Christoph Mertens

Wyatt Barnes wrote:
I am going to start promoting a basic Jenkins sawdust toilet as either a stored backup or as an outhouse alternative that can be moved indoors in the event of a flush failure due to blockage, septic failure or water loss. Longer duration power outages are not unusual in cottage areas here and certainly other failures are common as well.

I would propose a worm farm composting toilet. Composting with worms is odorless and does not require much ventilation. In fact, the opposite is true: Worms do only thrieve in and with high humidity levels.
Maintenance is minimal: The worm farm should be filled (used) a couple of weekends per year. That prevents the worms from starving.  
(Urine separation is mandatory, of course)

Mick Fisch wrote:This string got me thinking a little more.  Found a vermiculture string on permies that mentioned this website.  

http://www.wormfarm.com.au/

Looks like a winner to me!  

there are way cheaper solutions available.

http://www.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/how-make-vermicomposting-flush-toilet

You should keep greywater and blackwater lines separate. The blackwater goes into the "poofilter".

Mick Fisch wrote:

The sensibility of breaking apart the black water from the grey water is a given in permaculture design.  I am still looking at options for a composting toilet for our next house that will come as close as possible to matching the ease and cost of ordinary indoor plumbing.  There are several intriguing ideas.  The willow house is really just a permaculture improvement on a standard old outhouse (as viewed by the user).  I've gone that route too many times in bad weather (-50 degrees is a real challenge) to be enthralled with that option.  I am actually leaning toward the sawdust/ 5 gallon bucket method (putting it aside to compost in the bucket for a few years before it's put on the ground somewhere).  My wife is not enthusiastic with this part of permaculture, but she's willing to try things out and I think a little experimentation might just find it solves several problems for us.

Inhouse vermicomposting is the future I think. No enforced ventilation needed  to the outside. No need to add sawdust, leaves or woodchips. But you have to separate urine. Urine could be drained into the greywater system or into a straw(leaves,paper,sawdust)-filled container which is located in the outside.

The result? For a single person, you get 40 ltr of compost (10 gal. ca.) per year, which you have to remove.  It's nothing in comparison with Jenkin's method.

Tobias,

I could locate the moldering toilet design based on wheelie bins on youtube



Two bins 240l each should do the work and you can see the modified bottom part with the grid. It will take two years to fill a bin...

Don't mix the brown stuff with something else => it blows up the mass you have to deal with and it is contradictory to both mass reduction and pathogen destruction.
Additional carbon source: Toilet paper and some cardboard eventually. This stuff will decompose completely.

Read this: http://www.thermopileproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Hill-and-Baldwin-2012-Vermicomposting-toilets.pdf
(A disaster for many existing composting toilet systems, additives like sawdust don't work well...)

I could locate an example with a wheelie bin: http://villagejournal.org.au/article_shell.php?page=n_e_compost_toilet.html&issue=252&group=2
(you could build it even simpler , but the mentioned 240 ltr waste bins are a good idea.) Never have an uncontrolled drain into the ground (pollution of ground water).
However , with an UDDT there is practically no drain water - it evaporates and you will not need enforced ventilation.

For a single person, it will take a very time long to fill such a bin. If you want to vermicompost both kitchen scraps and poo, build two vermicomposters. Kitchen scrap produces a lot of compost tea. Avoid contamination with fecal matter.

For infrequent use and a single person, a WPPU (worm poop processing unit ) is an oversized solution. If you have an outhouse and space below the outhouse (100 cm) , buy 2 trashcans (240 ltr) and prepare one of them: Place a false floor with a grid on the bottom of the can ( the bottom of the compost compile should remain sufficiently dry) , place some bark /wood shavings on the grid and let the show begin (but don't forget to place the can under the toilet seat). It will take a surprising long time, until the can fills up. After that, you prepare the next can and then switch. The filled can should stay for some time with an aereated lid. Then, you have compost. If the sump fills with water (very unlikely, if you divert the urine) the liquid has to be pumped out ( a foot-driven pump should do the work)

Worms need much humidity and this needs to be monitored. However, under ideal conditions, worms process poo very fast. The problem is the "under ideal conditions" . Fresh fecal matter can be toxic for worms (Ammonium).