Lunar eclipse - don't come here for pictures

I've seen some outstanding eclipse photos around the 'Net this morning. These aren't any of them.

I'm only a waxing gibbous moon ...

...sailing over a cardboard sky.

Truth or Consequences gets a little spiffied up for Art Hop.

Cookie Crumbs Coffee Shop

Happy Belly Deli

Some of you know Jake the Dog, and will be happy to see that he had a river play date.

It may be impossible to be gloomy while watching dogs play in the water. I thought they must be walking on water, but the river is just that shallow just below Caballo Dam.

Composting toilets: the scoop on the poop

Back in 2012 I wrote a short essay on the beauty of composting toilets. In 2010, when we installed ours in the motorhome, a person couldn't even get a civil reply on RVing forums when asking about such things. Today, I've gotten 12,500 hits on that topic; it's three times more popular than the next most popular post. Thanks to RVing resource websites, the information remains everbrown, and some days I get more hits on composting poo than I do on my latest adventure. 

At 12,500 hits, I like to think that 1,250 people read it and thought "maybe I could do this someday." Maybe 125 people went through with it and installed composting toilets somewhere in their lives.

This is a movement whose time has come. Back around 2005, I read Joseph Jenkins' book, The Humanure Handbook, and thought "maybe I could do this someday." Who knew I would become a poo evangelist?

Tiny House Edition: buying property in New Mexico

I'm not getting off the road. I do need a wide spot to pull over onto, though, to rest now and then.

13.6 acres, and none of it is lawn. Is this heaven? No, it's Datil. Close enough for now.

 342 square (octagonal)  feet, by my calculations. Feel free to check my work.

"7500 feet elevation calculates to 350° for ... forget it. Where's the raisin bran?"

Don't be fooled by these fineries. This baby is completely off-grid. It's off-off-grid. It's okay. It's how I roll, when I'm not rolling.

I wasn't looking for this, but it was looking for me. It was market-weary, having been there for two years, and I was already road-weary, having been there not very long at all. It was a foreclosure, and being offered for a price that made some friends urge me to buy it on the spot. So, I offered half.

You know those outrageous ideas that don't feel outrageous, and the hard things that are completely easy, and the rough roads that smooth out ahead of you? 

My agent is Marie Lee, and she made everything super-easy. I'd definitely use her again.  

Assuming all goes well (and I always do), I'll close on Monday.

I won't be wintering here this year! I've got a beautiful beach in mind, I just don't know which one. Or, maybe a lovely desert. The world is my Spud-tent.

Composting toilets for RVs and simple homes

We've gotten a landslide of emails (3) asking us for more details about a composting toilet in an RV. You want details? You can't HANDLE the details!

[You totally can.]

WARNING: I am going to talk about human bodily functions and their results. I won't want to eat after I've finished this post, and that's my goal for you, too.

I've discussed this issue on public forums, and I've found that composting humanure in any way can make people really mad. I've warned you, now it's up to you to bring up toilets only very carefully as dinner party chatter.

Why compost?

An average RV toilet uses two quarts of water per flush, which is 4.2 pounds (plus the you-know-what you just did into that water).  

• A couple might flush 10 times a day = 42 pounds/day (five gallons of previously-drinkable water)
• In one month, that couple has created 1300 pounds of waste that must be treated (including a rather conservative estimate of the weight of the urine and feces involved). This also represents 150 gallons of drinking water.

Many RVers divert their gray water for flushing, which is certainly an improvement. Still, the weight and volume of the waste remain the same.

Our composting toilet is pretty forgiving in the poo-storage department. A full vault is not a de-camping emergency. It will begin to ask politely to be emptied, and will not become belligerent for several days when it won't allow itself to be cranked.

However, timely urine removal is not optional. Please don't ask how we know this. However, delay is not a catastrophe like Isaac or Katrina. It will be contained, you just won't enjoy clean-up.

If you're talking about the same couple in a stationary home with a common low-flow toilet (1.6 gallons), the amount of treatable waste is more than two tons (4000 pounds) in a month. That's about 500 gallons of drinking water. If you're mad when you look at your water/sewer bill, imagine turning 4000 pounds of your own dookie back into drinking water and the bill will seem cheap.

The takeaway point is that our waste doesn't cease to exist after we flush. RVers know that when they drop the stinky slinky into that hole in the ground, but even then, it still lives.

