Compost toilet in a strawbale roundhouse
This article was originally written in 2017 and posted on my business website at the time. I stopped making compost toilets in 2019, however, we love the story behind Karuna and their beautiful house!
In 2017, I made a compost toilet for Janta and Merav, who have created a place called Karuna in Shropshire. Although they’ve been resident on the site since 2007, they managed to obtain planning permission to build a strawbale, green roof roundhouse (after a very long and arduous struggle with the planning authorities).
Since moving onto the 16 acre site, they have planted over 9,000 trees and are demonstrating and living a low-impact future through forest gardening, permaculture and sustainable practices.
At the very start, Janta built a simple but effective ‘long drop’ style compost toilet. However, Merav was less keen on trudging across a field to use the toilet, especially at night or when it was dark, wet and cold!
Janta, ever the free-spirit, says he’ll always use his outside loo with a view, but Merav will benefit greatly from having an indoor waterless toilet!
Merav chose the ‘untreated’ Eco-Loo compost toilet that I was making at that time, complete with solid oak toilet seat. Once fully installed, they’ll be applying a few coats of Tung oil to protect and enhance the wood.
You can find out more about Karuna on their website: https://www.karuna.org.uk/
I no longer make compost toilets. You can get urine separators to make your own compost toilet, take a look at the Separett Privy which you can purchase online from WooWoo Waterless Toilets in the UK.
With a urine separator compost toilet, how do you dispose of the urine? Linda
In most cases, I suggest people run the urine outside through appropriate pipework, to a small soak-away pit. This is a small (50x50x50cm ish) hole, filled with gravel etc. The urine flows into the top and the material provides a large surface area to slow its flow. Naturally-occurring soil bacteria will feed off the nitrogen (food) in the urine and convert it to mainly water.
The amount of urine the soak-away is having to deal with is very small – typically 1.5 – 2 litres a day for most people, spread out over several visits. If you’re in the UK, the Environment Agency are OK with any discharge to the ground of under 10 litres a day, provided you are at least 10 metres away from a water course etc.