#21 Not for the Squeamish or Proper

This blog post is really about learning to share our resources, and in honor of Cholo who was such a kind force on this planet, I post one picture that best captures such generosity of spirit (not of Cholo, but found by my friend Lucy in memory of Cholo): After all the soaring sentiments relating to the passing of my best buddy, Cholo, I return with a report on the seamier underside of ecologically advanced rural life: The Joys of the Composting Toilet. Feel free to skip this entire post. I won’t be offended. For the rest of you compulsively interested readers, don’t worry: This post will be short (if not-so-sweet).

In the dry spell before the rains get rampant, it is time to change out the soil in one of the humanure compartments that had been “roasting” for a year. I asked Chris, carpenter extraordinaire, to take a picture of me shoveling out the &#!+ in the composting toilet. Mike, carpenter par excellence, who was (unfortunately for him) nearby, hammering away at the new foundation, laughed, asking why I would even want such public evidence. True, seemingly ridiculous, but many of my visitors have evinced interest (if not disgust) in the nature of a composting toilet. So I thought I might share the education I am getting.

Two letters for the Day of the Big Dig: P-U! I mistakenly and optimistically posted earlier that when the compost is dug out, by the time it has been untouched for a year, the happy little microbes working away, it is merely inoffensive, rich soil. NOT! At least not in the way this toilet has sat for a year. I clearly have a thing or two (or twenty) to learn.

Backing up, here is a picture of the inside of my former outhouse (not connected to the house via the rest of the bathroom). Ralph, the Solar Electrican Magician, stubbornly continues to refer to it as my Outhouse. I’ve tried out other names, like The Toilet Room (obviously too obvious as to its function in this culture where we are supposed to be more subtle about That Room), or The Non-Water Closet (a clever play on the British W.C. and the history of toilets when water tanks were up high to insure a vigorous flush—but far too much to say in a sound bite). Loo, anyone? Well, Outhouse it is, since the room is rather out there, not heated and reminiscent of its rather primordial origins.

Okay, so now that we all agree on nomenclature: it’s a beautiful little room for an outhouse, n’est-ce pas?

Underneath, not so pretty.

The idea of a composting toilet is that we return our dirt to the dirt: “humanure.” When you use the toilet for your human soil, you throw 2-3 cups of a special mixture of one third each of soil, sawdust, ash or lime onto your bodily refuse. Here is my “Composting Kitchen” where I shovel up the mixture from big cans. The mixture both helps the feces chemically deconstruct and helps reduce the offensive odor. (Coconut coir or peatmoss are also used.)

This “aerobic” composting entails what’s called "thermophilic decomposition.” Apparently the bacteria thrive at high temperatures (104-140 °F), but by combining the feces with the sawdust, etc., it will oxidize or break down. Some of the resulting components are consumed in the composting process, reducing volume, and eliminating potential pathogens. However, the urine must be eliminated as much as possible because if the pile is too wet, then the "anaerobic organisms" thrive, creating foul odors.
Urban Woman did not read even such simple instructions before taking up regular residence in the Cabin in the Woods. Missing from the maintenance of the composting toilet? Let me count the ways.

First of all, you supposedly let a pile of “humanure” sit for a year before trying to clean it out. So in all fairness to me, this pile was created a year ago before I moved in last December 1, and the previous caretakers were clearly not using the correct soil emendment. I already knew that when I moved in because the outhouse stunk. When I asked one of the caretakers why it smelled so bad, he said that the emendment is supposed to have sawdust in it, but he didn’t have any sawdust to add to the mixture. So it was pretty much wet dirt going on top of soil made wet by urine, which is too much moisture for the manure to break down adequately.

Getting sawdust, by the way, is not as easy as it may seem. When I moved in, I went to my local hardware store for a bag of sawdust. They directed me to another hardware store that cuts lumber. So I went to shovel out a big black garbage bag full of sawdust myself under the buzz saw. When I went back a few months later, they had been told not to give sawdust to customers anymore because some of the wood is processed and we’re not supposed to mix the residue of processed wood with unprocessed wood, in case it leaches into a garden, I presume. Hence, I went to the actual mill just outside of town and found a veritable gold mine of sawdust. Was Urban Woman ever happy!

So back to the Outhouse: You recall from the picture of the inside that there were two handsome wooden toilet seats. One was out of commission ever since last November when I moved into the cabin.

Now, by November, it was time to dig it out and let the other one, now filling up, take its turn to lie fallow for a year.

Here is a picture of the cement box under the lovely wooden toilet seats. Indeed, the top layer of soil was fairly inoffensive dir. Underneath, however, and especially toward the front, a layer of uric acid-laden soil made the digging out process far stinkier than I had expected. I should probably have had on a mask. I definitely disinfected my shovel and myself at the end of the process. (Yeah, yeah, too much information, but I told you this post is not for the squeamish.)

After digging out both the dry and wet stuff, I instinctually (and it’s presuming a lot that I have any such instincts), I threw in several bucketfuls of sawdust at the bottom of the cement cubicle to dry up the wet, eventually leaving such a lovely, clean compartment.

(I now beg you squeamish folks who thought you could handle this to stop reading!) Before initiating the new toilet, I saw some pictures of nifty CTs that have a funnel system for urine which tends to hit the front of the toilet area. I will soon install such a system that will better divert the urine from women who do not wish to pee in the woods (no pressure, ladies, but I do have to deal with it). I’ve found a "Female Urinary Director" (who knew?)—no, not a person, a device that will serve as a funnel (hey, I spared you the picture, so I'm not entirely insensitive). With some piping from the funnel up top, a hole in the wall, and a closed paint bucket down below, I should be able to redirect most of the urine and keep the compartment much dryer over the next year of deposits.

I’ve also learned in my research that the pile needs to be stirred periodically so that the various layers will adequately get air and all the little microbes do their aerobic processing. I hate to have to say this, but we really do need to stir the s____ sometimes. That IS to say that all the Occupy Movements are not just a typical pain in the ass (so to speak), but that people who stir up the $#!& are sometimes the ones willing to do the nasty work of making us look at our nastiness and see what it is we need to do differently. There’s just no other nice way to say it when it comes to composting toilets.

So why use a composting toilet, you might well ask. Because a compositing toilet reduces use of a most precious resource, WATER. Just flushing the toilet, an American uses on average 7,660 gallons of water each year, as reported by one company that is trying to encourage the use of a more modern composting toilet is part of the ecologically friendly construction.
(See Biolet for an example of a “self-contained” composting toilet: http://www.biolet.com/resources/id/How-Composting-Toilets-work .)

In fact, in many National Parks in the US and at roadside toilets in various countries in Europe, the toilets are composting. Just think about sharing the resources, even at your own expense like that beautiful dog at the top.

As for all that uric acid: I invite you men to go into the woods and pee, that’s all there is to it and all my male visitors are happy, perhaps because they are liberated from having to put the seat down.

But you ladies! We’ll talk when you get here. Just think about how all those women coped for centuries, eons, before there was something so boxed in and private as the Outhouse. Yeah, no wonder we had penis envy, Freud!

But I’ve got some ideas for us women, never fear.