this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Offgrid living
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I tried a moldering-pit system for a while. I modified a standard toilet by cutting out the siphon and making a barrier wall across the bowl with "white cement". The urine, on the "front" side went to a drum outside and the solid(ish) waste fell into a concrete chamber with an access door. Two of us, using toilet paper and dropping it down the back hole, made less than 1/3 cubic meter (say 10 gallons) of solid waste per year.
The urine barrel would fill about monthly, and we would alternate between two barrels, so the full barrel would have a month to ferment and then it would be obligatory to apply it for fertilizer so we could resume filling. That was an unpleasant job -distributing it by small hose in a downhill wooded area. The annual scoop-the-poop and bury it in a shallow grave was not so great either. We stuck to it for two years though. Then we went back to a regular toilet since we already had a septic tank for kitchen sink water. If I were looking at a house that had that means of waste management, I would probably keep looking.
If you go alternative - do everything you can to make it low-effort and automatic. Composting is often healthy exercise, but if the compost-turner is ill, the waste will still keep accumulating.