes in a few weeks, depending on weather. You just want privacy or the movable privacy booth.

 

[Publius]

Yeah it seems like no matter how you go about toilets the expense is what scares most off and I guess thats why most naturally gravitate to the 5 gallon bucket and we use the portable camp toilet and no problems with it and wife loves it, so $125 or so dollars you can have a really good portable camp toilet thats easy to manage.
The private well deep unless you already have one and even then putting in a hand pump with a foot valve that can pull water from 200 feet down or deeper gets pricy but worth it if you experience power outages or bad storms often.
Cisterns work and only needs a common pitcher pump and that too can run into money digging the hole and doing the cement and running the rain gutters to it but made big enough hold 5000 gallons it should hold you for a while! Unlike an electric well pump you have to go pump it by hand and you wise up fast and learn not use so much.

 

[mala]

Interesting, mala. So one bag per evacuation? That's a lot of bags. Are they cheap? I know with the Humanure system (BTDT plus other ways) you're not supposed to add water so it's best to pee separately but being a girl, that is not always possible. When we got done with the composting via HM it didn't take long for the pile to become totally innocuous dirt.

I also like trench latrines but you need a movable privacy booth, with a roof for winter. Trench latrines compost very fast. I do not like pit latrines aka regular outhouses, they stink. I will be back with more hopefujlly useful info, at least a little bit.

Oh - another system that composts really fast, but you have to have a large property, is the "use your own trowel and make your own hole" method. I did that for about a year with my two adolescent children. I found that the stuff composted sometimes in a few weeks, depending on weather. You just want privacy or the movable privacy booth.

Well, we calculated it costs between 10 and 30 cents a bag, depending on the size. DH could have been a WWII bombardier and can use the 10 cent bag, but I'm not so, um, precise, hence the multi-use bigger bag! Overshare, I know!

Yeah, the humanure solution suffered from just the problem you mentioned. There are limits to how many different steps I will and sometimes can take to go to the toilet, especially when it's 30 degrees below zero. And as strange as it may sound, it's no fun dealing with a giant poopsicle. Menopause and complicated toilet procedures in subzero weather DO NOT MIX!

Anyway, I'm more concerned for the folks in suburbia, and that's why I brought up the "bag" system that we use - it's tidy and provides minimal fuss. You just need to think ahead and have the bags. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007XIXFMW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[pooreboy]

Wow! I guess being raised in the woods we were lucky. If a pit toilet filled up back when, people just covered it with dirt from the new one, and moved the outhouse over. LOL i see how in an urban situation this would be difficult.

 

[Publius]

Wow! I guess being raised in the woods we were lucky. If a pit toilet filled up back when, people just covered it with dirt from the new one, and moved the outhouse over. LOL i see how in an urban situation this would be difficult.

Grew up using outhouse's and all of them had a box with skids and when it filled up you just open the back of the outhouse (its hinged and tightly closed off) and put the chains to the rings on it and drag it out and off somewhere and turn it upside down and let it set for a week or so before dealing with it and you have an extra box to put in its place. The other full box got lifted off and cleaned off and allow to dry and put under a simple roof shed and wast was later used for fertilizer in the garden and the stuff can really make tomatoes grow.

 

[Freeholder]

I'm going to collect my posts from that other thread and put them here all together.

If you may have to haul water at some point, it would be a good idea to figure out how to do that without killing your back, now, while you can still get stuff to do it. (If we lost power, we would need to haul water from the river, about a quarter of a mile away -- return trip includes a steep hill, and the entire distance is rough dirt roads except for crossing the paved road that runs parallel to the river.)

Garden cart (with the hill coming home, I could carry four full five-gallon water jugs in my garden cart)

Little red wagon (Haven't used this for hauling water yet, but I imagine I can haul two or three full jugs with the wagon)

Old-lady shopping cart -- two-wheeled (for small families -- these won't haul a lot of weight; they also won't work well on rough ground)

Pony/goat/dog cart if you have a critter to pull it

Old-fashioned hand-cart (like the Mormons used for some of their ill-fated trips across the plains -- they are great for local haulage, though)

Bicycle -- can carry quite a bit of weight with a bike -- you push the bike while walking. You are using the bike like a pack mule. If you have a long distance to go, probably the best way to do it would be with a bike and a bike trailer -- the heavy-duty cargo kind.

Make sure you have containers with lids (you could use five gallon buckets, but water jugs with screw-on lids will work better, just take something to dip water into the jugs). And if you use a bicycle you'll need some way to attach the jugs to the bike that will allow you to take them off easily.

