Back to everyone’s favorite topic… toilet sewage!
I have previously written about exploring options for a composting toilet in BaanRimNaam. But rather than go with a totally modern (“normal”) looking composting toilet, we’ve decided to build our own.
In exploring the Internet, we came across biorealis.com, which has some well explained and thought out designs. They seem to have been working on this stuff since the late 60’s and early 70’s. (Hats off to a geek who has been geeking longer than I have. In fact, longer than I’ve been alive.)
In particular, he has plans for a rotating bin vermicomposting, urine diverting toilet. (Vermicomposting means composting using worms. Urine diverting means… well exactly what it sounds like.) Here is the link:
http://biorealis.com/composter/rotating/
We purchased the plans on that page for about $30, and I finally got a chance to review them today. It is a well thought out design. It will be a tight squeeze to fit the system underneath BaanRimNaam, but should be doable. (It will probably require digging down about 50cm, which will then need some care taken with drainage.)
It doesn’t smell at all because:
- The system is aerobic with plenty of air flow, so it doesn’t stink at all.
- The air-flow is outward from the storage tank area to the outdoors. So even if it did smell, the air is being sucked out of the bathroom, down the toilet chute, and exhausted into the outside.
Remember that it is the anaerobic bacteria that make septic systems stinky. When you force enough air through a decomposing mass, the aerobic bacteria thrive and apparently kill off the anaerobes. And sewage being digested by aerobic bacteria doesn’t stink. We know this for a fact because the ATS (aerobic treatment system) we have processing toilet sewage in BaanMae is just like a septic tank (which is anaerobic) except that it has a small air pump constantly bubbling air up inside. And if you open it up and take a good whiff, it only has a slightly musty smell. Not the typical septic tank nasty smell.
Having reviewed the plans, I do have one fundamental question unexplained in the plans. It is a rotating 3-bin system where it will probably take about 1 year to fill up each bin with the worms eating away at the poop and any kitchen scraps you throw in. (With just Praew and myself in the house.) Then you rotate the 3-bin turntable to expose the next empty bin and let the compost age for about another year while you are filling up the second bin and the worms are digesting it down to compost.
That all sounds good, except I wonder what happens to all the worms in the first bin during the aging process. Do they die off? Starved to death? Or do they simply find a way to climb out of the tank and into the second one somehow?
Time to check out the forum on their site. Let’s see if someone has already asked this. If not, I’ll post it.