Solo Boater - What Toilet?

[Jerra]

25 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

I thought he was referring to the justification of the cost of a pump-out, ie, the operator has to provide service and maintain a vacuum pump, electric supply, hoses etc etc.

 

I don't think he was referring for the need of all that gubbins 'on-board',

 

He also refers to an 'elsan' (not a cassette) and says the maintenance costs will be lower than for a pump-out machine.

Fair enough I clearly misinterpreted.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Handy things a boat bike and trailer, useful even when the dog gets tired.

Where did you get the Brompton trailer from??

[OldGoat]

9 minutes ago, NB Caelmiri said:

Where did you get the Brompton trailer from??

Earl's Court?

[Alan de Enfield]

Local "Pre-Loved" £30

 

Carries up to 40Kg and has a cover (folded back in this picture), so carries gas cylinders, bags of coal and the weekly Aldi shopping.

 

Towbar & wheels 'click' off and it folds totally flat and fits nicely in the underseat locker.

 

 

Edited June 8, 2020 by Alan de Enfield

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Local "Pre-Loved" £30

 

Carries up to 40Kg and has a cover (folded back in this picture), so carries gas cylinders, bags of coal and the weekly Aldi shopping.

 

Towbar & wheels 'click' off and it folds totally flat and fits nicely in the underseat locker.

 

 

That is fantastic. I'd been looking for a trailer for my Brompton for some time. I guess such things rarely come up for such a price. Lucky you! 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Jerra said:

Not all pumpouts require on board pumps or electrics.

I dont believe I mentioned anything at all about 'on board' anything.

 

I was refering to the cost of maintaining a canal side pump out facility.

[Jerra]

6 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

I dont believe I mentioned anything at all about 'on board' anything.

 

I was refering to the cost of maintaining a canal side pump out facility.

See #76

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Jerra said:

Fair enough I clearly misinterpreted.

?

[Slim]

9 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

I thought he was referring to the justification of the cost of a pump-out, ie, the operator has to provide service and maintain a vacuum pump, electric supply, hoses etc etc.

 

I don't think he was referring for the need of all that gubbins 'on-board',

 

He also refers to an 'elsan' (not a cassette) and says the maintenance costs will be lower than for a pump-out machine.

Life is never fair. One marina I moored in had both an elsan disposal and a pumpout (into a 'honeywagon'.) Every so often the honeywagen was driven to the elsan point where it sucked out it's contents. The elsan disposal was free, the pumpout was £10. (about 12 years ago). In turn the honeywagon was emptied by an even bigger honeywagon which the marina operator paid for. 

Edited June 8, 2020 by Slim

[Narrowboat Vidar]

On 07/06/2020 at 22:33, NB 'Wrong 'Uns' said:

Hello there,

I know I'm probaly going to start a toilet war here, but I am getting a boat built at the moment and the builder would have prefered me to choose my toilet a month ago... But I hadn't' really decided what I wanted. I have always only thought about two types of toilet, the composting and the cassette. I thought about an incinerating for a while, but then went off it due the the enormous amounts of gas usage, and I ruled pump out pretty much straight away.

 

I am going to be a solo boater, and a continous cruiser (even through winter), and I was just curious as to what other people opinions of each option are. the composting toilet will have a carbon filter rather than a ventalation pipe. If your wondering, the composting toilet will have a splash screen, and that will enable me to stand up when I have to empty the tanker truck. I will include links to each toilet, here they are:

 

• Cassette: https://www.thetford-europe.com/gb/products/toilets/cassette-toilets/c263-cs-ceramic-bowl
• Composting: https://compoosttoilets.com/collections/all-products/products/deluxe-compost-toilet-with-urine-diverter-12v-self-stirring

 

Anyone who is willing the help, thank you.

Thanks, Niklaus

Hello Niklaus,

I would go with the cassette, because if you do end up bag & bining your waste its going straight into landfill, your waste would still compost in landfill, but it would take up space and landfill is NOT infinate. But thats just my opinion, I would go with what suits your purpose best, and whichever one you would rather bake your brownies on.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Narrowboat Vidar

[blackrose]

21 hours ago, NB Caelmiri said:

How is it not environmentally friendly? What is there in poo that wouldn't break down far before anything else that goes into landfill?

