poop magic.

If you know a thing or two about tiny houses, or you've hung out with me at all in the last few months, you knew this day was coming. Its time to talk about poop. Yes indeedy, one big part of living in my bus in the future is going to be having a toilet in the bus! For those who are wondering, the title comes from many a conversation about poop I've been having with one of my co conspirators lately. Our conclusion is that composting toilets are magic because they turn poop into dirt!

To start out let me tell you a smidge about the types of options one has for putting a toilet in their tiny houses.

The basic RV toilet is using a more or less normal toilet (I think they have less water than standard though) and the water and waste go into a black water tank. A black water tank differs from a grey water tank because black water is full of poop and really can only be dumped in sewage dump places. Grey water on the other hand has sink and shower stuff (food and dirt residue and soap) and can be dumped other places such as outside if you use biodegradable soap. Basically black water tanks are gross and I don't want one.

Another option for compact toilets are the incinerating toilet. These toilets are nice because they are pretty small and what once you've burned the poop all up you're left with ash! This ash is easy to dispose of and not super gross like black water. The down side of the incinerating toilet is it uses a lot of electricity so unless you're planning to hook your house up to the grid (not doing solar like I'm planning to) its not really an option. I've also heard that the burning of poop is smelly, who would have guessed.

And so we get to composting toilets! This is what I want by the way. Composting toilets are awesome. As I said above they're so awesome that they are magic, because they turn poop into dirt! Composting toilets basically work because poop is like most other organic material and can be put in the compost and it will decompose into dirt. This dirt can go in the compost bin and be used in the garden (only for non eatable things though, don't use poop compost on your veggies!) it can also just be spread about outside. I suppose in a pinch it can also go in the trash in a biodegradable bag. There are some legal thingys about throwing human waste in the trash, but this is dirt, so hmm.

There are a few types of composting toilets available and I'm still deciding what I want to do, but that is for another time.

Ta!
Mer.