If it comes down to hauling water, make sure you keep the home storage containers topped off. Sure as shooting, if you let them get low, you'll get sick or hurt or have an ice storm or something, and won't be able to go out to your water source to get more water.

Kathleen

P.S. I have dairy goats who need about five gallons of water in the winter, more like ten gallons per day in the summer. The chickens need one to five gallons of water, depending on how many I have at the time, and the weather. Three dogs go through anywhere from two to five gallons of water per day, depending on the weather. So just for the animals I would need to haul eight to twenty gallons of water home (or be smart and take the goats and the dogs to the river with me twice a day -- goats don't need to have water in front of them 24-7 as long as they can get at least one good drink per day). In warm weather I could even take the laundry down to the river!

PPS: Stash two or three big bales of peat (the biggest size you can get at the garden supply store or the feed store), three five-gallon buckets, and a spare toilet seat. You can make a humanure toilet and save the graywater for watering the garden, or whatever else really needs water. That much peat will last most people and small families a year or more.

The Humanure Handbook is free on-line if you want to read it, but basically, you put a scoop of peat in the bottom of a bucket, set a toilet seat on the bucket (there are ways to stabilize the seat, but I won't get into that right now), and then add a scoop of peat after each use of the toilet bucket. You need one extra bucket for the peat, and one for when you switch out the toilet buckets (need a tight compost bin to dump the contents into, with more leaves, sawdust, or peat to add to the compost pile) -- the used bucket needs to be cleaned and left in the sun if possible before bringing it back in the house. We've used this system a couple of times for several months to a year, and it works just fine with minimal odor.

I do have a young goat that I am keeping for use in harness. He isn't quite old enough yet (he's about eight months old) to start pulling weight, but he should be able to pull a load next year, and the year after should be able to pull a cart with my handicapped adult daughter in it. I have the harness already, need to build or buy a cart. I don't know how much your Nigerian Dwarfs would be able to pull -- you might have to hitch two or more of them! (Which would be awfully cute!) They don't take a whole lot of training -- especially since I don't plan to drive from the cart, but will walk with the goat on a lead-rope. The young wether I've got for pulling is a Nubian/Boer cross, by the way -- he's going to be a big boy. I wish he wasn't mostly white, but you have to make do with what you've got.

Be Well, plain dirt will NOT work in a humanure toilet. I've tried it. You need something that will stay on top of the fluids in the bucket and absorb some of them -- dirt just gets wet and sinks. If it's got any clay in it, it then settles and sort of solidifies on the bottom of the bucket, and is a pain to clean out. (Takes quite a bit of water, preferably from a hose with pressure, self-defeating if you have a water shortage.) Peat, sawdust, and shredded dry leaves all work well. Chopped straw would work, and any other dry organic matter, but not dirt.

Adding: I was talking to a friend today who is probably close to my mother's age, and lives (and has lived for twenty or thirty years) without running water at her place. I don't think she has electricity either, but I'm not sure about that. She gets water from a friend's place (and does her laundry and baths at a friend's place). She has several horses, and uses a pony and cart to move water and hay around her property to take care of the horses. She told me today that she made her pony harness herself. So if you have an animal you could use for pulling, you don't have to spend a bunch of money on harness (although if you are going to use a full-sized horse, or an ox, or anything that can put a large amount of strain on the harness, it might be best to buy the harness). Just find some good pictures and copy them as best you can with sturdy webbing. Pony and goat carts are also not that hard to build from pictures and plans on the internet. A sled for winter use is a good idea, too. Just make sure, whatever you build, that it won't run over your draft animal on a down-hill slope.

Kathleen

 

[Be Well]

Thank you, Freeholder, for moving your comments. I will try tomorrow, just got done make grape juice and putting in jars and I'm too tired to do anything more.

One way of washing people used to do in the "olden days" was using a basin to wash face, hands, sponge bath, etc. I've done it a lot over the last 13 years because the first few years were off grid and we had to save water, we had no hot water until about a month ago, so all water was heated on the woodstove in the winter and cooking stove in the summer. With a basin of water you can get clean enough to feel reasonably human; if you use much soap, you need a second basin to rinse with. We also used for years the bucket bath. First in a shower stall and later hub got an old claw foot bath tub. Put the 4 or 5 gallon bucket in the shower stall or tub (or for the first 8 months on the property it was on a pallet outside with privacy wood around), and fill with warm water. Then we used a container, usually a quart yogurt container, to pour some water and get wet, scrub up, and then rinse. I use very little soap as my skin can't handle, and scrub with wash cloth or mitt. You get perfectly clean, even with 3 gallons. Long hair is another matter entirely, but can be done.

