Help me making a compost system accepted by the municipality

I live in Norway, where we bought a house from 1922 without an inside bathroom. Great for us, but not as straightforward solution for the municipality.  The last they wrote us is that "other solutions than septic tank will probably not be accepted". Well, I accept the challenge and I want to present a project that they will just say yes to.

But I need some inputs!

I'm still in the process of reading the Humanure Handbook. The idea that I currently explore is a 4 chamber compost. So that it would take me 4 years since the harsh temperature we experience here equals to more time for "bad" bacteria to be gone.

What do you think in general about this solution? Would you consider others?

I struggle to make sense of some aspects of this 4 chamber system. The thing is that both us and a neighbor have a dwell we have to avoid contamination into. Should 60 feet away from those in air distance be a good enough buffer?
Also, my idea for building this compost system was to use pallets. Mixing garden scraps and poop for a year before moving to next chamber. The thing is that pallets would still have some contamination to the ground. Even worse when big rainfalls strike. Would a roof be a good enough addition to make this less of a problem? Or should I try to make the bottom part more or completely closed to leakage? How would you do this?

All ideas and meanings are very welcome. I've been reading some other posts here on permies and got very motivated to set up this system asap.

And just to mention, since I was forgetting: the idea would be to have a separated toilet so that urine can be spread in different areas also.

I read that book  a few years ago. It seems like a great way to go. The municipality might not agree. Another option might be a commercial composting toilet. There are several types available that use different technologies to deal with the waste.

Hi Marta,

fist off I want to say that even the best system might be revoked by the officials just because they don’t understand or don’t want to deal with it.
But the humanure hand book has a lot of useful information, also on how to talk to the officials.

A roof is a very good idea to control the moisture. Avoiding rainfall (and placing the piles in an area that doesn’t get flooded) should take care of the well situation.

Unless they ask you to do it I wouldn’t put an impermeable bottom. You want a big pillow of dry, organic matter as a start of each pile. But you want worms and bacteria to be able to come into your pile from the earth. If you have to provide an impermeable bottom consider adding some ripe compost or earth or forest earth to the new piles.

I personally don’t like the urine diversion. Makes everything more complicated. Jenkins also advocates for not separating.

Even if they make you build a traditional system you’re still free to install it but not use it.

Hope this helps a bit.

It might behoove you to read about these systems.  They use a flush toilet indoors , then a special compost collector outside that can provide usable biogas for cooking.  Here is one such system for a DIY approach, and a ready made product exists from homebiogas.com.  

While I can't confirm their efficacy in a Norwegian winter, at least you could cite their track record to your municipality

Or maybe a willow feeder

Just a tidbit of info, a previous county I lived in Texas USA, would only accept a incinerator toilet.

Times change and views of other countries change so I wish you the best.

Thank you, everyone. I'll keep this thread updated when we get to the next steps.

Marta, the number of bins you need will depend on their size, and the size and number will need to scale for your situation. I have 8 to 10 full-time residents, and find that adding animal manures and extra straw insulation helps it stay consistently hot, even in the winter (e.g. -27F before including wind chill), so I oversize my bins.  I use 8ft diameter rounds made from cattle panels, and find that even at that size they still only last about 6 months each.

A roof can help if you have significant rain events, since a heavy downpour can kill a pile quickly. Likewise, it gets windy here during the winter, and I've learned the hard way that I also needed a wind break.  Currently I line my bins with canvas painters tarps. Setback here is 100ft from leach field to a private well, but a well managed compost pile should be much less risk than a leach field.

After 5 years of doing the Humanure Handbook method, approved by the municipality, I can say it works, but has some challenges to be aware of: All the bucket lifting and pitchforking can be hard on my back.  Composting and cleaning buckets in freezing conditions takes shoveling snow to get to the pile and then long waterproof insulated gloves with access to hot water. I worry that if I couldn't keep up,  my family would be without a toilet.  Given these challenges, having extra buckets to wait until storms pass can help. Since I haven't found good quality free cover material that is fine enough, I buy it, but shred cardboard and paper to supplement.

I now have a permit to build a flush compost toilet (called a vermifilter or vermicomposting toilet). The design uses recirculation to achieve surface discharge quality (e.g. vermifilter.com), because I don't want to contaminate our well. It has a subsurface discharge option for when it freezes.  As far as a septic tank being strongly preferred by your municipality, some vermifilter designs have used septic tanks (requires precautions), and some just treat the outlet of septic tanks.

There are many alternative toilet options, depending on your goals and constraints. You've mentioned protecting your well, the municipality strongly wanting a septic tank, outdoor space for at least 4 bins, and a neighbor close enough to share the well.  Presumably an existing exterior toilet option exists but you prefer indoors, and you have access to a reliable source of carbon cover material. How cold does it get there?  To what extent are building modifications an option? Does the building have a second story?

