willow feeder #3 - willowonka - roundwood timber framing on skids

This project is being built as part of our permaculture bootcamp - learn permaculture through a little hard work.

Thanks to jocelyn for the pic



For the PDC we need another willow feeder.  

For this willow feeder there will be three improvements:

improvement 1:  the floor will be higher up so we don't need a box or other platform for your feet to rest on.  

improvement 2:  one hole that has a lot more room for a urine diverter.

improvement 3:  a much better trombe wall vent.

progress:






Some day this might be a toilet seat:




This is being built as part of our permaculture bootcamp.

very nice work! who's on the job?im curious to see how you use the space under the stairs and how much better this trom wall works!

Sean, check out the couch balcony thread. The folks in that thread have also helped build this willow feeder.

The couch balcony thread also has more pictures of willow feeder #3 that Cliff took and will likely add here a bit later.

In the mean time, we've been trying to come up with a name for willow feeder #3.

As you may or may not know, we already have:
#1 - chateau de poo
#2 - willow bank - where you make your deposits for a fertile future!

Name suggestions for #3 have included:

Bear Paw's Pooper
The Library (while there's room for bookshelves, due to the open air design, any books would be subject to moisture which would ruin them)
The Thinker / Thinking Spot
Willow Candy Collector
Willowonka - a different kind of chocolate factory

I think there have been others, but I can't recall them now - add them here if you remember them!

okay will do !

pics by cliff of fred and tuesday working on the roof:

Sean Pratt wrote:very nice work! who's on the job?

Running point is bear paw who is leaving today.

Fred Tyler, Lane O'harra, Cliff Ponder, Tuesday Yocum, Jesse White ...  and then Nick Fouch arrived and did a lot.  

Lane left yesterday and Nick leaves today.  

So I think that leaves Fred, Cliff, Tuesday and Jesse to finish up.

Ants are welcome to join the bootcamp at this time.    But most importantly, I want to emphasize that I would like to see more long term boots in our bootcamp to build these kinds of experiences.  

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:Willowonka - a different kind of chocolate factory

We went into zoo town yesterday ....  it was me and jocelyn and josiah and lane ...  and we spent a good fifteen minutes throwing ideas for names around.   Lots of shitty ideas (badump bump).

This one was jocelyn's idea.   I think it is not only the best so far, but I already feel very glued to the name.  

I was checking out links to the first two willow feeders and found myself wanting details on the venting.
The solar panel powered fan , does it vent out the side of the pooper?
The trombe wall, is it a steel pipe in an insulated box of mud, with a glass covered southern face?
What's the diameter of the pipe? The thread mentioned adding mass,insulation,and removing pipe that was a heat sink.
Did these changes fix the issues and allow 24 hour thermal siphon venting?
Are these designs 4 season usable?

William Bronson wrote:The solar panel powered fan , does it vent out the side of the pooper?

yes.   Which we have learned is okay, but not great.  It would have been much better to vent it out the roof.

And, let's face it, that setup will work fine for five years and then need maintenance.  A fully passive design is superior.

The trombe wall, is it a steel pipe in an insulated box of mud, with a glass covered southern face?

yes.

What's the diameter of the pipe?

I think it is something close to 2 inches.

The thread mentioned adding mass,insulation,and removing pipe that was a heat sink.
Did these changes fix the issues and allow 24 hour thermal siphon venting?
Are these designs 4 season usable?

Those changes have not yet been done.  

Thank you Paul  for the detailed response!

The small people can't wait to use the new willow feeder.  Very fitting that it's being named "WillowWonka"

Seems like if the door is going to be oriented south the whole wall next to the door could be a trombe wall. Sliding glass door panel in front of a cob wall would be easy.  It would then vent above the highest point of the roof. Issue would be whether the boy or girl seat gets to be next to the warm wall.

Here is my feeble drawing.

The first image is the trombe wall at chateau de poo.  Single pane of glass, pipe is embedded in cob but also exposed, no insulation.

The second image is what is proposed for willowonka.  Double pane glass, wider solar collection, more cob, insulation and pipe is slightly buried.

