Why We Built Our Composting Toilet and You Should Too!

hey YouTube so I'm coming at you today from our composting toilet in our recent bus tour video we had a lot of questions in regards to it what type of media do we use did we build out ourselves does it stay in place while we drive why did we build one instead of buying one so I'm going to answer all of those questions as well as show you a step by step and how I built it and how you can - so let's check it out now [Music] now these are all of the components that you'll need to build your composting toilet not including the actual building materials and hinges but the main pieces that you'll need to make it work a urine diverter we ended up using the killed whip classic which can be found on eBay I'll put a link in the description box below for this a toilet seat and lid we went with one that is a soft closed no slam lids that there's no sound in the middle of the night you'll also need a five-gallon bucket for the solids and a 1 gallon jug for the liquids we went with a slightly different jug than what is pictured and I'll put a link in the description box below you will also need a 1 and a quarter inch slip fitting to go from the urine diverter into the jug which I'll show a little bit later in the video so to construct our composting toilet I ended up using some leftover pieces of plywood from the cabinets built inside of our bus here you can see the upper support straps and the lower blocking to give the rough estimate of what the toilet size is going to be which was 18 and a quarter inches tall 20 inches deep and 28 inches wide but your measurements may differ depending upon your build the wires that you see are the positive and negative connections for the air circulation fan so in this photo I place the five-gallon bucket 1 gallon jug and the toilet seat and separator just to make sure that everything was going to fit where I wanted it to now I didn't want the vent for the composting toilet in the side of the bus or in the roof so I decided to install it in the wheel well of the bus here's a close-up of that vent I did find these vents on Amazon and I'll put a link in the description box below I did silicone all around just to make sure no water could come in here's what the backside of that vent looks like inside of the wheel well I did have to trim it down a little bit to make it fit but it worked out really really well now this is the cover that goes over that vent hole and so this will help keep any water or debris coming in through that vent as well as when we're going down the road the air running by it is going to help suck more air out of the composting toilet I ended up using a hundred and twenty millimeter ultra quiet computer fan to suck all of the air out of the composting toilet and push it out of that vent that I created now the composting is starting to take shape this box is going to be for the peat moss that we'll use as our covering and in the back you'll see there is an upper trim piece that is where I'm going to be attaching the lids and hinges for the covering box the toilet paper storage area and the lid for the composting toilet okay then I just built a second box this is going to be where we'll place all of our toilet paper and toiletries now here have created the lids for each of those storage boxes I did make the lids slightly narrower than the full opening of the boxes just to give room for the lid for the urine diverter to be able to sit down as you can see here here you can see all of the lids in place not fastened with the piano hinges yet but at least just making sure that it all fits and there is a slight gap between each lids so that they lift up and down without rubbing against each other this is where I'm test fitting the lid to make sure that it fits perfectly over the urine diverter and the solids area before I affixed it in place now the next step was to attach the slip fitting this is a standard plumbing fitting that you can find at any hardware store and it is a 1 and 1/4 inch slip fitting that as you tighten that nut down it just holds itself right on the urine diverter I did put a little bit of silicone across the top just to make sure nothing would ever come out and then I trimmed the hose down to make sure that it would fit in the jug now in this photo I have everything fully secured in place the lid is secure and the urine diverter is secure right where it needs to be now here you can see the toilet all trimmed out and finished I use some flooring material that was gifted to us from some friends to finish the front of the toilet as well as I used some one inch pine trim pieces on the front of the lids to give a good handle to be able to lift them up and down with okay so now that you've seen how easy it is to build a composting toilet let me show you how we go about using it on this side we have our peat moss that is the covering that we choose to use because in peat moss there is bacteria present from the breakdown process that also helps break down and neutralize the smell from the solids fantastic covering it's super cheap and readily available at any hardware store so I have already cleaned this toilet out the biggest benefit to using this type of a system is the fact that you don't have to really touch the solids whatsoever because they go into a five-gallon bucket that has a bag in it once that bag is full you literally just grab the bag pull the whole thing out and throw it in the trash no need to touch the solids whatsoever it's a very very clean process unlike the nature's head in separate toilet where you have to clean the solids container out after you're done with it kind of a disgusting thing and we just didn't want to hassle with it so to prime the composting toilet once you've changed out the bag you'll just take two scoops of your peat moss sprinkle that in to cover the bottom and you're ready to use it as far as the one gallon jug that we use in our composting toilet we empty that once every day or two depending upon how often we end up having to use that toilet in this particular build because when I first constructed it I wanted to use a five gallon milk jug which ended up not working out very well and we found this jug on Amazon it doesn't fit perfectly so we do have to kind of tilt the jug forward a little bit so that when you bring it down that tube from the urine diverter fits in the jug and then now everything has been ready to go this other compartment this is where we have all of our toilet paper and regular toilet trees as well as it's where rachel puts her hair dryer and hair straightener so that it's out of the way other than that and daily maintenance we use a one to one water vinegar spray that's basically what we use to kind of flush the toilet so after we've used we just kind of spray out the urine diverter let that drain out and then that pretty much neutralizes any of the smell the other thing that we do to help combat some of the smell from the urine because that's actually the part that smells the worst is we use this stuff that is a gray water odor control lemon scented it's a super super strong lemon scent so we put a little bit of that in the jug and that just helps cut down on any urine smell whatsoever other than that the fan that is built in the little 12-volt fan that sucks out all the rest of the air and really there's never any smell people are always surprised when they come into the bus how there is no smell from the composting toilet whatsoever and that's really the biggest benefit to it growing up my parents had an Airstream Motorhome and occasionally that toilet once the black water tank got full there was a smell and there was no way to get rid of it so this is definitely the best possible way to go it also is incredibly cheap in comparison to the separate or the nature's head composting toilet at a thousand dollars and thirteen hundred dollars respectively this cost two hundred and thirty three dollars for all of the materials to make it and we've even got that nice slow closed no slam lid so I hope you enjoyed this tutorial like you can see it's incredibly simple to build your own composting toilet which is all the more reason to build one instead of buying one Plus by being able to save a lot of money on your toilet you can divert those funds to other areas of your bus build such as the solar system building materials or finishing materials if you have any questions leave them in the comments below if you liked this video make sure and give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe and hit that Bell icon so you don't miss any notifications when we post another video thanks for watching and we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Soulful Bus Life

Views: 248,894

Keywords: composting toilet, DIY, Build it yourself, Natures Head, Separette, Skoolie, School Bus Conversion, School Bus, Skoolie Conversion, Tiny House, Tiny House on Wheels

Id: f6gNS9MKkOE

Length: 8min 55sec (535 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2019