Extending stay/ Blackwater?

DiploStrat wrote:

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.

I do have a few questions though, and this is out of curiosity than anything else. I have looked at Nature's Head models, Air Head models, and one other brand, and all seem to run about the same price, and separate liquids from solids. The Air Head offering seems to be quite solid, but none of them are junk.

Where can one legally dump a composting toilet? Here in Texas, due to so many sewage dumpers that have fouled up rivers and streams, if someone dumps -anything- that looks like waste, be it compost or no, the local sheriff will get called. In reality, compost is just fertilizer, and it can go in the garden, but if one doesn't have a farm, but lives in a more urban area with nosy neighbors who tattle on anyone for the smallest perceived offense, it can get the local HOA asking pointed questions like demanding why someone is dumping human waste in the back yard (yes, it is compost, but in the eyes of the law, it can be still human poop.) Of course, one can toss the compost in a trash bin or a dumpster, but that may not be doable on the road.