Fred, Tuesday & Michelle have been finishing up the roof

Thanks to my patreon peeps for pushing me into making videos again.

https://permies.com
http://patreon.com/paulwheaton

Thanks to Dan Ohmann of The Grass-fed Homestead channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc2ka-aGChwIiX0mEXzfmoA

Tahnks to Nick Fouch of Fouch-o-matic Off Grid:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm28mg76wIUxq1eyqhbivfg

More pictures and the latest info about our round wood timber framing project "willowonka":

https://permies.com/t/65018/willow-feeder-roundwood-timber

More info about our permaculture bootcamp:

https://permies.com/t/59706/permaculture-bootcamp

I suppose I should explain the phrase "willow feeder".   A willow tree falls into a classification of tree that we call "poop beasts".   Most trees shy away from such nutrient heavy content.  But willow, cottonwood and poplar gobble up such high nutrient content.   The willow feeder designs are an attempt to discover systems that are better than septic systems with drainfields, better that sewage treatment plants, better than flush toilets, better than composting toilets and even better than humanure systems.  We start with the use case of being better than a porta potty and then try to evolve systems that people will enjoy more than an indoor flush toilet.  

This material is heavy in carbon, nitrogen and many minerals that make for a rich soil. Rather than putting the carbon and nitrogen up into the atmosphere (composting or humanure), or into our water systems and the dump (septic systems and sewage treatment plants), the willow feeder process is to try to convert most of that material into willow trees after we have made the material safe from pathogens.

This willow feeder is being built on skids so we can move it as our needs change.  We have a long, rich history of building structures on skids:

https://permies.com/t/47740/ten-skiddable-structures

This video is about a bit of round wood timber framing.  On skids.  

Master round wood timber artisan Bear Paw teams up with the talented Nick Fouch of Fouch-o-matic Off Grid to design and build a mobile composting toilet outhouse on skids using round wood timber sourced from Wheaton Labs.  The outhouse is being constructed in preparation for the upcoming May 2017 Permaculture Design Course being held at Wheaton Labs.  
Bear Paw puts his chainsaw to work as he sculpts the round wood timber and Nick Fouch uses his framing experience to install the interior wood and siding from salvaged lumber.  The outhouse has been given several names: The Willow Feeder (because the deposits made in the outhouse will be used to fertilize the willows at Wheaton Labs, Willowonka (a different kind of chocolate factory), and Bear Paw has dubbed it the hootenanny.  The rafters are scribed saddle notch.  square notched wood between the skids keep the structure from racking while being pulled.

We are trying to get this and a bunch of other stuff done before the permaculture design course starts:

https://richsoil.com/pdc.jsp

We have a kickstarter going right now so people can watch our permaculture design course from home:

http://kck.st/2q6Ycay


Permaculture bootcamp participants include Fred Tyler, Cliff Ponder, Lane O'Harra, Jesse White, Evan Pierce, Tuesday Yocum

Chainsaws and angle grinders are used sometimes, and sometimes the chisel and mallet is preferred.

Thanks to Josiah Wallingford for convincing his dad, Bear Paw, to come share his skills with us.

https://permaethos.com/


Relevant stuff at permies:

https://permies.com/t/65018/willow-feeder-roundwood-timber
https://permies.com/t/59706/permaculture-bootcamp
https://permies.com/f/81/timber
https://permies.com/f/102/labs


music by Jimmy Pardo
https://permies.com/t/30796/Jimmy-Pardo

Thanks to my patreon supporters:

Julia Mason
wade L
Jason Hower
Bill Crim
Doug Barth
One Community
Mark Allen
Kelton Mitchell
David Ingraham
The Rayhawk Clan

http://patreon.com/paulwheaton

The trombe wall is in place.  Although the glass still needs to be mounted once the cob and plaster are dry.

This is part of the appropriate technology course.  This part was taught by Erica Wisner.

So this is a willy wonka hat on a rabbit that is eating willow while producing "willow candy"

That thing turned out really nice, makes me miss leaving fresh deposits in the cool Montana morning air.

