Composting toilets

The lot I want to build my off-grid home at is not connected to sanitary sewers (it even doesn’t have access to public water supply!), so I will have to deal with wastewater on my own. I have a batch of ideas I will share with you here in a couple of next posts.

One of ideas I got is to get rid of the traditional flushed toilets, and use composting toilets instead. The theory on composting toilets can be found here, so I will cut to the chase and explain the basics of this idea. And I will describe here the goal I want to accomplish.

When I first read about composting toilets I loved the idea of dealing with all the human waste on-site. Such toilet needs only a bit of electricity (but you can find such models that don’t use electricity at all!) to dry the waste, at the end you get compost – a good fertilizer for my future garden.

Using composting toilets also would allow me to save the water used for flushing the toilets. This would make my other idea (collecting greywater and using it to flush toilets) obsolete, saving me some work and money.

My wife is not very fond of the idea, though. I will have to buy one such toilet for my root cellar first, and show her that such toilets aren’t something to be afraid of. 😉


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3 responses to “Composting toilets”

  1. Eddy Winko Avatar

    A composting toilet is the single most important thing you can do to save water and the planet; no need for fancy electric units, build your own. We have used one all spring, summer and autumn whilst building our own straw bale house and there is no smell; my better half was so impressed that we intend to use them in the house.
    http://winkos.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/how-could-i-forget/
    This post a quite a few others cover the subject.
    Good luck.

  2. Mario Rodriguez Avatar
    Mario Rodriguez

    You can not have solar power?
    You must connect to electric from the city ?
    You bought this land for you or ist it a school project?
    Can you leave off grid in poland?
    Thanks.

  3. Krzysztof Lis Avatar
    Krzysztof Lis

    The law says you need to be connected to the power grid, or have your own, independent energy source. For some reason it’s illegal to build a house to live in without electricity or a heat source. I don’t get it. Some people might want to live in a house that has no electrical appliances, so why not allow it?

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