I have been thinking and reading alot about the waste of pottable water we use for flushing toilets. It doesn't make any sense to me that we use drinking water to liquify human waste. We send it to expensive municiple plpants where they use ineffective processes to remove the water that we added. All this because 1) we don't want to deal with our own waste, or 2) the government doesn't trust people to handle waste in a safe way, or 3) municiple codes a written that it is illegal for a person to use a simple, safe method of waste disposal.
As an experiemtn and as a mild form of secret - social protest and I have made a modfied sawdust toilet with a urine separator. I used the basic ideas of a sawdust toilet from the jenkins website. But also read that mixing urine and faces is what causes that aweful odor found in repulsive outhouses. Separate the urine and most of the odor is gone. Cover the faeces after each use with sawdust, ashes, dry leaves, newspaper, hand paper towels, peat most, almost anything, and there is no offensive odor.
http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/sawdustoilet.html
Nature's Head manufactures a toilet like this for campers and boats for $850. It is a very nice urine separating compost toilet. But expensive.
http://www.natureshead.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1
I made mine out of scraps been using it for 6 months in my work shop. Cost $0.oo Very pleased so far. I use a funnel to divert urine into a container. Faeces are covered after each use. People visit me in my wood shop, sit down to rest on what looks like a seat or box. They don't know they are sitting on a composting toilet or what it contians. There is no odor, no plumbling, no utility. I may be twisted but I enjoy the irony of the whole situation.
I have a composting worm bin for kitchen scraps that eventualy end up on the garden. I have added a few red worms to the toilet so they can help speed up the composting of the faeces. Urine from a healthy person contains no pathogens after 30 hours. If diluted with water it is a marvelous source of nitrogen and minerals to non eddible plants.
After the first container from the toilet is full I will add more worms to it. Keep it in a plastic bucket for a year then spread it on ornamental flower beds.
Dee Bee
Grace happens...