Anyone thought about a composting toilet?

I'm wondering if a composting toilet would work in a TrailManor - eliminating the hassle of frequent dumping. Sun-Mar makes a unit designed for boats and RVs. The link below describes the unit and its electrical requirements (heater speeds up the process).

Have any of you considered this - or even had experience with a composting toilet in boat or RV?

Sure sounds like an interesting idea to me.

-Pam

http://www.cetsolar.com/sunmar1.htm

I've never heard of a composting terlit, tho it sounds interesting, the one thing kinda similar that I have run across in RV mags etc was an incinerating terlit. Simply burns everything up. Does anyone know *anything* about these? I'd have to assume they run off of shore current only tho, but don't have a clue about em. Anyone ever see one of these before?


[glow=red,2,300]Happytrails..........[/glow]

[B_and_D]

I think the electric terlit you are thinking about is an "incinolet" http://www.incinolet.com. There may be others available, but this is the only one we know about.

It runs off 110, they have different models for different levels of use. We thought about getting one for our barn, but they are really expensive. However, you don't need a septic tank, leachfield. constant pumping, etc. It turns the waste into ash, so you do have to empty it out some times. Kind of 1/2 way between the cat's litterbox and the woodstove.

A friend of ours has one in his workshop in Zayante, I guess it does the job for him. I've never been there, but husband has seen it.

Yeah, that's the one I was talking about.......lol, guess it wouldn't work well for "dry camping tho".........lol Grab hubby and ask him to post about it.......Ever since seeing them advertised I wondered what they were about.........

[glow=red,2,300]Happytrails........[/glow]

[Bill]

My Dad had a propane-fired incinerating toilet in his camp (that's cottage to you non-New Englanders). He was never happy with it. It stank badly during operation, even with a tall vent stack (and that would be hard to install on a TM). The propane flame was **loud**. It ran for a long time. And it didn't do a particularly good job of incinerating "stuff". Wouldn't handle napkins at all, for example.

Maybe someone has had an expereince that matches the advertising hype, but it wasn't my Dad.

Bill

Pam,

Unlike some of my colleagues, I can't quite figure out what happens to the waste. And to vent it, wouldn't you have to cut a hole in the sidewall of the trailer to install some kind of venting unit. Would you still use a holding tank, but would the waste be more solid than liquid as it composts?

Inquiring minds want to know....

Pam:

I think FJ's comments are pretty "right on." I read the descriptions pretty carefully from the website that you included. There were description about "heater" and "evaporation." Sounds to me like the composting is removing the liquid and biodegrading the solid stuff with heat & obviously bacteria (as any good composting pile in the yard would do -- horefully, more quickly).

Looking at the picture, I'd bet a case of Yuengling's best that the big tube on the upper left side is an air vent. All that evaporating would necessitate getting rid of the air quickly. And as FJ points out, unless you vent through the side or the floor, the TM's collapsing and erecting would almost certainly preclude roof venting (which I'm also sure is what this is designed to do.

Now my skeptical and cynical side -- sure, I could throw solid stuff that we would not necessarily openly mention here, on my compost pile in the yard and eventually it too would compost. But I think the operative word is EVENTUALLY. I'm not sure I'd be real thrilled with a toilet that would store the "bad stuff" and work composting it. And without adequate venting, the smell might be far worse than what you get from the chemicals in the "old reliable" Thetford.

But that's just my opinion based on little empirical first-hand knowledge of the toilet you asked about.

Ed