Maybe you're an intermittent flusher; I'm cool with that. You can customize these numbers just knowing that a gallon of water weighs 8.35 pounds.

What's in it for me?

If you're a campground kind of RVer, maybe not much. I can't deny the bliss of never thinking about where poo goes after it leaves me. This is an excellent set-up for boondockers and homesteaders, and people who are seeking simplicity. You can't get much simpler than we are.

How to compost poop


I'll talk about the Nature's Head composting toilet, just because that's what I know.

However, there are many approaches to RV waste management. Van dwellers tend to be very ingenious in this area (and in many others, too).

For two people, the Nature's Head poo-vault needs to be dumped about twice a month. The urine bucket in front (shown pristine white in the photo) must be dumped every two days, at least. Urine does not burn vegetation, and is safely dumped onto the ground. [Don't dump urine into a stream or other water body. Just because. A nice hole facilitates a contained dumping.]

If you feel you must occasionally flush something, take your urine bottle for a ride to a toilet and dump it there. This is just for you; your urine doesn't care either way.

We dump the poo into a garbage bag and throw it away. After two weeks in the vault, it weighs about 20 pounds. If we had our own stationary home, we would  compost it for a long time and become our own solid waste management system.

A new friend works for a sewage treatment facility in Tucson. He tells me that medication being dumped into the sewer system is a problem requiring a team of full-time lab workers. Untreated, the drugs are recycled into the aquifer and we get our diazepam for free. Nevermind the metabolites - he didn't even discuss that.

Drawbacks to composting poop

• You can no longer deny you poo
• After only two weeks, the contents of the vault will still smell a fair amount like poop
• Sometimes there are "glitches" in the system. The toilet may smell, or you won't get a full two weeks/ couple out of the vault. Humidity bogs down the system.

The ultimate solution to the main wrinkles is just dumping and starting again. That's as drastic as it gets.

While I am typing away on my sanitary keyboard, Annie is implementing a vault dump. She is smiling, but it's not a happy smile. This has been a glitchy two weeks. We can't compare this to going to a dump station, since we've only done that once, for graywater. Luckily for us, that one time involved other people's turds laying all around the overflowed tank.

You will have gut reactions to what you have just read. Oh yeah, I said it. Hopefully I have addressed them, in snarky format, in this discussion. We're glad to answer questions. If you feel argumentative after reading this post and this thread, I'll respond depending on my mood at the moment.

As always, talking about a different way to do things is not meant to challenge traditionalists (much). Composting humanure has been a way to live the way we want to live, and it works. I'm not dissing conventional poo-management. Some of you may be looking for ways to get off-grid, and this is one of our Top Two modifications for off-grid living.

Free Humanure downloads.


 Or, buy from Amazon.

