Would you "do" a cassette toilet?

Shame on anyone who would dump a portapotti in the woods when any pit toilet or regular toilet would work. Better to dig cat holes then bury which is what the Forest service recommended at a yellow tag site I visited last weekend. I have a picture of me at about 3 years old sitting on the folding toilet poopin in a bag next to my mom and dads old VW camper van along a highway(when ya gotta go etc...). No! You may not see it. Bags are better than dumping in woods. I might have to consider it now using the method others have suggested here using the toilet itself as a hold. The problem would be my wife finding out I'm doing it. I'll have to figure out where to hide the bag. She'd freak.

Everyone and every RV is different. My class B's always had 10/12 gallon black tanks and that is a lot of capacity if used properly. When I first started camping in the early 70's we had a Shasta trailer that was not self contained and two children. At that time the "bag system" was a folding toilet with a ring that held the bag, many people used them. We never had a leak or a broken bag and today there are several manufacturers of these that are made specifically for potty use. I never liked the cassettes myself and I witnessed may times how they are just dumped behind the trailers a few yards into the woods. In most situations there are trash receptacle that will accept the bags and if not you put them in another bucket with a sealed lid until you find a place, you can't save a full cassette unless you have a spare. Some of them are so small that your face is only a couple feet away from the drain they dump them into. With a black tank system, you can seal the hose with a donut and stand back when you pull the lever then flush it with the gray water. Again, we all have different opinions but if I didn't have a sewage system in my B I would go with the bags and dispose of them in the same manner that everyone does, or should do, with their dogs.

Nick

Neverhappy wrote:
The bucket solution with 2 waterproof bags is imho the cleanest way to go. If your rv has a toilet..then just put the bags in the bowl and discard after usage. Easy peasy :)

I am being swayed to this solution as I find it hard to carry the larger cassette and find it pretty disgusting (I still have keen sense of smell) so I just ordered the Cleanwaste Toilet in a Bag Toilet Kit and will give it a try.

"Where do families that boondock for a week empty their cassettes?" As you see above.Class B's don't have big black water tanks so there are even less options with regular toilets.If you get splashed wash your hands.Maybe the bag system will suit your situation best,but what if the bag breaks?

I just bought a 1996 Coachman Saratoga and figured out the black tank will hold 8 gallons.My Porta potti(Thetford Curve) holds 5.5 gallons.I will now have to find dump stations more often where I could just dump in any toilet with the curve.Oh well, the new rv will make wife happy.

Where do families that boondock for a week empty their cassettes? And when they do, do they get splashed? Don't have that problem with a bag.

Nick

The bucket solution with 2 waterproof bags is imho the cleanest way to go. If your rv has a toilet..then just put the bags in the bowl and discard after usage. Easy peasy :)

mlts22 wrote:
I looked at a cassette toilet for a Sportsmobile build, as well as a Nature's Head composting toilet.

The good about a cassette toilet:

• Self-contained, so it can be used even when the vehicle is winterized.
• Can be wheeled into any toilet stall and dumped.
• One can carry 2-3 with some ease.

The bad:

• Can be heavy, and if one has back issues, slinging this around may not be good.
• There are few US RV parks equipped to handle dumping of these. You can always try emptying it out through the sewage plug, but that can be iffish... and possibly messy.
• It takes more time to dump than a black tank.

My thought is as follows:

If I were boondocking 100% of the time with weeks to months without going back to civilization, I'd buy a Nature's Head composting toilet. The liquid gets collected in a bottle, solids are composted (although you do need to carry bags of peat as a starter, and emptying the composter can be messy.) Because this produces the least amount of waste, it would be useful for when there is no place to dump. Of course, the ideal would be what Dometic used to sell with motorhomes... they used an exhaust-based incinerator to burn the contents of the black tank into sterile ash, but that isn't sold anymore.

If I were boondocking for weeks at a time with a van or truck camper, I'd consider a cassette toilet and 3-4 cassettes. They can remain outside until time to hit the road, then put in a plastic tub and placed inside. At a national or state park, I can wheel them to the bath-house and dump them down the toilet (with permission, of course.)

However, for what I do (boondocking for days at a time), a conventional black/gray system is good enough and with a macerator pump, can be versatile.

As someone who actually has used a cassette toilet,

The bad,

1) agree that a full 5 gallon cassette weighs 40 lbs(+ -) and maybe heavy to carry a long way. I don't find it a problem at all.

2) Directing the 2" drain pipe into a 4" sewer pipe is much easier than filling up your vehicle with gas from a Gerry can.

3) You can empty a 5 gallon cassette in under 7 seconds after releasing the air lock button. I said in an earlier post that it took 2 minutes start to finish. It is probably closer to 1 minute.

Dave

TentsHurt wrote:

wincrasher65 wrote:
I really wish that when the subject of toilets or black tanks comes up, that those with the idea to******in a bucket or trash bag would just keep quiet. It ALWAYS comes up. We get it - it's a cheap solution. But it's disgusting and fraught with potential problems.

The original question was about cassette toilets. If you can't address the question, then don't post.

By the way you answered that I doubt you ''do'' a cassette toilet yourself. calmase

Well obviously I don't. That's why I posted the query, to find out from those that do.

Just returned from 30 day class B rental in Germany. Cassette toilet worked just fine. No problems with compartment getting messy. Most German campgrounds have special areas for dumping and cleaning "chemi" toilet. I doubt many American ones have such facilities.