[Public-List] Head questions ...

Jeffrey fongemie at gmail.com
Fri Mar 11 04:27:41 PST 2011


Kris,

"solids container lasts about half a person-year, based
on full-time use."

Half a person year? AKA Six months for one person?

Just trying to see if our three to four months for two people is
comparable.

-Jeff

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 6:47 PM, Kris Coward <kris at melon.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 02:36:03PM -0500, darcyhaldeman at cs.com wrote:
> > Kris, could you post details about your switch to a composting toilet?
>  It's on my list of things to do.
>
> Well the first thing I did was ask Richard and Margaret (on Into The
> Blue) which toilet they'd gotten, and if they were still happy with
> theirs (AirHead, and yes).
>
> Installation involved drilling 2 small holes in the liner where the
> toilet rests (Candy Cane is #583, so well into the liner era), and
> widening the dorade vent hole to the diameter of the included fan (I
> used a small piece of scrap plywood as a template to do this
> widening--still used a hole saw, but the guide in the middle isn't
> much use when there's already a hole).
>
> With the head suitably prepared, installation consisted of screwing the
> supports for the toilet into the holes in the liner, attaching the
> provided fan to the widened dorade hole, connecting the fan to the
> terminal block that was already in the head for the forward and mast
> electrics, running the vent hose from the toilet to the fan, and tossing
> in some peat moss. I'd estimate the job having taken no more than a
> total of 5h (uncluding trips to the store for electrical connectors and
> PVC cement).
>
> I have had a problem with the toilet, in that some guests have
> occasionally deposited their TP into the toilet in such a way that it
> got pressed into the liquids collection area and clogged the spout down
> to the liquids container. Because this overflowed into the solids
> container, the fix was pretty much to keep adding peat moss to the
> solids container and agitating until the solids were, well, solid again
> (oh and to remove the clog from the spout, which was just a matter of
> taking the bottle off, sticking a bunch of paper towel under the spout,
> breaking off the encrusted TP with a piece of wire--actually I used a
> broken bicycle spoke--and then reaching into the liquids collection area
> and pulling the TP back to the solids container). That said, the
> disgustingness of fixing this problem is a far cry from the problems
> with flush toilets (though apparently it's still enough to make most
> landlubbers squeamish).
>
> The liquids bottle lasts for about 1 person-week before needing to be
> emptied, and the solids container lasts about half a person-year, based
> on full-time use. I typically have to travel on business at least once
> every 3 months for a week or so, and after getting back, the material is
> composted enough that I feel quite comfortable scooping it into a heavy
> paper bag, and adding it to the municipal compost stream (which already
> accepts diapers, so I don't have to worry about being personally
> responsible for making the resulting compost vegetable-garden-unsafe).
>
> I've left the holding tank and hoses in place (though I plan to remove
> the hoses upon receipt of one of them round tuits), because the tank
> looks to be integral to the liner, I don't have any immediate plans for
> the space, and I'll gladly stick a flush toilet back in, hook it up, and
> make off with the composting toilet if I end up selling the boat to some
> damned fool who actually prefers to deal with clogged hoses, pumpouts,
> holding tank chemicals, etc.
>
> Cheers,
> Kris
>
> --
> Kris Coward                                     http://unripe.melon.org/
> GPG Fingerprint: 2BF3 957D 310A FEEC 4733  830E 21A4 05C7 1FEB 12B3
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-- 
Jeffrey Fongemie

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