Please keep us posted about your vermiculture toilet efforts,  I am intrigued by every iteration of this method. Just as Kimi in New Mexico has posted about their 'working worms'
Also, could you share details about your approved plans? Thanks for the nudge, our house needs to implement this system soon

Burton Sparks wrote: Presumably an existing exterior toilet option exists but you prefer indoors, and you have access to a reliable source of carbon cover material. How cold does it get there?  To what extent are building modifications an option? Does the building have a second story?

I greatly appreciate you sharing your experience.

Yes, there is an outhouse/garage/workshop where also the outside toilet is located now. This is a tangent, but one of the incongruence - in my eyes - of the municipality rules is that poop from outside toilet is not regulated. This means that it's okay to just dump poop and bark in a hole on the property, and that's okay. I assume the reason is that in this area of Norway there are lots of cabin built and being built. Usually one uses cabin recreationally so the quantity we talk about in those cases are much much less than in our case. Still, I think it would be beneficial for people to learn how to handle and use humanure in the best way possible. So in my dream I'd like to make a system that people can learn from. End of the tangent. Thanks again for your comment on sizes of your system. How many years rotation do you use then?

What where you thinking with "building modification"? We are indeed about to build a bathroom in the main house, the only personal constraint is economical :/

How cold it gets here? It's rare to get to -4F, but it happens. Between november to february the avarage temperature is around the 30sF

Marta, my hot Humanure compost piles sit for 2 years, but they also cook at 155F in the center and 132F on the edges.  I'm not sure letting them rest for more than 2 years buys you anything unless perhaps if the piles are moist, never get hot, and can't breath.

In your original post you mentioned separating urine, what was the goal with doing that? To utilize the nutrient directly, or reduce the risk of contaminating the well?  I tried for months to come up with a reliable urine diverter, but it always seemed to clog.  Keeping the urine with the poop also reduces the added labor of adding more water and even more green material or manures if your goal is to get the pile hot. I've collected urine in a bucket, tried to heat it for added safety, and then distribute it, but it's not a pleasant task, and I wouldn't want to have guests around while doing it.

The question about building modifications was to see if there were any design constraints you might have there.  The Humanure Handbook method requires no plumbing. Other solutions may require standard plumbing or just an electrical outlet, and still others would require a direct chute to a lower level or under the house (e.g. Clivus Multrum style).

You mentioned wanting to have a system others could learn from. While I've shown the Humanure Handbook method, I've grown increasingly discouraged by not just the workload (given the size of my family), but I haven't felt successful at making good compost from it. I mostly have kiln dried pine sawdust available, which definitely takes more than 2 years to break down, and composting it so hot dehydrates the pile to the point it becomes hydrophilic and won't grow anything. I've tried screening aged mulch to get hydrated biologically advice sawdust like what is recommended in the Humanure Handbook, but it was a lot of work, and I don't have the indoor space to store enough of it to last 8 people for 5 months of freezing moist (I can store kiln dried sawdust outdoors).

I'm definitely excited to share our vermicomposting toilet when we get it installed.  I think I'll be happier with the output and the low maintenance. I live in a dry climate, and establishing trees takes a lot of work, so our design also includes a way to automatically sub-irrigate trees from the vermifilter output, which will be so nice.  Other designs I think I would be excited to share include Clivus Multrum and
Wastewater Gardens. The Clivus Multrum design manages moisture, is a cold composting process that doesn't cook the soil food web, is very low maintenance, and has a shelf stable liquid output. Wastewater Gardens use lots of plants, have very low regular maintenance, but may require cleaning the gravel every 20 years, and the output isn't quite as clean as vermifilter when coupled with plants.

Marta, hopefully I didn't discourage you.  The Humanure Handbook method definitely works, and is a good option in many situations.  I'd be happy to support you with ideas on how to be more successful if that is the direction you'd like to go.  I just wanted you to go in with eyes wide open to some potential issues, as well as providing a couple alternative solutions you may prefer.

Another option we've liked, especially if you're open to working on design improvements, is a barrel based design.  My family has used them for a few years, and we hosted a youth camp of about 80 participants where we built and managed 7 of them.  The feedback in both instances was that the barrel design was quite nice as it felt like a comfortable distance between you and your business. As far as I'm aware, pathogen performance of barrel based designs have not been studied as much as the Clivus Multrum, Wastewater Gardens, or Vermifilters that I mentioned above, but there is some data as a start.  The Global Water Pathogen Project published a paper on the factors influencing performance of Composting and Dry Desiccating Toilets (Latrines), which has some good information.

The urine diverting Omick barrel toilet was tested and authorized by a municipality.  Another example of a urine diverting barrel design is Paul Wheaton's Willow Feeder.  Geoff Lawton's Wheelie Bin design (could use a barrel) uses a drain out the bottom, and the Alaskan Bioshelter Compost Toilet design uses both a urine diverting seat and a drain out the bottom.

I'll post my ideas for improvements on the vermifilter/vermicomposting toilet design in another thread.  My actual build looks like it'll have to wait until Spring though due to higher priority winter prep projects, put perhaps it'll help foster ideas in the forum.