My First Experience with a Composting Toilet

This spring, Hampshire College Professor Gabriel Arboleda will be teaching an unusual class: Reinventing the Toilet. Addressing the fact that a single flush toilet can contaminate thousands of gallons in just one year of operation, he and his students will attempt to build alternative workable toilet models.

An important class? I think so. Many Tiny House folks would agree, having found that the mobile lifestyle necessitates flexibility when it comes to things like electricity and plumbing. Of course, there's an easy solution already at play, and it's something we don't think twice about doing with cows: composting.

I recently tried my first official composting toilet, and loved it. Our friends Pepper and Dylan from Bungalow to Go built this awesome composting outhouse on their property in Healdsburg, and were kind enough to let me, ahem, try it out.  

Who knew an outhouse could be so beautiful?

In addition to the requisite crescent cut out, the outhouse has a light, a nice big bucket of a cedar chips, and a magazine rack!

 A pleasure to use

Plenty of open-minded people like Pepper and Dylan are pushing the envelope with practical, conscientious ways to dispose of waste: while we wait for Arboleda and his crew to envision the next big alternative, we can manage pretty comfortably. While making a separate outhouse is a viable option, the bucket and cedar chips method can easily be applied in any tiny house. 

In addition to the composting toilet, there's the incinerating toilet. Incinerating toilets are a bit more high-tech than a bucket and some cedar chips (though there are plenty of more advanced composting toilets available). Essentially, they incinerate your waste, converting it to a clean, non-polluting ash. An incinerating toilet can be powered a regular outlet, by gas, propane, or of course, solar panels. However, it uses more electricity than a composting toilet, and doesn't provide rich and useful fertilizer!

No matter your preferred commode, there's a reason colleges like Hampshire are highlighting the urgency of reinventing something most of us take for granted. We are far too distanced the effects from our own, for lack of a better word, crap. With the help of sophisticated indoor plumbing, most people never had to accept that what comes out of their body actually goes somewhere.

We want to live responsibly but we also want to live in a sanitary and safe. When choosing how to outfit our houses, we can think outside the porcelain box and attempt to do both. 

Who Loves the Sun?

I once met a vegan who ate plants because they were closer to the sun. His reasoning: if plants get power from the sun, animals eat plants, and we eat animals or their byproducts, we get shortchanged in the sun department. By simply eating plants, therefore, he  figured would close the gap and be fortified with much more solar energy.

Luckily, the universe has finally come to its senses and allowed cheese-lovers like myself an opportunity to harness the power of the sun in a less calcium-deprived way: solar panels.

Soaking up the sun 

It's hard to think of a better way to power a tiny house. After all, you can get sunshine pretty much anywhere you bring your home. Install a panel or two on the top of your house and boom! Good to go! Or, you can try my personal favorite and use a plug and play system. This way, you can place your panels wherever you'd like.

(See also: A Tumbleweed in the Sun)

Given the small scale of a Tumbleweed, a little energy goes a long way. On a sunny day you've got yourself a pretty bright little space already, and you'll probably want to spend your hours basking outside on whatever gorgeous piece of land you're currently calling home. Then, when the sun moves on to power another hemisphere, you tap into your stored supply of solar juice, turn on a couple light bulbs, plug in your two or three necessary electronics, and live it up.

That said: yes, the sun is great, and with some smart investments, we should be able to do all we want electricity wise. But the first way to save money and help our earth is to scale down our usage in general. Just because the sun shines fairly reliably doesn't mean we should go crazy with it- after all, our usage of electricity goes beyond what's powering our devices. We have to think about who is making them and how, what they're contributing to on a larger scale, and if we actually need all of them on a regular basis.

Start by figuring out what uses the most power, then figure out if there's another way you can swing it. For instance, an electric water heater will use a good amount of electricity. Instead, why not try a simple passive solar water heating system? 

You can read about how Laura decided which appliances made the most sense here. 

In a tiny house, you'll probably find it easy to realize exactly how little you need- the rest will seem like clutter in no time. So live simply with solar power, and live simply with your solar-powered devices. But more importantly, get out and run around in that sun!

Have a good story about your solar powered tiny house? Submit it! 

J.T. Answers Your Questions!

Recently, we posted an article about J.T.'s modified Walden. It started a great conversation- blog readers responded with over 160 comments! J.T. has done his best to answer some of the questions you asked. 

Waste water:

Alexis asked: When the septic tank gets full, is there somewhere to empty it or does it go to one of those sewage processing plants?

J.T. says: Black water is collected in an 18 gallon waste water tank by Thetford. They make a lot of RV supplies. The tank is on wheels and sits directly below the toilet under the trailer. This can be dumped at any RV park that offers a sewer dump station. For the grey water  I use a separate waste-line which collects and drains daily onto topsoil/mulch pit and vegetation.

Rain Water:

Peatstack asked: Can the house harvest rainwater, does it have a tank/filter, does it generate electricity or use a battery system with solar/ propane generator? Can it accomodate a composting toilet that the house needs no septic system? I would like a house that can sit on open agricultural land without any systems connections, the occasional propane tank and grey water drain accepted.

J.T. says: The roof's surface area is quite small, but you could divert rainwater into a collection tank for irrigation: a standard rain barrel would be overkill, but a 10 gallon tank would work. I have a 25 gallon drinking water tank onboard with a water pump. I can also hook up to a 3/4 inch garden hose. Make sure you put an RV/Marine drinking water hose or your water supply will have an off plastic odor. Water heater and pump are powered by 12v batter. 120v comes from a 20 amp extension cord into a 30 amp circuit breaker box using around .5 to 1kw per day.

Solar Power:

Annette asked: This looks like it would be the PERFECT portable office for our mounted drill team. I do have a question regarding using solar power as an energy source. Has anyone installed a solar set up and if so, what did they use and how is it working to help out with their energy usage? 

J.T. says: A Solman Action Packer System could run this house easily. A plug and play system is the solution for a tiny house- something for sure in the near future. I am considering A. 2 fixed panels on the roof of the tiny house. Orientation to the sun could be limited when a new location is found. The Solman Action Packer could easily fit in the loft area above the front door or B. 2 fixed panels on the top of my truck with the Solman system in the back of my truck. It could be parked daily in different spots to optimize sunlight, then plugged into my house daily to charge on board batteries.