Find a few hundred other sustainable ideas here.


~~~~~~~~~
Make our Amazon link your Amazon bookmark!

I'll be on the other side of the island. Please forward my mail.

We're on Laguna Madre now, Bird Island Basin.  Maybe three miles from Malaquite Campground, but a whole 'nother vibe.  This campground has pit toilets and levelish gravel sites.  Oh, and bay views to knock your SmartSocks off.

We read that this place starts to hop in February, but in January it's content to flop.  We're content, too.

What the Other Cat Saw

Houses in the lagoon

Imagine a young family living in a modest home in suburbia.  Now, trade the 'burbs for a yellow school bus, and you've done just what our neighbors did.  The children are active, cute, nearly-edible, and all under six.  The ones who can sit upright have chairs.

 Only 30W.

Isn't it cute? It's been keeping us current, although we did run the genny today to ward off a deep-cycle spiral. We cut our hair, microwaved rice, and turned the refrigerator to "AC" to load it up; if you need more information on Onanism, email me privately.   Or, hit the Google.  No one knows when you Google.

Over here it's quiet in a different way. People do run their generators, but occasionally. The fee is $10 for the year, with a 56 day annual limit (divided into 14-day stays). Over at Malaquite, it's $8/day. Not steep, but enough to sift out the hardcore boondockers from the daily generator-runners.

I've been feeling a boondocking post coming on, like a petit mal. Please assume a safe position.

An X-treme boondocker's best friends.

The B-team

This stuff works for body and Duck.   For example, is it already the day you wash your hands again?  Spray them liberally with a castile soap solution, suds up, then spray your hands with water.  No need to turn on the pump or run a quart of water into your gray tank for such a simple task.  I didn't invent this trick, I'm just passing it along.  I got a million of 'em.  

I've been no-poo for several months, and I like it.  I can't think of a reason to go back.  Some people no-poo with commercial shampoo that doesn't contain sulfates, and that works.  I've tried that, but a baking soda solution followed by dilute apple cider vinegar works a little better for me.  No-poo isn't mandatory for extreme boondocking, but it is very compatible.  There's a large component of boondocking that is a pursuit of radical simplicity, and this is a small piece of that picture for me.

The family next door wants to get a load of our composting toilet.  They're using a Luggable Loo, which works for them.  I don't think they're looking for another solution, they're just curious.  We met and immediately started sharing toilet tips, probably because we were waiting together outside the pit toilet with our buckets.  I love this life!  Micah said There's an enzyme solution, but don't buy it.  It doesn't work for crap.  We all appreciated the accidental poop humor at the same time.  Now I'm sharing so you can appreciate it, too.  [Crap absent on picture day.]
 
Tomorrow ... oh, it's too exciting for tonight's post!  We're going to ... oh, no, I can't.  It'll have to wait.

Shout'n out, and poop on a grand scale

"STEVE! STEVE! STEVE! STEVE! STEVE! STEVE!"

Your captions, motivational and de-, were all winners in my book. Steve gets the award for Extraordinary Effort:

I figured this out at 4 A.M.  

HeyDuke50 pointed us toward clivus multrum, which then pointed us toward Clivus Multrum.

AWESOME!

Poop rolls downhill, and now here's the technology to prove it.

For LG61820 (I like to call her "Anonymous")

The poop is still flying in the composting toilet discussion.  Really, the poop is now just being gently tossed in civil and genteel ways to avoid spatter.  Here's a commenter's honest questions, and my response.   


[Please don't feel that you must defend poop-flushing to me.  It's what most of us do in the developed world.  It's what I have done all my life.  It's what I taught my son to do.  Bye-bye, Poopie!  It's fast, it's easy, and it's fun.]

My last post was definitely off-topic and I'm sorry.

I do have some questions though:

1. Why would you consider a composting toilet in an RV when there are other sanitary waste disposal options available?

I don't know how long the composting process takes, but you would have to haul all that along with you until it's done. Weight is an issue with RVs. Where do you put it until that's done? Hauling around extra weight increases fuel consumption, which in itself is not good for the environment.

2. Assuming the composting process has completed, where would you dispose of it? What good would it do in a landfill somewhere, and aren't landfills themselves a blight on the environment?

3. Why would a composting toilet be preferable  to a sanitary dump station?

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I would think that a composting toilet would be more efficacious if you were fixed in place where you could use the results to fertilize a garden to grow food. 

Hi T__ & R__,


I'm not positive you're asking me specifically, but I'll be glad to address your questions as best I can.


1)  There definitely are other options available, but I am far from convinced that they are superior (or even equal, but I'm not trying to impugn other people's motives).  The other options are conventional, and that's not always a compelling quality.


2)  "Completely composted" is hard for me to define.  Some people compost their manure to the point of using it on their vegetable gardens, and that process may be 2-3 years.  Composting in general begins within a week, and if you put your hand on the outside of the vault, you'll feel considerable heat being generated almost immediately, which is a sign of microbial action.  


