Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
When I move in June, I'll be using a composting toilet with a urine diverter. I'll be using a cheap one as I really can't afford to spend $500 or so on a used manufactured one. I think I will buy the toilet from the person below:
Here's what I've found so far when it comes to composting the humanure:
On about 18" of straw and sawdust in a bin, make a hole in the center and dump the filled bucket. Cover the hole and let the humanure compost. After the bin is full, let it sit for a year. Afterwards use it for...
I've heard it can be used in a garden, only around fruit trees and ornamentals, and on ornamentals only.
So here are my questions.
Has anyone here used humanure directly on a vegetable garden when composted? I should add that I am on medications now and will probably continue to be on medications while using the composting toilet.
What do you do with the urine?
Can you compost this stuff in the winter and if so, how?
Would I be better off getting a tumbling barrel or just use a bin? Keep in mind I'm worried about possums, raccoons, rats, and wasps that can build ground nests in this area.
Is humanure from one person even enough to justify composting it?
Can anyone answer these questions or add anymore info to the subject?
My personal experiences with using composting toilets is that they don't work well for anything other than occasional use, and even then not so much, especially in winter. You have to manually remove the "compost" which isn't actually compost yet (just s*** mixed with some peat moss/etc. at this point) and set it out to further compost, which is pretty gross. You then need somewhere to put it for further composting. I prefer a well working functioning outhouse.
For just one person though, a compost toilet may work better though. I have heard the urine diverter helps things a lot. I'd want a model that is very easy to empty and dump. The model I had you had to manually remove waste as it just couldn't keep up, and it wasn't an easy dump process. I couldn't wait to get rid of it.
The homemade version of a composting toilet that you linked to at least seems very easy to empty and dump which will eliminate some of the messier issues. I think those simple kind of set ups actually work better than the fancy expensive commercial ones, mainly due to simplicity. So you'd mainly have to just focus on where you are going to dump and store the compost.
I think that some people do use humanure all over their garden, not just on ornamentals. I'd want it to compost for some time before I did this personally though
I wouldn't recommend it on your food garden. Some of the recent salmonella outbreaks have been linked back to Mexican farms where human waste was used on crops like lettuce.
Because human waste and fluids are classed as a biohazard, I'd refrain from using it even composted on anything I'd be planning on eating.
To my way of thinking, if you want real value, use an anaerobic digester setup. While the effluent is breaking down it creates methane gas, 17 cubic feet of gas per pound of solid waste. Tap off the gas and run it through a filter is sawdust and iron filings to remove the H2SO4, then bubble up through lime water, and you have pure natural gas for any appliance, furnace, whatever. Cheap energy.
Once the composing is completed, you can use the treated material on your trees or whatever. You can actually do this off a regular septic tank. Just need some pipes, the filters, a containment tank. A pump to move the gas and maintain pressure, and there you go.
You can burn straight methane, but it's dirtier and smells of rotten eggs.
Think outside the box and it's amazing what you can do!
I don't think it's advised to use human waste for vegetable gardening, and I think there are a lot of reasons why, including potential disease and parasites. Even the zoo who sells "Zoo-Doo" Does not include carnivore poop in it, only the manure from the herbivores: elephants, giraffes, etc.
The primary reason for composting toilets is not to create an asset, it's to neutralize and allow safe disposal of a problem.
We have a regular flush toilet in the house, as the state of Maine requires all residences to have a septic system. However we also have an outdoor composting toilet (actually in a woodshed) that I use most of the time, and my wife when she is working outdoors.
I do compost the waste in a separate area from our usual veggie pile. I usually leave it there about 3 years, as it does not compost during the Maine winters, which can be below freezing for 5-6 months per year up where we are. However, after that time, it is safe to use anywhere. I would not tell you this, but I have a background in chemistry and am certain that zero pathogens remain after that interval. I believe that the reluctance to admit this officially is due to the fact of contamination from fresh deposits. If some sources say it's OK, some people will abuse that, and not compost it properly or for long enough. Illness results, but not from anything inherently wrong with the material, just poor handling after the fact.
