Kitchen Garden Forum

We have a small grant from the Local Authority to install a toilet. We are looking for a low cost low maintanenace units (no mains) suitable for the ladies on our site. Any guidance?

Afternoon Uphavering,
If you have no mains connections on your site,water and electrics?,then on the face of it a chemical toilet is the answer;but someone has to treat and empty it.
It may be that a two-chamber compost toilet as built by Dick Strawbridge in his TV series"It"s not easy being green".
I can"t remember the details but if you Google"compost toilet"you will find sites there with the necessary info.

There's a company callled "NatSol" - compost toilet specialists. Their advert says "affordable*hygienic*low-impact*. Toilet solutions for off-mains situations.

Saw the advert in one of my mags if it is of any help.

there was a two hour programme on sky last night all about crap, from several thousand year old stuff being dug up and analised , the uses cow dung is put to in an indian village were an eye opener, calcutta's new sewage system is basically a large area of settlement ponds producing large quantities of fish and vegetables for the city. are all our allotments missing something ? what we are used to seeing as a problem waste product, can be a valuable fertiliser.

We have regular visits to our allotment site by infant school pupils and those from a school for pupils with special and additional needs and we also had requests (lots!) from the ladies (and especially those who bring their children to help on their plots) on our field for toilet facilities. We solved this problem by purchasing a wooden shed, 6' x 4' and lining the back and sides of this with laminate flooring panels (for easy cleaning) and then installing a 'Thetford Porta Potti model 365' chemical toilet - the sort used for caravans. You will also need to come up with some sort of hand washing/cleaning facility - we have a supply of 'baby wipes' available. You do need to have someone who will be responsible for checking it regularly and emptying it on a regular basis - like at least once a week. After it was up and running for a few weeks (and proving very popular), we found we needed to purchase a second ' holding tank' so we could take one off and away for emptying, and put the second one on so the toilet was always available. The cost of our project was around £400 - the shed was about £250, laminate flooring panels around £20, slabs to put the shed on, porta potti and extra holding tank were £50 (second hand) plus you will need to purchase chemicals and 'consumables'.

Because of the 'community uses by the two schools and another organisation involved with young people' of our allotments, we have just been given a grant towards the purchase of a NATSOL compost toilet. We've been to see one of the NATSOL compost toilets near to us and they are excellent and very hygienic and they are 'low maintenance' but I don't think you could say they are 'low cost' as they are almost £6,000, plus delivery plus VAT and there's also other costs in putting this up.

Like the typo Richard!

sorry geoff , my spellings worse than my typing, whay typo?

think i need a keyboard with bigger keys that dont keep moving arround

richard p. Hi richard, I think I have the twin to your keyboard.

Composting type planned for Butts Meadow. Note the "planned"! A statement of intent from the council is worth little.

I just liked the relationship between crap and analised but I suppose analysed would have had the same effect.

On BBC Radio 4 a while back, there was a programme about a new housing development in Sweden - the toilets separated the crap from the liquid gold and collected both - both were then used as fertilisers. Reminds me of a Spitting Image song about the privitisation of the water industry with the lyric "crap for cash" !

Liquid Gold - pee - good compost activator. Also good for the complexion (according to one book) !

At the Centre for Alternative Technology, they have compost loos. Ryton Gardens has a reed-bed system for the loos.

I've been trying so hard to keep out of this one (old timers will know why).

However, buy http://www.amazon.co.uk/Liquid-Gold-Log ... 1903998484 and learn all you need to know about peeing on your plants.

You might find this one useful too

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Humanure-Handbo ... y_b_text_b

Chantal wrote:I've been trying so hard to keep out of this one (old timers will know why).

However, buy http://www.amazon.co.uk/Liquid-Gold-Log ... 1903998484 and learn all you need to know about peeing on your plants.

There are bizarre non-plant related uses for the liquid gold - eg the complexion! Great book, can recommend.