Search Results for: compost toilets
Compost toilets
“The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in drinking water and those who don’t.” – Joe Jenkins, the Humanure Handbook
What are compost toilets?
Compost toilets are dry or waterless toilets, i.e. they don’t use water to take the waste somewhere else. They allow natural processes to produce useful compost, after a resting period depending on the type of toilet.
DIY compost loos
There are usually two chambers – one in use and one resting. A typical toilet would use one chamber for a year, then change to the second chamber and allow …
Compost toilets course
… New campsite toilets (with waterless urinal) (video)
17. Our first house toilet (pdf)
18. The house toilet, including pest control (video)
19. Processing the urine and faeces (pdf)
Benefits, options, other processes
20. Benefits: comparisons with other systems (pdf)
21. Benefits: water, soil, pollution, energy, cost (pdf)
22. Buying a compost toilet (pdf)
23. Various types of basic compost toilet (pdf)
24. What happens to the urine? (pdf)
25. Urine separation and processing (video)
26. Faeces treatment (video)
27. Wormeries (video)
Building a compost toilet
28. Building an indoor compost toilet: tools, materials, planning (pdf)
29. Chambers (pdf)
30. Hatch …
How we go about not wasting our waste – Compost Toilets and Watson Wicks
… avoid over-thinking, procrastination and dithering, but also with the idea that there needed to be some serious learning done before too much momentum was gathered, and that starting this project would encourage that to happen.
This started fairly well, the studying went well during which time Dave Darby’s Compost Toilets became preferred bed time reading, and I came across the Low Impact Site with its wealth of useful information. During this time we ended up moving from our 1000 square metre lot in a river valley to a 100,000 square metre “sitio” or small holding on the …
Our new compost toilets online course is live - and we think you'll love it!
We’ve produced an online course on building, using and maintaining a range of different compost toilets. You can purchase the new compost toilets online course here.
If aliens were to land on this planet, and we were to try to explain to them the way we live on earth, amongst all the crazy things that we as a species get up to, perhaps one of the most difficult to explain would be the process of expending vast amounts of time, energy and money producing and delivering pure, precious drinking water to all homes (in the West anyway), only for …
Willow sewage treatment systems
“I’m interested in how we can use natural biological systems and green technologies to meet environmental challenges. We’re only at the start of developing such solutions but I think they are very much within reach.” – Louis Hennequin, postgraduate researcher, Imperial College London
Contents1 What are willow sewage treatment systems?1.1 Willow filters1.2 Zero discharge willow facilities1.3 History2 What are the benefits of willow treatment systems?2.1 Self-provisioning / personal2.2 Decentralising power away from corporations2.3 Building community and preparing for any potential collapse scenarios2.4 Environmental3 What can I do?3.1 …
Waterless urinals
… unit has a vent flue that gets the odours out of the room. Urine is taken away via a drain pipe.
Shed installation of the vented Biolan Urinal in Cornwall. No trap – the urine is just led away to the ground or to a straw-bale / sawdust pile to create compost. Good for alltoments / gardens. Pic: Toilet Revolution
Retrofit cartridges
Flush urinals can be retrofitted and made waterless by inserting a cartridge / some sort of one-way valve that allows urine to pass though and then closes to keep out smells. This type of product can be attractive in the …
Septic tanks & drainage fields
“The Grass is always greener over the septic tank.” – Erma Bombeck
What is a septic tank and drainage field system?
Septic tanks are settling systems for use with flush toilets (and grey water) to achieve a reduction in suspended solid levels prior to disposal and further treatment of the liquid effluent in a drainage field. A drainage field (alternatively a leachfield, percolation area or infiltration area) is an area of ground set out with perforated pipework at specific spacing and elevation to distribute septic tank liquid effluent for treatment within the soil underneath the drainage field pipes.
Septic tank …
Narrowboats
“One of the greatest pleasures on this earth is steering a narrowboat and, assuming there aren’t too many hazards ahead, eating a butty stuffed full of bacon, sausage, egg and tomato, washed down with strong tea from a pint pot.” – Mike Lucas
What are narrowboats?
A narrowboat is a boat for living in, transporting cargo and / or travelling on canals and inland waterways. Modern narrowboats are generally made of steel, though some are aluminium, and many older craft are wooden. They are 6ft 10in (2.1m) wide, up to 70ft (21.3m) long and can cruise almost any …
Low-impact sewage treatment
… groundwater resources and surface water habitats if not adequately filtered through deep unsaturated soil. Source: Permaculture Guide to Reed Beds.
Sewage is the term used to describe domestic and municipal effluent (sewerage, by contrast, is the infrastructure itself – the pipework, sewers etc.). Sewage is typically comprised of ‘black water’ (from toilets) and ‘grey water’ (from sinks, wash-basins, showers, baths, washing machines etc.). Industrial effluents may also be included within municipal sewage. In a ‘combined sewer’ the runoff from roads, yards and roof surfaces (or stormwater) is also connected to the foul sewers. Note that connection of stormwater to domestic …
Composting
… material (anything that was once alive) in the presence of oxygen (i.e. aerobic decomposition). Organic material can also decompose without oxygen, but this is slower and smellier, and tends to be called anaerobic decomposition or digestion (which can produce biogas). Healthy soil requires composted organic material.
Keep a little compost container in your kitchen for food waste, and empty it into your compost bin when it’s full.