I generally use ours on the lawn or for trees and shrubs. It works very well, as it's rich in nutrients. There is no odor. It is just finished compost, and is clean and sweet like veggie compost. Any chemical elements, like the drugs you take, would be long ago broken down into component elements. So it would be safe. If I lived by myself, I would not hesitate to use it on a veggie garden. After 3 years, there is simply nothing pathogenic remaining.
I believe that The Humanure Handbook is available for free download, if you look for it. It's a great book on the subject.
ETA: You can dilute fresh urine 1:20 with water, and use it safely on vegetables. It's very rich in nitrogen, and will green up most anything quickly! There are positively NO fecal coliforms in urine, and when fresh it is virtually sterile.
anaerobic digestion requires a warmer temp than is common in many areas of the U.S., and carbon nitrogen ratios have to be correct for decent production. The output and efficiencies and maintenance make it impractical on such a small scale. Pig farms and other places with large quantities of waste use it effectively, and in India - where it is hot enough that digestion occurs at environmental temps without added heat - it was used as a combo energy source and public health tool.
SOME medications break down, but not all. Lithium, for example, will not.
Urine is not sterile. Pee in a sanitized jar, seal it, and wait and that is obvious. It is less likely than ground water to have dangerous pathogens when fresh, but not always.
If your holding tank is buried, depending on depth, the nominal temperature of the ground is between 45 and 50 degrees. The digestion process creates some heat during the process and is usually enough to keep the system operating. This isn't applicable to areas with permafrost, but for the lower 48 it works just fine even for small applications.
While for large production for a town or city requires a lot of effluent, just as an individual can set up a small scale solar system for their home instead of acres of cells for supplying commercial applications, an individual can also have an anaerobic digester on a small scale.
Yes a lot of the research and commercial applications have been done in the tropics because of the more rapid rotting in temperate climates, but there are cities in more northern climes using the process generating gas and feeding it into generators making electricity pulling the gas from the sewage treatment plant. The town I live near, Helena, Montana, has been doing this since the 1990s.
Possible and practical are two different things. The OP specifically states "ONE person." To mess around with a digester and end up with not enough biogas to even cook breakfast is not practical, nor is it an efficient use of time and energy. Been through all that stuff in the early 1970s.
A little logic: no human pathogens will wind up in your pile that didn't come out of your body in the first place, so don't worry about contamination of your food plants unless (a) you're sick or (b) you plan on anyone else eating your produce.
Meds: are organic chemicals, will be excreted in very dilute concentrations and will be degraded by bacterial/fungal metabolism like any other organic material. Lithium in drugs is one of the few things that will survive unchanged, but again, extremely diluted-- don't worry about it. There's already natural Lithium in your soil.
Human feces is 90% excess bacteria. Very little "food" actually makes it out that way, and almost no Nitrogen, so human feces has very little value as fertilizer. It even lacks the valuable fiber quality of herbivores' manure. Nitrogen is processed in the liver to urea and excreted in the urine. Urea in the excreted urine quickly degrades to ammonia.
Save your urine and use it quickly as fertilizer. Bury your solid waste.
Thank you, everyone! I guess I should have explained a little more about my situation.
I will be more or less camping on my land for at least 3 to 5 years. I'm having water put on it now, electricity will be put on hopefully by the end of 2020, and a year to 2 years after that, I'm hoping to have a septic system on the land. So currently there is no electric or septic on the land and although there is water, I need to bring it in to an outdoor faucet.
Because I'm at the top of the hill, all waste will run downhill into the Sound. That's something I don't want to have happen because I don't want to pollute the water and because there have been people upset before because of all the septic systems in the immediate area. They have yet to figure out a sewer system though and our area probably won't have one until the year 2100. Not only that, but I'd say that everybody living here is on well water. Heck, I'll be on well water. No point in s***ing where I and everyone else drinks.
Meantime I've looked into port-a-potties and if I have to, I'll rent one of those as a last resort. I could also put in a (above ground or below ground) plastic tank for a septic system that will need to be pumped out regularly until I get a septic system put in. That's pricey, but not prohibitively so. In a worse case event, I suppose I could just throw the number twos out with the trash. That sounds horrid, but parents do it all the time with their kids' disposable diapers.
But I am trying to be really a little more responsible if I can. Plus, if I get called out for living on the land and I can prove I am handling the bathroom issue with no problems for the environment, I might not be pestered by the county for living here.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