To do a really good sponge bath, a gallon works; I have used a wash cloth to get all wet, then scrub with the wash cloth again, then remaining water pour on, unless in a place I can't pour it. For people who aren't used to minimal water, off grid, etc - they would be surprised how clean you can feel with a 1 gallon "sponge" bath.

 

[bbbuddy]

I have used a humanure compost system for years at a time, and it does work...the post about not including the urine is incorrect, the nitrogen in the urine helps the composting process.
Also not every one has access to sawdust, but everyone can buy wood pellets by the bag! Put some wood pellets into a 5 gallon bucket and sprinkle hot water over them from your kitchen faucet sprayer and they swell (alot!) and fall apart right away. Use just enough water for them to get uniformly damp....you can do this now while you have access to hot water and fill a large bag with the saw dust, don't tie it up, allow the sawdust to dry, and you can keep it indefinitely.
One store bought bag of compressed wood pellets lasted two people at least a month, so you don't need a huge amount laying around.

Try to buy wood pellets that are not hardwood and it will compost faster. I used to mix peat moss in, but found it was not necessary. Just a cover of the wood pellet sawdust over your poo will block smells and flies. You still need to set up a 4x4 outside enclosure for composting, and a bale of straw for the compost pile.

You start with a good layer of straw mixed with small branches if possible at the bottom to keep it aerated, then deposit the 5 gallon bucket of sawdust and human waste in the middle, with plenty of straw around the outside edges so it doesn't leak out, and cover each deposit with straw.

The free online humanure handbook shows how to build a simple compost enclosure and how to do it all. ANY backyard can have one of these and no one will know what it is unless you tell them....now is the time to get it ready, before it may be needed. Everything can be in place but not used until things fall apart....sawdust toilets work very well!

 

[Be Well]

When we used a humanure type composting toilet, DH built a box frame and put a toilet seat on it, and slid the bucket underneath. We used raw sawdust sometimes (from milling some of our trees), you cannot use sawdust from kiln dried lumber; and sometimes chipper shredded materials like twigs, leaves and the like. Some of the chipper/shredded stuff was small size and some was pretty good sized. Still worked. I had read that dirt worked but it sounds as though Kathleen knows what she's talking about! I did read that leaf mould works, so if someone lives in a forest or has woods nearby, scraping off the top layer of leaf mould would certainly work. Composting toilets can work as long as a person has at least some kind of back yard to make a compost pile with the bucket contents. I cannot imagine living without at least that much space. In an apartment or other city tight quarters situation, even if you (the generalized "you") can manage to take care of exrement in a cleanly manner, no one else will.

DH lived in SF during the Loma Prieta EQ not long before we were married. He lived in a smallish apartment building near GG park and he said people were crapping everywhere and not even trying to bury it in the park and other areas with dirt or grass. He knew plumbers and they said people filled their toilets with crap and then bath tubs.

Most people don't have a single clue how to take care of crap in a hygienic way and in a no water/grid down scenario, this would make life intolerable in cities.

 

[parsonswife]

As a side note, I went to Russia when they first let Christian missionaries in. It was a town 8 hours outside of Moscow, 80,000 people population in winter and the whole city did not have indoor plumbing! Only 1 hotel (our) had 1 toilet per floor, this was for the government bigwigs. Walking outside was like walking through a cess pool....they said it wasnt was in winter but by spring when the city thawed out it was pretty rank. made me think of our cities in a grid down

 

[Downriver]

We do the humanure thing, too. It most definitely helps to add the urine in there although it does make the bucket heavier. We just use more sawdust, the downside of that is the bucket fills up faster. I love the compost I get though!! I have used sawdust from kiln dried lumber and had no problems whatsoever. What is supposed to be the issue with it? It made a wonderful, fine textured compost compared to the course, but fresh, sawdust I get now.

 

[Freeholder]

Actually dirt might work if you completely covered the contents of the bucket each time you used it. I mean, buried the stuff. It would still be harder to get out of the bucket than organic material, though. The issue would be the amount of dirt you'd have to use -- one scoop (I usually used a 16 oz. can for the scoop) of organic material or several scoops of dirt. Given the amount of dirt you'd have to haul in and out of the house, I think that if I couldn't get organic material I would just dig an outhouse hole and build an outhouse. Save the dirt that comes out of the hole for covering the contents; when the hole is filled back up, dig a new one nearby and drag the house over the top of it. Rinse and repeat. You could plant a tree on top of the old hole after it's set for a year or two!