To give you some perspective, two weeks' worth of continuously-composting manure from two people weighs about 15 pounds. How much would that much manure weigh mixed with water?  Urine is a consideration in the holding tank scenario, and so a conventional black tank's contents would likely weigh 15 pounds inside a day.  Most conventional RVers wouldn't travel to a dump site every day (and pay $5-10) to rid themselves of that weight, so overall, composting in an RV weighs much less than the conventional option.


[Let me say here that we look at this from an extreme boondocking perspective.  We don't camp in campgrounds generally.  We are also fans of an off-grid stationary life, although we aren't there yet.  This may help to explain why we find this a superior process.]


But, if we can reach some agreement on what "fully composted" is, and we can draw that arbitrary line,  I would put it on/in the ground.  There is no longer any reason to separate it in any way.  This is great for a homesteader, or anyone who is living stationary, as you said.  Because I am not going to carry our manure around for a couple of months, I settle for the less-perfect option of separating it to continue its composting in a landfill.  I  agree that landfills are a blight, but we all like to think that our household waste in general is going to biodegrade (rot) and go back to the Earth.  Not necessarily true ... except maybe for my lone bag of already-composting manure.


My poop is not doing any good in a landfill.  It will be a resource when we stop traveling, assuming we are in a place where we can "resource" it.  Now, my concern is "where will my poop cause the least impact?"  In a conventional (house) scenario, I might use the toilet six times a day (more if beer is involved).  Pooping and peeing into and flushing away about 10 gallons of drinking water.  After that, it is no longer really a resource (although farmers buy the heavy-metal-contaminated sludge as fertilizer for open fields).  For two of us, that's about 280 gallons of fresh water in a two week period.  As a couple, we have effectively created 1.1 tons of waste that must be dealt with, as opposed to 15 pounds of composting manure.


3)  When you gotta dump, you gotta dump.  A conventional RVer will have to travel to a dump station, and a boondocker will have to travel further.  This is not something that can be delayed for long.  When they get there, they'll have to pay a fee, understandably.  This fee feels small and totally worth it when the tank is dangerously full!  A composting toilet says "Relax!  Empty me tomorrow, or the next day, or on Thursday if you get a chance."


3a)  In our Nature's Head, the urine is separated from the manure mechanically, and we dump the urine onto the ground.  Under duress, we will dump it into a flush toilet.  This amounts to about 1.5 gallons every two days, with two people using it.  See above for beer disclaimer.


My re-disclaimer:  I'm not trying to knock conventional poop flushers.  Since you were interested enough, and so kind as to ask polite questions, I've tried to give you a sense of why we compost.  I'll admit to being strongly influenced by Joseph Jenkins' book Humanure (which you can download chapter by chapter here for free:  http://humanurehandbook.com/contents.html)

Sit down for this.

Adam Katzman has his poop together.  Check this out:



For Slacker Monday, this is Good Luck Duck.

Up on the roof.

Lead story.

It's been hot here, like it's been hot where you are (offer not valid in PNW).  The heat showed us that the toilet room is not as pretty-smelling as it used to be, and Annie decided to sniff out the reasons.  Obstructions in the vent?  Maybe a wasp nest, or a cache of pecans.  Every answer's a winner.

We have a solar vent shed that fits into an adapter to use the old blackwater tank vent, since we were just using that to hold fresh daisies.  That arrangement on the roof seemed a little wobbly, like a baby's little neck holding up his bowling ball head, so a supporting brace was added.  We've had trouble with excess moisture in the inside toilet vent, so much that the old fan died a lingering death of rust and pew.



Once Annie got her first good look at the arrangement, she understood the problem.   The workings of the vent fit into the inner pipe, then lay down on the outer pipe and screw down.   But, the outside support pipe - a great improvisation - completely defeats the purpose of the fan because it seals the stink in.  She realized there had been no outside venting for the past year, and that just leaves inside venting which we cannot recommend.

Annie drilled a couple of dozen small holes in the outer ring, replaced the solar vent shed, and WHOOSH THE STINK LEFT.

Segue.

Yesterday, before Annie boarded the Grand Funk Railroad, we picked blueberries in the back yard.



Q:  How easy is it to pick blueberries?
A:  Mmblthqppbt.


Things to look at.

L to R:  Carrot and John

Carrot croissant

A PooPourri for yoo and mi

INSURANCE:
We heard back from the Miller Agency, who does not write for NYS.  One down.

POOP AND PEE:
We've had a couple of requests (I poo you not) for more info about our toilet, so let me see what I can do:

The urine receptacle is full after 2-3 days.  Don't wait until it's full.  When we first started using it, we sort of lost track of things, and the next half hour was not pretty.  The jug has a lid that screws on for safe and jaunty carriage to whatever disposal place you use.  Joseph Jenkins, the Humanure guy, would suggest strongly that you dump it on your compost, but that's up to you.  Even if you flush it down a toilet it's better than flushing 10X a day.  So sez I.

