Our simple composting toilets

We've a couple of composting toilets here, one in the house, one outside. Both were built into existing spaces so no chance for chambers etc. We seperate urine and solids, compost the solids in a series of bins, and put the pee on our compost heaps. Both require emptying, the house one more often as the tanks are smaller - weekly - and the outside one less often - monthly. The inside one needs a vent (which it will get soon), and the outside one is well ventilated enough to not need one. The preformed plastic separators are easy to fit and work well.

Here's the outside one -


and a couple of others that we built at our last place - both treebog type designs with a large chamber below





and a twin chamber design, that we planted willow around and which is now completely concealed. Here it is without -



There's a complete build sequence here - Composting Toilets

Thanks for sharing this!
So with no hole in the ground,the waste just piles up inside the straw walled containment?

With the chambered treebog type toilet, the chamber is about 1m x 1m x 1m, and has straw lined walls formed with chicken wire. Ideally you have 2 chambers, so you use one for a year or two, then swap to the other, and wait until the first has composted down before using the compost. In practice the 2 chamber one has never filled up or needed emptying yet. It doesn't have a separator, but willow planted immediately around it takes up any moisture. The growth rate is phenomenal.
In all the loos I pictured we just put in a little sawdust with each use, and so far this has kept odour at bay. The problem is always with the pee, especially if its tanked for any reason. Useful as it is, a lot of designs simply head it off to a soakaway pit to avoid the problem.

I have an indoor composting toilet with a vent for the poop. The urine goes in a separate container. When I first got it I was really hating the smell coming from the urine. Researched and now use a couple of tablespoons of sugar in the emptied container and no more smell!  Tada!

We just bought a composting toilet that we will be using in our RV. There is currently a rental crisis here in N.S. So we will live in it until we work out a more permanent solution.  We are considering building a rammed earth home...but on the subject of composting toilets we think it will be a much better option than using the conventional toilet that comes with the RV. The pros far outweigh any cons that we might face and simplifies living on my husband's brother's land. We were able to get one for half price, it had been used a few times and the people selling just didn't like it and wanteda regularflush toilet. We were very happy since we were about to spend twice that much on a new one!

Here's the simplest, most elegant way I've seen yet.

https://archive.org/details/compost_toilets_Humanure_Handbook

This book was written a long, long time ago, and updated, but I've yet to see anything match it for simplicity and ease.

I'll suggest a few things along the same lines as an addition to this:

Like Janice, many will soon be living in vehicles for much the same reasons.

A similar, stripped down version of what's in the Humanure Handbook for mobile living might be a pool noodle to cushion the edge of a 5 gallon bucket and a bag liner for the bucket in case you have to dumpster the remains. Takes up minimal space.

amazon sells something similar if you don't want to DIY it.

We use a 5-gallon bucket with a raised toilet seat
(sort of like this one:  Amazon toilet seat)

(It can be hard to find one as simple as ours -- no handle arms, no hinge, simple 1-piece molded construction)

The bucket top flexes to fit the toilet seat so it sits in the bucket securely, and is a good height.

We use bokashi sawdust.

3 years so far. Can't wait to graduate to our house, hopefully with a vermifiltered septic system. Until then, we shit in a bucket. (And pee outside -- I use a funnel.)

Kimi Iszikala wrote:We use a 5-gallon bucket with a raised toilet seat
(sort of like this one:  Amazon toilet seat)

(It can be hard to find one as simple as ours -- no handle arms, no hinge, simple 1-piece molded construction)

Kimi, that's a great idea. Do you remove it and put a lid on the bucket in between "deposits"?

Interesting to read up on tree bogs.  We currently use the Joe Jenkins method, but I've been wondering about planting nutrient feeders around the sides of the bin similar to a tree bog.  Our compost bins are on a hill, and while the soil underneath is bowled, perhaps I didn't do a good enough job as there is occasionally a little leachate that comes out the downhill side, probably due to extra water from rinsing out my buckets both before and after washing with soap.  We also may try planting nutrient feeders downhill from the animal winter yard which can also have leachate after heavy snow melt or rain.  Always something to learn.