05-05-2014, 08:13 PM
I use a bucket toilet here in my shipping container home and it is not "ewww" at all. It does not smell at all in between uses. When it is full, or sooner if you have any other issues with it, you take it out and empty it into a compost heap, covering it well with mulch, grass clippings, sawdust, or whatever you got. Right now I am using grass clippings or rather weed clippings I should say, which are a rough mixture of coarse dead grass stems, various woody weeds, and whatever saplings will succumb to my push lawn mower. I modified the lawn mower with pneumatic wheels of the kind that are on hand trucks, greatly raised the ground clearance, and cut away part of the front of the mower to better handle the weeds. Yep, I have a jacked up Puna style mower with monster 'truck tires.
So far nobody from the gummint has bothered me about my shipping container lifestyle. I do feel a bit guilty about bringing down the property value of my one neighbor who built a beautiful small house, but then I am definitely bringing UP property values when you consider my other neighbors. Really. Most people would be lucky to have me as a neighbor.
From everything I have read about permitting cesspools, greywater systems, composting toilets, etc, I have concluded that if push came to shove I would install whatever the county required, then keep doing my own thing.
A septic tank and leach field is a carefully designed system that seems to work pretty well. Part of the design is that the leach field should be only a couple of feet down from the surface. In areas with a high water table the leach field can be in a mound only 3' or so high above the surrounding ground surface. The key is spreading out the water, slowing it down and providing lots of surface area by burying it in gravel and sand, so that there is time and space for the aerobic bacteria that live in the top layers of the soil to do their magic.
Now think about what a cesspool is and tell me which is better for the environment, a turd in a nice hot absorbent compost heap on the surface with only rainwater added or a turd flushed with 5 gallons of water into what is essentially a 12' deep injection well a long way below the aerobic layers of the soil, with an additional 50 gallons of shower and laundry water dumped in on top of it, plus rainwater, to help speed it on its way to the water table. If THAT'S legal, why bother having any laws at all?
So far nobody from the gummint has bothered me about my shipping container lifestyle. I do feel a bit guilty about bringing down the property value of my one neighbor who built a beautiful small house, but then I am definitely bringing UP property values when you consider my other neighbors. Really. Most people would be lucky to have me as a neighbor.
From everything I have read about permitting cesspools, greywater systems, composting toilets, etc, I have concluded that if push came to shove I would install whatever the county required, then keep doing my own thing.
A septic tank and leach field is a carefully designed system that seems to work pretty well. Part of the design is that the leach field should be only a couple of feet down from the surface. In areas with a high water table the leach field can be in a mound only 3' or so high above the surrounding ground surface. The key is spreading out the water, slowing it down and providing lots of surface area by burying it in gravel and sand, so that there is time and space for the aerobic bacteria that live in the top layers of the soil to do their magic.
Now think about what a cesspool is and tell me which is better for the environment, a turd in a nice hot absorbent compost heap on the surface with only rainwater added or a turd flushed with 5 gallons of water into what is essentially a 12' deep injection well a long way below the aerobic layers of the soil, with an additional 50 gallons of shower and laundry water dumped in on top of it, plus rainwater, to help speed it on its way to the water table. If THAT'S legal, why bother having any laws at all?