I don't know of any reason not to use sawdust from kiln-dried lumber. Are you perhaps thinking of treated lumber? I would agree that sawdust from treated lumber would not be a good thing to use at all, as the chemicals used are dangerous both to have in your house and to your compost pile/future garden soil where the compost pile is to be used.

Kathleen

 

[Be Well]

The reason not to use sawdust from kiln dried lumber is explained in Humanure - the microbes that turn the excrement into good compsost have all been killed in the drying process. I think dirt would work because there are plenty of microbes in it, especially if the dirt is top level with a lot of organic matter in it. I found using trench latrines for months that the poop would compost totally in just a few weeks, buried with dirt each deposit. I actually like trench latrines a lot for that reason. Just not so nice in the rain, winter or at night! They could be used with a movable privacy screen and even a box above with a toilet seat, just move along the trench as needed. My elderly neighbor told me that's what her family did when they moved here about 35 years ago, until they got their house finished and septic system put in.

I think the easiest way to store water if a person has a big enough yard is water storage tanks from farm supply places, potable water tanks. Fill with rain water, well water or even city water. To me having enough water is the MOST vital prep item. There is no subsitute or workaround for sufficient water.

 

[Be Well]

We do the humanure thing, too. It most definitely helps to add the urine in there although it does make the bucket heavier. We just use more sawdust, the downside of that is the bucket fills up faster. I love the compost I get though!! I have used sawdust from kiln dried lumber and had no problems whatsoever. What is supposed to be the issue with it? It made a wonderful, fine textured compost compared to the course, but fresh, sawdust I get now.

That's interesting - I have no experience with using kiln dried sawdust, only from logs hub had milled on our property. I guess Humanure is wrong about that!

 

[Christian for Israel]

at the request of the OP i'm putting this here:

contact your local bottled water (5 gallon water cooler bottles) distributor and order a cooler along with as many bottles as you need. when i was a distributor we had many customers who ordered 20-30 bottles at a time, some as a prep item, some because of convenience and some because they lived so far out that delivery was difficult.

i'm not in that business anymore but i still get water delivered and keep 20 bottles in stock (60 days supply for myself and DW). due to this situation we doubled our normal holdings. the bottles store easily and racks are made to stack them (distributor usually provides racks for free to customers). we pay $6/bottle with a $10/month cooler rental. we can also choose between purified and distilled water. ours were guaranteed good for 5 years if unopened.

 

[Siskiyoumom]

We have used a dirt layer and saw dust in our five gallon bucket crapper.

We lined the bucket with a construction grade garbage bag first.

Hubby peed in a urinal and would sprinkle it on the perimeter of the property.

We have also used both soft wood and hard wood sawdust.

He made a pit to dump the contents of the buckets and after a couple of years of heavy snow fall he got the itch to finally put in the septic system : )

We have an out house as well for when we have extra guests because our septic system was not designed for heavy use.

We divert "grey water" ie. washer/shower/sinks and that has worked well for us.

 

[Downriver]

I know this is a bit old, but I'm new here and got 'lost' and couldn't find this thread again for a while. Sorry!

Be Well, I'll have to read through the Humanure Handbook again, I didn't remember that, but it's been years since I read. My impression was that there are more than enough microbes and such in our wastes to get the job done. The sawdust supplies the carbon to balance the nitrogen and to deal with smells. I've buried many animals in sawdust and ended up with good compost a few months later as well. That's the only place where I had an issue with kiln dried sawdust, mostly because it was so fine and light that it just blew off.

My experience has been that anything that was ever alive, or came out of something alive, will compost. It's just some things take longer than others. I am not all that knowlegdable about this stuff, it's just observations from over the years of experimenting.

Thanks for replying and, again, my apologies for taking way too long to respond!

 

[inskanoot]

Somewhere recently I came across an incinerating toilet.

 

[Freeholder]

Somewhere recently I came across an incinerating toilet.

There are incinerating toilets, but don't they require either propane or electricity in order to work?

Kathleen

 

[moldy]

DH was commenting on this thread - but I can't get him to post. He says that when he worked at Vail, they would use mineral oil to flush the toilets. The oil wouldn't freeze, and it would float to the top. There was some kind of recirculator that allowed them to re-use the oil.

 

[inskanoot]

There are incinerating toilets, but don't they require either propane or electricity in order to work?

Kathleen

Yes. Not for everyone.

 

[Freeholder]

Yes. Not for everyone.

Yes, I wouldn't want one. The bucket toilet works fine, except for having to take it out and empty it every day or so. Honestly, I'd just as soon have an outhouse. Downwind of the house, of course!

Kathleen

 

[Orion Commander]

Can the humanuer be used for garden fertilizer? Safely? Using human waste in third world countries causes health issues.