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[Village Idiot]

I've used the "Humanure" method of dealing with fecal matter and I think it's the way to go.

I didn't do it quite like the book, which is linked below, suggests (I began that way, but altered it) and it worked flawlessly for years and is still the way human waste is handled at the off-grid straw/tire/etc. house I helped build. My former partner still lives there with her new husband and the setup we built is still going strong after 11 years (I visit often and always look forward to pooping there). Done right, it's totally safe and the resulting compost can be used on food crops.

Our setup was on a three-year rotation; the 1st year we filled the compost enclosure with all veggie scraps, weeds, and normally composted materials along with all feces, toilet paper, and urine (covering with straw/leaves/ some carbon source), adding wood ashes and/or water when necessary (not often).

At the end of the first year, our compost pile was just under 2 cubic yards (1.5 cubic meters) and we used pitchforks to chuck it all into a secondary enclosure right next to it and let it sit there for another year (I guess we flushed our toilet once a year, then).

After a year of sitting it had shrunk down to less than half its original volume and was safe to use on the veggie garden (the E. coli and other nasties were mostly pasteurized as the pile grew since our heap was usually -except in late Winter- around 130℉/54℃ and often went up to 160℉/71℃ but even if it never got hot, letting it sit a year ensures the pathogens would not survive). So in the 3rd year we pitched the 1st year's compost into the garden, the 2nd year's compost into the secondary bin, and the primary compost bin was ready to go, so to speak. We did this in Spring as soon as the pile wasn't frozen from winter anymore.

We only needed to add water because our pile was under a roof; we built it 'direct deposit' style meaning we climbed up a rope to a deck above the pile, opened the hatch door in the deck, and it was "bombs away!" I wasn't interested in using buckets and carrying it around and thought it was preferable to just go outside every time we needed to go. We built the roof after we got sick of being rained and snowed on while trying to 'relax.'

We were shy about growing root crops with it because we just couldn't shed all our inhibitions, though rationally we knew it would've been fine (but no health insurance made us extra-prudent). We even used to joke about how "If we are what we eat, then we haven't changed a bit!" Also, we learned that a test of someone's true level of experience in the outdoors is how willing and at what level of detail they're willing to talk about their own excrement. If you live outside it's something you confront the very first day you arrive, and every day thereafter. Even if you don't live outside it's an issue that 'conventional' methods (septic tank, sewer) deal with rather poorly, so I would see a humanure setup as an improvement to any existing infrastructure even if it comes with flush toilets (you know, those bowls of precious potable water many of us crap in).

The best part was that the whole setup cost about $200, and it's been working for 11 years without backing up once!

http://weblife.org/humanure/default.html

[Hantayo]

Excellent post and very good information.
Oliver

[m_astera]

Here's another method a friend used:

Digging a deep outhouse hole is hard work, but if you dig a shallow one you'll have to dig another that much sooner.  My friend had filled up one hole, covered it over and moved the outhouse.  A few years later, the second one had filled up, it was high summer and the ground was hard.  However, the digging was easy where the old outhouse had been, and the waste that had gone into it had turned back into odorless organic matter, dirt more or less.  So that's what he did from then on, when one filled up, it was covered over and the old one dug out, with the compost put wherever it was needed.

At my place in the woods in Washington I only managed to fill an outhouse hole once, and that took ten years, with two or three people using it regularly.  I dug a second hole ten feet away from the first one and moved the outhouse.  The second one never filled up before I left, but if it had I would have dug out the first one again rather than tackling the clay subsoil with a pick and digging bar.

I was told that in China, at least in the olden days, farmers who lived along a traveled road would compete with each other to build the nicest and fanciest outhouse along the road, in order to encourage travelers to leave their fertilizer there.  I put a glass roof on the outhouse at my place, just for fun.  It also had mahogany flooring and fancy siding and a window so one could see anyone coming up the path.  And it was a two-hole seat, which was traditional back where I was born in South Dakota.  My girls loved to go sit side by side and pee with their girlfriends when they came to visit.

Another good tip I read was to put the wood shed between the cabin and the outhouse, so one could grab firewood on the way back.

[Elliot Gain]

For some reason, the idea of composting my own waste, and how easy it seems, really excites me!