Extending stay/ Blackwater?
Anybody have suggestions how to extend stay while camping in NF. My problem is the blackwater....
Forum Discussion
mlts22 wrote:
The downside of composting toilets is that they need a lot of additional room in the bathroom so you can disassemble it to dump the compost and reload it with peat moss. For extended boondocking trips, it produces the least waste, but for shorter trips near dump facilities, it may be a hassle.
I hate to be the compost phanboi, but after living with one for a year, please allow a few clarifications.
-- Doesn't take up more room, but it does require about six inches at the back to allow the top to tip. Actually, the greatest annoyance on our Tiger is that the shower/bath door is too narrow to allow the toilet to be carried out without tipping it on its side. Nice thing is that it requires no plumbing and depending on your aim, no cleaning.
-- You only dump when you need to. In fact, it is the reverse of a conventional black tank - you don't dump at the end of a trip, but rather at the beginning. The longer the material sits in the toilet the more benign it is when you do dump. While the purists may quibble that the material does no stay in the toilet long enough to be completely reduced to compost, rest assured that organic decomposition is taking place - which is why the toilet does not fill up as fast as you would expect - the moisture evaporates and the solid material breaks down.
The dirty secrets of any composting, or, if you will, urine separating/desiccating toilet.
-- There is no smell because there is no urine mixed with feces. If you have yours in a wet bath, as we do, you need to make sure that the shower doesn't spray water inside.
-- The most expensive element in the toilet is the anatomically designed seat which directs urine to the urine bucket. One composting toilet, the C-Head makes everything else out of off the shelf products.
So basically, long trip or short trip, you dump when it is full. If it sits a month between trips, so much the better.
