Composting Toilet

One really important addition to the shabin is a composting toilet. After extensive research, I decided on a Nature's Head Dry Composting Toilet. It was designed for mainly for usage on boats, and so it is compact, low power, and sturdy. It is quite simple in design and operation, and there are mainly people who testify to its effectiveness. I found it very easy and quick to install. First, I placed the base of the toilet where I wanted it and marked the location. I made sure to leave enough space at the back and side to raise and remove the top section of the toilet, which is necessary for emptying it.



I then moved the base out of the way and installed the mounting brackets to the floor. Above you see my one goof. I have them turned the wrong way. Unless one uses screws that can fit into the recessed of the brackets, the brackets must be turned to they are outboard of the toilet base. Otherwise, as I found, the base will rock back and forth on top of them. This was not a big deal to fix, and I simply turned them around.



After the brackets are in place, the base is simply slipped between them and fastened with these large thumb screws. This means it is very easy to pull out the entire toilet and move it outside, which I think is what I will do whenever I need to empty it.



Here you see the assembled toilet with the integrated seat mounted on top. The toilet has a fan that must be run at all times, and you can see its power adapter plugged in to the outlet I placed in the toilet room. The fan draws very little power, about 0.1 amps at 12V.  This is about a tenth of the output of my single solar panel. While the panel does not operate at peak efficiency throughout the day, and does not work at all when the sun goes down, I an hopeful it can keep up to provide constant operation of the fan. The battery bank alone should be able to run the fan for at least a month, so that should provide plenty of margin for error once we put it into operation.



The purpose of the fan is to draw air in from the cabin and vent it to the outside, so I needed to cut a hole in the back wall. I ran a short piece of tubing, provided with the toilet, from the inside of the wall to the outside.



Along with the toilet, I purchased a mushroom vent, the same used for boats. Pictured above is the main body the vent installed in the hole. You can see the integrated screen that will keep bugs out. The vent is fixed to the exterior siding with brass screws and sealed with silicone.



The bell shaped cap is screwed into the main body of the vent, providing a rain proof cover.



On the inside, I affixed the white hose adapter plate to the short piece of tubing in the wall, and then screwed the plate to the wall over the hole. After that, it was just a matter of cutting the remaining vent tubing to the right length and slipping it over the neck on the side of the toilet and the neck of the hose adapter plate.

And that is it, ready for us when we come back in the summer!