 

I don't know about how rubbish is handled after the bin men take it but are there people manually rummaging through the rubbish? I'd be surprised. Doesn't it all just get crushed in the back of a truck and then crushed again elsewhere? Please if you know otherwise let me know what happens. But I certainly can't imagine poo has a negative affect on the environment. 

 

There's a lot of misunderstanding about landfill. Landfill is not composting. Ideally landfill is more suited to inert materials that don't break down. Putrescible materials that do break down in landfill tend to do so anaerobically due to being compacted to save space and the resulting lack of oxygen. This releases methane (CH4) which has 25x the global warming potential of CO2. If the landfill is capped the methane may be tapped and used as a fuel.

 

Composting on the other hand is (or should be if properly managed) an aerobic break down process, so compost heaps should be turned regularly to keep the waste oxygenated. That doesn't happen in landfill.

 

I wonder when someone will come up with an anaerobic digestion boat toilet that collects the methane for cooking? I guess it might be a bit dangerous! The BSS man would have a fit!

Edited June 9, 2020 by blackrose

[tree monkey]

1 hour ago, blackrose said:

 

There's a lot of misunderstanding about landfill. Landfill is not composting. Ideally landfill is more suited to inert materials that don't break down. Putrescible materials that do break down in landfill tend to do so anaerobically due to being compacted to save space and the resulting lack of oxygen. This releases methane (CH4) which has 25x the global warming potential of CO2. If the landfill is capped the methane may be tapped and used as a fuel.

 

Composting on the other hand is (or should be if properly managed) an aerobic break down process, so compost heaps should be turned regularly to keep the waste oxygenated. That doesn't happen in landfill.

 

I wonder when someone will come up with an anaerobic digestion boat toilet that collects the methane for cooking? I guess it might be a bit dangerous! The BSS man would have a fit!

This ^^

Compost bogs by all means but actually compost the stuff and use as a soil improver, bunging more stuff into landfill is not exactly environmentally friendly 

[BilgePump]

2 hours ago, blackrose said:

 

I wonder when someone will come up with an anaerobic digestion boat toilet that collects the methane for cooking? I guess it might be a bit dangerous! The BSS man would have a fit!

Kevin Mccloud did something like that in the Man Made Home series. Don't think he got oodles of methane from human number twos but when he got barrowloads of lionpoop from Longleat, he was literally cooking on gas.

[ditchcrawler]

7 hours ago, Narrowboat Vidar said:

Hello Niklaus,

I would go with the cassette, because if you do end up bag & bining your waste its going straight into landfill, your waste would still compost in landfill, but it would take up space and landfill is NOT infinate. But thats just my opinion, I would go with what suits your purpose best, and whichever one you would rather bake your brownies on.

plus the double plastic bag you put it in

[David Mack]

On 08/06/2020 at 08:43, NB Caelmiri said:

How is it not environmentally friendly? What is there in poo that wouldn't break down far before anything else that goes into landfill?

If it was environmentally friendly it would provide an environmental benefit, which it would do if it was actually used as compost to improve crop yields, or displace single-use mined fertilisers. Dumped in landfill it may not cause explicit environmental harm, but the plastic bags it is dumped in will take 100s of years to completely break down, and it will take space in landfill - space which is increasingly difficult and expensive to provide.

[TheBiscuits]

1 minute ago, David Mack said:

If it was environmentally friendly it would provide an environmental benefit, which it would do if it was actually used as compost to improve crop yields, or displace single-use mined fertilisers. Dumped in landfill it may not cause explicit environmental harm, but the plastic bags it is dumped in will take 100s of years to completely break down, and it will take space in landfill - space which is increasingly difficult and expensive to provide.

 

I agree, and this is why we should start a campaign to get rid of all dogs and cats, and all small children who wear nappies ...

[mrsmelly]

On 08/06/2020 at 08:41, Alastair said:

I have extensive experience of a composting loo. 

 

A good one actually does compost down the waste. However:

You MUST have a powered vent. Occasionally the composting with 'go wrong' and start to smell. If you have a powered vent, this smell will not fill your boat.

They are much bulkier than cassette or pumpout. The small, slim composting systems don't really compost, they just store and dry.

 

When we had a composting toilet, we were moored up at a farm. The composted output could be buried in a trench. That isn't an option for a cruising boater.

 

If I were a cruising boater, I'd probably go for a cassette system with several spares. A cassette can be put in a bike trailer and taken to a caravan park or BW disposal point. That adds a lot of flexibility.