The vault where we store our treasures gets full and hard to crank after two weeks, and so we completely change it out at that point if we're using peat moss.  Recently, I got an email from Elaine who suggested we try coconut coir (or fiber) instead of peat.  Great idea!  Compact, easier to stow than peat, and easier to use.  It's compact and ready;  peat moss comes in a huge bale that then has to be separated out into gallon plastic bags or it becomes immediately unwieldy.  I like my poop matrix to be wieldy.  Also, as she pointed out, it's more sustainable than peat moss.  It can be had at most pet stores, since it's mainly used for reptile cages.

Since we've been trying coconut, "we" don't dump it completely after two weeks.  Instead, "we" scoop it like a litter box about once a week.  Poo breaks up quickly in the coir, and the whole thing seems to stay dryer and less-smelly longer.  The sack o'poo goes into the garbage with the cat litter, and smells better.   When the level of coir gets too low, I imagine we'll just add a portion of a brick.  A brick of coir.

Last weekend Annie and my son, Phil, worked on the new camera.  When he got to the place on the roof where the Head vents, he yelled "SMELLS LIKE POOPY RIGHT HERE!"  That's what we like to hear, because when the dookie smell is on the roof, it's not in the coach.  That reminds me that I wanted to rejoice with you when I tell you that our solar vent is back online!  [rejoicing placeholder] Apparently it's equinoctally-related:  OFF in autumn, ON in spring.  We have to leave this place.

[Edit:  Annie just said "It's so funny that you talked about the camera while you were talking about the toilet.  It IS a REAR-VIEW camera ... "]

PARTY:
Some photos.

And STAY out.

I gave Disqus the heave and the ho. I got three complaints, and the last one was Annie. No one was thrilled. Naturally, I lost some of your comments. If you don't see yourself here, be here anyway - I didn't delete anyone and I'm sad not to have your funny, thoughtful, and useful comments here. Blogger commenting is clunky and awkward, but it's reliable. Like the AMC Pacer.

I got an email from Elaine - a full-time boater - chock full of interesting and useful stuff. Coincidentally, I recently got a REQUEST for more potty talk. Thanks, Elaine, for writing this blog post:

Hello again---I seem to lose you then find you ----your email arrives but I'm confused by exactly what it is you are doing---except now I know that you have learned how to shower with a garden sprayer. Paint it black and set it in the sun once you are in warmer climes and you will have endless hot water for many tasks. As boaters as well as RV'ers we have learned many tricks from our fellow travelers. Boaters are extremely inventive folk---I think you two would love the boating life from what I have read of your driveway adventures so far! Once you start to travel check out Marina's once in awhile----many often have an RV hook up or two---usually not advertised but rentable none-the-less. You will meet some interesting folks and may get bitten by a water bug. You will at least meet some great characters who love to talk about their boats and boating.

On to the reason for my note here -----I have discovered a great source for coconut coir for the composting toilet. You may be perfectly happy with the peat solution and that's fine. For us on the boat we find that space is at a premium (25 footer) so even 2 cu. ft of peat takes up well---2 cu.ft. Quite by accident I discovered that pet shops sell coir in their reptile department----who knew? Neat little bricks of the stuff that we can buy one or two at a time ands store in various nooks and crannies on the boat.

I keep finding and losing your blog----will I ever be able to keep up with technology? Doubt it. But I enjoyed our initial contact and hope to keep in touch in spite of my ineptitude----or perhaps it is just my 'tude' in general.

Did you know that if you have a crockpot and keep it filled with water and turned on all day you will have a cheap source of hot water on demand and can turn off your hot water heater?

That's it for this go 'round---hope you will soon be able to get up and go--let the adventures begin!!! Is it still snowing where you are?

You see NOTHING.

Where's Waldo?

Put your gasps away; Carrot is practicing tactical autumn camouflage in her new fatigues. She won't go near that road - oh no! - our furry vegetable is far too cunning for that. She has a "special place" she likes to visit to do a thing or two (mostly two), and when the weather is good and ground cover renders her invisible, we allow it. She doesn't wander around. Like a good soldier, she accomplishes her mission and returns to base.


Annie has been working on an auxiliary exhaust fan for the Nature's Head, as the solar-powered fan is entering its sad, hopeless, nearly-lifeless season ... sorry, I got distracted. I meant to say that, with sunshine at a premium, our solar-powered fan is an under-employed drain on society ... Our solar-powered fan is considering a winter course of Prozac. Annie wanted to install a 12V fan to give it a boost. It took a while, because something something splitting power, and something something soldering gun, and blahblah wire nuts and electrical tape. Phil was a big player in this game, with Annie explaining the situation and Phil Imagineering™ the solution. Here's how it looked:


And, are you kidding me, that dirt was on the inside all this time? I could have cleaned it months ago?

Sure, blame in on the solar-powered fan who is only human and DOES NOT APPRECIATE YOUR ATTITUDE.