You can see it all finished in this awesome video by Justin Rhodes. The tour of the "chocolate factory" starts at 10:35.

We enjoy Erica's trombe wall art so much that we're continuing the theme a bit, thanks to some pure silly fun (generous support).

The skids on willowonka are way too small.  While it has been fine while willowonka has been in the same general area (it has been moved three times), when the time came to move it onto the trailer so it could be moved up to the lab for the peasant pdc, schmoozaroo and rocket kitchen workshop ...   it should take about 15 minutes, but it has now been about five hours for three people.  

We decided that the short term solution is to brute force it onto the trailer by hook or by crook.   And later we will need a longer term solution (I think that we need to add proper skids to the bottom - maybe attach the existing skids to the better skids).  

Great build! Please ask someone to take and post more pictures!
1. I'd particularly like to see a picture from the outside of the "under seat area" in its current arrangement of pipes etc - pretty please?
2. If there's a link to the current version of the containment for the deposits, that would be nice also. I'd like to know what you're doing with the diverted urine short and longer term also.
3. Is there a thread that shows pictures of your more successful urine diverter? Are women using Willowwanka regularly for urine or doing that elsewhere?
4. Is the pipe in the trombe wall just open at the top under the roof? Is that the thing you're wanting to change? (I got confused reading parts of that.)
5. Do you have a thread showing the mechanics of the foot operated sink? Is it gravity only or is power involved? I consider it brilliant, and I absolutely agree with having a sink in there!
6. What is the lab using for cover material?

PS - As a woman and mother (grown now) *I* think the reason for two seaters on homesteads were so mom could take a passel of small children and deal with them efficiently! That was my friend's opinion as well as she visited her grandmother regularly in the summer for weeks and eventually inherited grandma's two seater (with a lovely cottage to go with). Some outhouses are scary places, so friend and mom went together. Her outhouse actually had wallpaper! It was, however, old school and not as environmentally sound as we are capable of building today. It was surrounded by shrubs on two sides with trees behind, so I suspect much of the goodness was being harvested before getting to the groundwater.

Jay Angler wrote:Great build! Please ask someone to take and post more pictures!

:)

Jay, I would like to take this moment to invite you to put a little something behind the BRK for boots which encourages people here to take lots more pictures and video of all the things.

3. Is there a thread that shows pictures of your more successful urine diverter? Are women using Willowwanka regularly for urine or doing that elsewhere?

We are currently looking for somebody to but some design and stainless steel fabrication into the ATC this year for just this purpose.

4. Is the pipe in the trombe wall just open at the top under the roof? Is that the thing you're wanting to change? (I got confused reading parts of that.)

This is on the list of things to do to improve the trombe wall.

so what's the problem with the skids? they're too small?
I want to build this for my community workshop space, but don't know how big i should make the skids.

K Wagner wrote:so what's the problem with the skids? they're too small?
I want to build this for my community workshop space, but don't know how big i should make the skids.

Yes, the skids are too small.  A bit to short and a bit too narrow.  

This year, those skids have been removed and replaced with proper skids.  I think there are some pics in the boot threads, but I'm not seeing them now.

The skids were replaced and then it was moved to basecamp for the pdc.   Here it is the moment it arrived at its new home (you can see it still has a moving strap on it for the door).

Is the newest urine diverter design working well? Where can I find a drawing/schematic?

Near as I can figure out, the plastic trash cans go on the ground beneath the seat. If so, why does it have to be moved regularly? Why not just regularly empty the trash cans?

T Bate wrote:Near as I can figure out, the plastic trash cans go on the ground beneath the seat. If so, why does it have to be moved regularly? Why not just regularly empty the trash cans?

Yes, they do move the trash cans to storage. My understanding is that they have different events on different areas of the property, so this is their upgrade from a "porta-potty".

There are some properties where this concept could easily be a permanently located structure. However, I understand they're also experimenting with skiddable structures to give people ideas that work when local codes only allow "temporary" or "portable" structures and even for people who are renting land and want to be able to take their structures with them when they buy land.