The composting process involves tiny organisms, including bacteria, fungi, insects and worms. These organisms utilise the two main components of organic waste – carbon and nitrogen – and work in a series of …
Biogas
“People have been producing biogas for fuel for centuries. The Assyrians, for example, apparently used it to heat their baths in the 10th century BC.” – Sujata Gupta, New Scientist
Contents1 What is biogas?2 What are the benefits of biogas?2.1 Reduces CO2 emissions2.2 Reduces methane emissions2.3 Reduces resource use2.4 Creates two renewable resources3 What can I do?3.1 Setting up3.2 Sizing3.3 Use3.4 Regulations3.5 Safety4 Specialist(s)5 Comments
What is biogas?
Biogas is mostly methane (around 60%) with carbon dioxide (around 40%) and a little hydrogen and hydrogen sulphide …
Reed beds
“Sewage treatment reed-beds may be at least as biodiverse as naturally occurring reed-beds and will add to the overall biodiversity and ecohydrology of a catchment whilst saving energy.” – International Journal of Ecology
Contents1 What are reed beds?1.1 How reed beds work1.2 Different types of reed bed system2 What are the benefits of reed beds?3 What can I do?3.1 What size should my reed bed be?3.2 Can I use a reed bed for greywater or stormwater?4 Specialist(s)5 Comments
What are reed beds?
In a low-impact context …
New owner sought for low-impact pub and glamping site in rural Suffolk
Aldegarden is a wonderful site in Suffolk, with accommodation, a community-minded pub, and a ‘glamping’ site with yurts, timber structures, a cob roundhouse, gypsy caravan and a converted barn, communal areas, solar hot water and electricity and compost loos. They’ve been in our directory for years. But now owner Marie Smith and partner are moving on, and looking for new owners for the property and successful businesses.
Over to Marie:
14 years ago we had a dream. We bought a derelict pub and overgrown beer garden and set about turning that dream into a reality.
Alde Garden campsite …
Reflections on building the ‘Commons’ economy
First – apologies to anyone trying to use the comments sections at the bottom of topic introductions and blog articles over the last couple of months.
They haven’t been working properly – huge amounts of spam meant that we had to redirect comments into a moderation queue, to be approved before they appear on the site – and this redirect had a bit of a glitch. More importantly, our director, Dave Darby, has been ill, and so several issues have had to take a back seat. He’s much better now, and the comments problem has been fixed. We’ve also taken …
In praise of the compost toilet: why I love compost loos
In praise of the compost toilet, Lowimpact.org’s Sophie Paterson shares her love of compost loos, showcasing their versatility and practicality with a rundown of her favourites through the years.
First of all, a bit of a disclaimer: I’m a serious fan of compost toilets. So much so that a former colleague of mine wrote in my leaving card that whenever she uses a compost loo, she’ll think of me – a compliment, I’m sure!
A popular off-grid choice for allotments, community gardens and even golf courses, compost toilets are on the rise thanks to a …
The simplest DIY compost toilet
… system was going to be expensive, and either way would involve disruptive house alterations. Then I read The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins. Jenkins advocates a very simple low-cost system which requires no house alterations and takes up relatively little space. He also strongly, and convincingly, argues that the compost produced in a thermophilic (hot) compost heap is safe enough to use on your vegetable patch. Here’s how it works:
The simple compost toilet
The toilet
A 20 litre bucket sits inside a plywood box with a toilet seat on it. Next to it is a bin filled …
Why flushing away 'waste' water is a bad idea, and what better options exist
Like many things in modern life, the vast majority of our current water and wastewater infrastructure is completely dependent upon fossil energy to keep the toilets flushed and the taps running. Even the word “wastewater” itself assumes that we have no better use for the water that we flush out of our homes or the nutrients and biomass it contains than to dump it. In a truly sustainable society, “sewage” would be a word of the past, and we would begin to hear terms not typically used in today’s media like “humanure” and “yellow water”. Humanure is fairly self …
Taking the pee: is urine a good fertiliser?
Many of us consider it a waste product but, in fact, is urine a good fertiliser? Scarlett Penn of WWOOF UK sets out why we should pause for thought before we flush.
Many of us consider our urine to be a waste product, which we flush out of our lives with purified drinking water. Even with a low-flush toilet the average person may use about 40L of treated water a day to whisk away their wee. The eco and cash cost of sanitising water for drinking is huge, so to recklessly contaminate and flush it is, in both senses …
Opportunity for low-impact person in the Loire valley
We’ve been approached by a very nice man called Rod Harper, who has never used a computer in his life, and so asked us for help in finding someone to rent his property in the Loire Valley.
He and his partner are getting on now, and so they’re returning to their native England to be closer to family. They’d be happy for someone to live in their property for a very low rent, but it has to be the right person – i.e. someone willing and able to use the low-impact facilities there.
It’s a …
Revolutionary super-fast composting technique
… homes, together with kitchen, garden and other organic waste was collected for a week and composted in a sealed 1.5m³ sealed unit. After 14 days, the original material was unrecognisable; after 30 days it was tested for pathogens, and there were none; and after 90 days it was marketable compost.
Lowimpact.org: Uganda is a hot country. What about in the UK?
RH: The same kind of speeds can be achieved. On a recent permaculture course lasting two weeks, the unit was opened after 12 days and the original material could not be recognised.
Lowimpact.org: How does it …