Gillian McKellar

I haven’t looked into worm toilets much, I’ll do some more research into that. Thanks!

I probably wasn’t very clear in my first post. The full size house we’re building now will have a comfortable bathroom with the Separett Villa toilet. Nobody will be forced to go outside in the cold at night! It’s a urine separating type but which still requires having the solids emptied. The nice thing about it for guests is that it looks more like a normal toilet and has a door that opens when you sit down and closes again when you stand up. Happy to look at other options for the house though. I should mention we are in Canada and the house is slab on grade so anything has to be within the bathroom itself. No basement.

The outhouse would only be for when we have friends over and we’re all outside or working in the garden and don’t want to go inside. And while we’re still in the tiny house and people don’t want to use the closet sized toilet. I was trying to think of a way to combine the emptying of the house toilet with the outside toilet. Mainly just to avoid having multiple poop piles around the yard!

I have been spending some time thinking about how to combine our Jenkins bucket toilet, compost pile, new outhouse and future house Separett Villa toilet. I think I’ve found a possible solution but it would be great to run it past you guys to see if anyone can think why it wouldn’t work.

Our current set up is in a tiny house using the bucket toilet and emptying the contents into a compost pile. The system seems to be working great and we don’t feel like we need to change anything there. It gets a bit weird though when we have guests over or people working in the garden. Nobody seems comfortable using the tiny house toilet, which seems fair considering it’s in a space smaller than most people’s closets, and I think the bucket freaks some people out. It seems like a good addition to our setup to put in an outdoor outhouse type compost toilet. In addition to this we’re planning to start work on our full sized house which will have the Separett Villa urine diverting toilet. Possibly less off putting for guests than the bucket toilet but would keep the same system of emptying into a compost pile.

The idea is to try and combine the compost pile with the outhouse and still use this as the pile for emptying the bucket style toilets. I’m imagining a double chamber compost pile but with a outhouse building on top. We would use one side for a year, then close it up and switch to the other side like with a double vault toilet system. We would like to keep the Jenkins compost pile management, so lots of cover material around the sides and on top after use. At the beginning of starting a new chamber we would prep it by lining the bottom and sides with straw or something similar. The hottest part in the middle would be kept clear by using a cylindrical shaped wrap of hardware cloth attached to the top floor structure. Something that would keep the cover material at the sides, the excrement in the middle but still allow worms and insects to pass through. This way when someone used the toilet it would go straight down the shoot into a hole of straw, and same as when emptying the bucket into the pile. The toilet seat would be on a wooden stand that could easily be moved to the side to allow the emptying of the bucket toilet into the pile, as well as topping up the sides with more straw maybe a couple times a year.

The compost bin part of the structure would be built more or less like a normal compost bin. Cedar posts in the corners to hold the upper outhouse structure up, with wood siding attached to the posts. We’d build a access hatch on the back of the compost bin part to remove compost after a year. It’s basically the Jenkins humanure bucket system, accept we’re removing the bucket part for the people using the outhouse. I know a lot of people have problems with flies and smells, but currently we have neither at our compost pile so I can’t see why this would be any different. I’d plan on keeping it fairly open at the top to allow enough oxygen but not too open that you’d see things dropping down the chute from the outside! We looked at the concrete double vaults, Clivus minimus and wheelie bin designs but didn’t really love all the concrete and plastic used.

I hope I’m explaining this well enough. Happy to draw some plans and sections to help explain.
Any reason why this would be a terrible idea?

Thanks guys. Yeah, the farmer would like a contract that he can remove hay from the fields for the next 4-5 years to make the seeding worth his while. I’m going to see what I can do to get him to lower those years in exchange for lower rent or at least some kind of exit clause to let me get out earlier if I need to. To have him continually taking fertility from the fields is exactly what I don’t want.

There are a few neighbours who over look our fields, so part of our thinking is to keep them happy as well. Currently the fields are slowly being taken over by horsetail, wild parsnip and thistles which I don’t think is going to make me very popular this year. My hunch too was that once I got animals out there the native grasses would start to come back, but with all our building work this year and the next I don’t think we’ll be ready to get as many animals as it needs for another few years. This year we’re starting with Muscovy ducks and next year we’re planning pastured poultry and pigs. Starting small and building up!

Late last fall we took ownership of 56 acres of mixed marsh, forest and fields. After a very long winter we’re finally making progress with some building work, garden beds, ducks, etc. We’re doing everything on a minimal budget and limited machinery. There’s absolutely nothing on the property so we have our work cut out for us this year!

For at least the past decade the 25 acres of fields have been rented to a local farmer who grew corn and soy beans with minimal input. One day we’d like to pasture mixed animals like cows, pigs and birds but that feels like a bit too much to handle this year with everything else.

So finally my question is this: do we get a local farmer to seed the fields with hay? He wants 4-5 years contract but I’m thinking by next year we’ll already want to start getting animals out on at least some of that pasture. Having him seed it for us seems like a decent way to get things converted to pasture though. He would also pay us rent. Alternatively, could we seed that much acreage by hand and not even get him involved? I’m worried he won’t do enough to add fertility back to the soil over those years and that I might want that pasture sooner. Or just let the fields regrow naturally this year and spend that time observing ready to make amendments the following year.