Replace Toilet with Composting for FT use

rv_sailor_man wrote:

Please tell me more about carrier pigeons.

Back in the old days, before ethernet or phone lines, we use carrier pidgens to carry our packets of data. An you think your internet connection is slow! :)

I just updated my original post with the link for what I use, since I'm the half of us that didn't come pre-installed with my own hose :D.

Great topic! We're planning to start FT'ing this fall, and are strongly thinking about swapping in a composting toilet this summer (before we hit the road). Seems like a great way to save water & simplify dumping.

@billy79, @FreeRangeHuman - thanks for sharing your experiences! Helpful to hear about others doing similar things!

Everybody's making this way too complicated and expensive. Of course you can (and should) use a composting toilet. We, too, never used the toilet that came with our RV.

I bought a Cabin Can just because it's very attractive, and I'm a girl and like that kind of stuff.

I seriously objected both to dealing with disgusting black water, plus the usual chemicals that go along with it, AND the pee bucket that allows urine to so beautifully "ripen" with time, that comes with Nature's Head, et. al. (Had never heard of the "vinegar cure" though.)

This one uses NO electricity at all, requires no installation of anything.

I will be blunt: We pee in the shower stall. You guys come with pre-attached hoses; use 'em, and just develop a system for quickly rinsing the stall afterwards. I attached a spray hose to the existing water inlet for the toilet. It reaches the shower. You could also, of course, just use your detachable shower head, but that's a bit more hassle. Saves the extra weight and possibly smell inside your composting toilet.

This is great for the girls; I LOVE mine. Cut the bag off and the other end of the tube fits right in the shower drain. Then I use the hose/nozzle I installed to rinse the urinal. Off course, the guys can use this, too - saves possible splashback from the shower floor.

The rest couldn't be simpler. Your basic 5 gallon bucket, lined with a usual size kitchen trash bag, fits inside the Cabin Can. The key to "no smell" is PEAT MOSS. I learned this the hard way when I tried to switch from using a mixture of peat moss and wood chips (the stuff that's supposed to be rodent bedding; you can even use cedar chips) to wood chips only, and that was a mistake. :E

If you use all or at least half peat moss, your toilet will smell pleasantly earthy. Just be sure to cover up after each addition completely.

The contents will start to settle, but once your bag finally is really full, tie it up and dispose of it. You can also actually compost it if you wish, but that's usually impossible to do if you're moving frequently. For that reason, I refer to mine as a "dry toilet", rather than as a composting one. And no, this does not need to be vented.

And as someone else mentioned, now you can use both your gray and black tanks for gray water. Put a gate valve where there's only a screw-on cap now, keep it closed (unless you're connected to sewer), but leave both the gray and black gate valves open.

My wife and I bought a new fifth wheel in Feb. and went full time in May.

Knowing that our plan is to do a lot of boondocking and dry camping we opted to install one of the Nature's Head composting toilets.

We never even used the regular toilet, pulled it and switched toilets the night we got the rig.

We have had family obligations ever since we hit the road and have not done any boondocking yet :(

I have already seen some of the benefits for sure. We have stayed in a few spots where the sewer dump was rather far away and it didn't matter to us. Without even trying we can go a week without dumping our tanks...so if we were to be more careful with consumption and waste, having that blank tank as an additional grey would probably let us stretch that out to 10 - 14 days.

Dealing with the composting container isn't that big of a deal. When you empty it there isn't much of a smell other then wet dirt, and it is like dumping a bucket of wet dirt with itty bitty pieces of TP mixed in into a trash bag.

The only thing that is a pain in the rear, and not a huge deal, is dealing with the urine bucket. We find ourselves dumping that about every 3 days. It's not difficult and if you put vinegar in it when it is empty there is no smell....it is just a chore that has to be done every 3 days.

IF we were to never boondock and always be in parks I think I would be 50/50 on which method is better (regular black tank or composting). The only thing that would make me go with a regular set up is the cost....$1000 is a lot to swallow.

For extended boondocking I really think that this will be a nice upgrade and worth the $1000. At least I am really hoping to since we dropped the money on it :) Hopefully we will get to boondock shortly....really has been a bummer how things have cropped up keeping us from being able to do that, but it could be a good thing. My tuck needed an unplanned transmission rebuild which took my solar panel money. So we are all set up for boondock (big battery bank, inverter, solar charger, composting toilet) but will still need to run our generator at this point to charge the battery bank.

holstein13 wrote:

Gjac wrote:
I think what you have to think about is that your grey tank will fill up before your black tank anyways. How will you dispose of the grey water? Try to look at how and where you plan to camp. What kind of MH do you have how big are the tanks? Do you have solar to recharge your batteries? What is your limiting resource? For me it is 60 gals of FW, then grey water storage if I make trips to fill FW tanks, then battery recharge, having to do laundry after a week. Black tank is at the bottom of my concerns.

Gjac, you are missing one very important concept here. If he no longer needs his black tank, then he can simply tie his black and grey tanks together to double (or at least combine) his capacities.

In other words, if he gets a composting toilet, his gray tank will last much longer.

That's true but the limiting resource is still the FW unless he wants to haul in water or a close supply of water.

Gjac wrote:
I think what you have to think about is that your grey tank will fill up before your black tank anyways. How will you dispose of the grey water? Try to look at how and where you plan to camp. What kind of MH do you have how big are the tanks? Do you have solar to recharge your batteries? What is your limiting resource? For me it is 60 gals of FW, then grey water storage if I make trips to fill FW tanks, then battery recharge, having to do laundry after a week. Black tank is at the bottom of my concerns.

Gjac, you are missing one very important concept here. If he no longer needs his black tank, then he can simply tie his black and grey tanks together to double (or at least combine) his capacities.

In other words, if he gets a composting toilet, his gray tank will last much longer.

I think what you have to think about is that your grey tank will fill up before your black tank anyways. How will you dispose of the grey water? Try to look at how and where you plan to camp. What kind of MH do you have how big are the tanks? Do you have solar to recharge your batteries? What is your limiting resource? For me it is 60 gals of FW, then grey water storage if I make trips to fill FW tanks, then battery recharge, having to do laundry after a week. Black tank is at the bottom of my concerns.

Naio wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers

You asked for it.

Excellent! Now I can throw out my cumbersome wireless hotspot for this. Thanks!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers

You asked for it.