As always, call or write Ecovita with any questions about installing our toilet solutions.

Enjoy!

Watch online: Separett Villa 110-volt ecotoilet installation

A few years back, Ecovita started carrying very simple waterless urinals for our urine-diverting toilet customers.

Sustainable Industries magazine’s piece on its Top Green Building Products for 2009 is now on its Web site: [click here]
(The report is 22 pages and might take awhile to download)

Customer Chris Melo wrote a report for us on the advantages of living with a urine-diverting composting toilet on his boat. Chris lives year-round (except when he’s captaining schooners in the Caribbean) on his 35-foot Alberg sailboat. Other than the bathroom at his office on land, his composting toilet is his only toilet. 

Download this report on his experience: [NaturesheadOnBoat]

Although a little small, this enamel-painted bucket with handy scoop would be a great container for keeping composting toilet additive next to the toilet.

Composting toilet additive isn’t critical for urine-diverting toilets, but many owner-operators use it.
More later on our favorite composting toilet additives.

Here, we will detail ways to deal with a too-wet composting toilet, using a real-life example:

Eva was given an older but never-used Humus 90 composting toilet to use as a toilet for a few workers and visitors to at her gardens. For the past two years, the toilet has leaked brown liquid. (We call this leachate.)

This toilet actually worked pretty well when I first saw it in 2006. The Humus 90 was a decent model in its day: Nice and large, with a strong heater and fan. (The Humus 90 later changed designs and was ultimately renamed “Biolet”–aka “Mulltoa” in Europe and another name in Canada.)

Many of our customers replace their composting toilets with a urine-diverting composting toilet from Ecovita. However, although we at Ecovita love to sell our toilets, we hate to see a big piece of plastic wasted. 

Here’s what to do if you are in the same situation:

1. Check to see if the fan and heater are working.
If you can’t hear a fan, place a burning incense stick or smoking match in the toilet and check to see that the smoke goes up the vent stack.
In this case, a timer put on the unit was likely preventing the fan from working. The fan is super-powered, using a lot of electricity.  I can’t tell if the heater is working. If the fan and heater are not working, replace them.

2. Divert urine?
Many customers ask if the Privy Kit will fit in an existing manufactured composting toilet (such as Envirolet, SunMar, BioLet, etc.). Usually the answer is no; it is too large.
Just to complicate things: The  child’s seat of the Separett Villa will fit over most composting toilet openings, but it is meant for small bodies. You will also need clearance for a urine line. That is nearly impossible on a Sun-Mar.

We solved this leaking toilet problem with four other fixes to be described in posts on this site over the next two weeks.

Answer: Pour water–preferably hot–with some vinegar down your urine drain periodically to break up any urine sludge that builds up. Urine sludge is common even in urinals. It is the minerals in your urine adhering to the walls of the pipe. 

The best way to avoid it is to:

1. Make sure your urine drain is sloped as much as possible.

2. Flush the urine drain periodically with water and vinegar. The vinegar’s acid will break the bonds of the salts and minerals. 

Note: Tap water, especially if it is from a well, can have a high mineral content. This can react with the urine minerals to create a hardened sludge that gradually constricts the pipe. (Again, this is common in waterflush urinals.) Flushing your urine drain regularly with cold well water and no acid (vinegar, citrus juice, etc.) can contribute to this constriction, especially if there is little slope in the drain line.

A Growaway Garden is a garden specially engineered to growaway urine’s nitrogen ecologically and in a contained planter, so no nitrogen discharges to the ground.  A system like this, especially if it is lined with plastic, can help you get permits for your system.

Ecovita will feature free plans here on the Web site soon.

We conducted another composting toilet workshop, so we updated our free online plans for making your own very simple composting toilet with a Privy Kit. Go to the Privy Kit page or download Privy Kit Baja Box Directions.

We call it the Baja Box, because it was designed for one of Ecowaters’ first workshops in Baja California Sur, Mexico.

The workshop was hosted by Pat Keaney (of Green Grease Monkeys), who installed a Baja Box toilet in his basement after our talk at his permaculture workshop in his home last year. Pat and his eco-toilet are shown above.

Why the basement? Many renters tell us they want a composting toilet but are unable to change their bathrooms. The basement is often a place with extra space and it has an easy way to vent the toilet: through the small windows near the ceiling.

We are honored that one of our favorite magazines chose the Villa. Editor Charles Redell told us: “The Villa is certainly a less conventional product compared to the products we chose, but we felt it was something the building industry needs to know about.”

More to come!

THE REALIST IDEALIST: Taking the Plunge with a Composting Toilet

Justin Fisher of Panda Paddles installed a Villa 12-volt in his biodiesel-powered bus. 

He and his partner drove the bus across the United States, using the Villa as their only toilet on the road. 

Justin spent the winter on the bus and reports that everything froze in the bus but the toilet!

Read about it here.

(Ecovita’s Carol Steinfeld was interviewed by Dublin’s News Talk radio show!)

Wherever you are, this is a day to put your urine back into the earth to recycle water and nutrients. 
Nourish plants with your urine’s nitrogen and phosphorus. 
Skip using drinking water for flushing!
PEECYCLE either directly or by depositing your contribution in a container you take outside and apply to:
– Fluffy soil, bark mulch or forest floor (not pavement) 
– Your composter or compost pile (makes brown leaves and woodchips compost faster)
– Or, diluted it with 9 parts water to 1 part urine, around plant roots

Dilute and distribute: Lots of urine deposited in one spot on your lawn can result in nitrogen burn,

(And, yes, we’ll have the bumper sticker available soon!)

The Lowell Sun, Popular Mechanics, The Christian Science Monitor, and World Changing

Moving to Cotuit Solar required moving some boats to make way for our stock of toilets and urinals for 2009. We’re still getting settled, but come visit to see the best selection of urine-diverting eco-toilets in North America. It’s best to call first, as we’re often on the road: 978-318-7033.  We’re right next to Pecks Boats.

Conrad Geyser of Cotuit Solar has long been an advocate of urine-diverting toilets. He even makes them out of wood and fiberglass. Conrad’s set-up, whereby he stores urine and combines it with water to irrigate and fertilize his verdant and very productive gardens, is featured in Liquid Gold: The Lore & Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants.

Traveling along Route 28, you’ll know you’re near our building when you see a wind turbine, usually spinning, in the sky.

Cotuit Wind Turbine in motion

Cape Cod has long had problems with nitrogen pollution of its ponds and bays. Local state representative Matt Patrick has been calling on the state to recognize urine-diverting toilets as a viable way to divert and manage the most easily targeted source of that nitrogen: human urine.

We are setting up at least two demonstration systems at our new offices. More on that later.

“Yellow is the New Green” proclaims the headline of an opinion piece by Rose George for The New York Times. Read it here

Writing in recognition of World Water Week, she extolls the value of urine diversion and quotes Ecovita co-founder Carol Steinfeld. 

She is author of The Big Necessity, a compendium of vignettes about the often-hidden world of wastewater.