I carried on one a bus many years ago inside a black bin liner ?

[mrsmelly]

23 hours ago, jddevel said:

As I`ve commented before I find the differential between having to pay for a pump out, but in many instances Elsan is free, rather discriminatory. One assumes we empty the same quanity of effluent undoubtedly which finds its way into the same storage facility and which has to be emptied and paid for by the marina/land owner. The  cost of a pump out -in the case of those operated by the CRT self service or the marina labour and power cost (can be as high as £25 I believe)  is difficult in my opinion not to believe I`m not subsidising the cassette users. 

The cost and servicing of pumps and pipes with regard pump out machines and labour costs for staff to operate or indeed to mend at remote locations due to misuse is considerable. 

[WotEver]

21 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

I agree, and this is why we should start a campaign to get rid of all dogs and cats, and all small children who wear nappies ...

I'll have you know that every single poop that our dogs do goes into the compost bin

[OldGoat]

As ever that ignoble fellow Fred Drift has taken over and clouding what to my mind is the essential, preactical difference, namely -

 

A cassette or cassettes are easier to handle, store and empty than a stack of plastic bags that contain whatever bag is in the composter loo in the first place.

 

end of

 

[ditchcrawler]

3 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

I agree, and this is why we should start a campaign to get rid of all dogs and cats, and all small children who wear nappies ...

Nappies are an environmental nightmare, You can get composting units for dog poo and also degradable bags so they don't add to the problem

[Guest]

4 hours ago, David Mack said:

If it was environmentally friendly it would provide an environmental benefit, which it would do if it was actually used as compost to improve crop yields, or displace single-use mined fertilisers. Dumped in landfill it may not cause explicit environmental harm, but the plastic bags it is dumped in will take 100s of years to completely break down, and it will take space in landfill - space which is increasingly difficult and expensive to provide.

Who uses plastic bags in their composting loos? I'm sure there might be one or two outliers but I would hazard a guess at the overwhelming majority of compostiing toilet owners using proper compositing bags which are made of cornstarch and decompose within months.

 

I should have said what was environmentally unfriendly about putting poo bags in normal bins. @blackrose gave me some good information. However, I would think it's fair to say that they are less environmentally unfriendly than wet wipes, than actual plastic bags, than much of the other items that find themselves in the non-recycled waste.

 

Absolutely poo bags would be better being properly recycled but no one is rifling through piles of rubbish so no one is in danger of getting someone else's poo on their hands - and I'd probably say there are far more dangerous contaminants that end up in landfill than a boater's muck.

[haggis]

5 minutes ago, NB Caelmiri said:

Who uses plastic bags in their composting loos? I'm sure there might be one or two outliers but I would hazard a guess at the overwhelming majority of compostiing toilet owners using proper compositing bags which are made of cornstarch and decompose within months.

 

 

That's interesting and it is the first time, I think, I have heard mention of bagging the poo in anything other than plastic bags - usually one inside the other. How robust are the proper composting bags and are they in danger of bursting  - too heavy contents or damp contents? What stage of the process are these bags used? With poo straight from the loo or after it has been drying out for a while? Sorry to ask so many questions but I am trying to get my head round why so many folk think a composting loo is more environmentally friendly, cheaper and less work than a cassette or pump put loo. 

 

haggis

[Alan de Enfield]

21 minutes ago, haggis said:

That's interesting and it is the first time, I think, I have heard mention of bagging the poo in anything other than plastic bags - usually one inside the other. How robust are the proper composting bags and are they in danger of bursting  - too heavy contents or damp contents? What stage of the process are these bags used? With poo straight from the loo or after it has been drying out for a while? Sorry to ask so many questions but I am trying to get my head round why so many folk think a composting loo is more environmentally friendly, cheaper and less work than a cassette or pump put loo. 

 

haggis

It sounds as it the bags 'decompose' at about the same rate as the poop composts, so you end up with a big heap of dried, composted poop under you bed but no 'container' left to remove it in.

 

What might be worse is if the bags decompose in 4 months but it takes 6 months for the poop to compost.

 

I'll stick with my sea-toilet and cassette.

[Alastair]

Given the variety of responses, I'm surprised someone hasn't suggested just using adult nappies.

 

'used' nappies could stored in bags on board and taken to the tip when convenient.