Sewage gases from toilets post shtf

[Luci_ferson]

sounds like you best build a composting toilet somewhere, 20 years is great, but what happens if the event is in 19 years

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what happens if its fuller than you think already.

[Highlander]

Then we will have to build something else, I have just watched a program on the telly [ taped from earlier ] where the guy built an outside toilet on a slope, the waste from the toilet went downhill through a pipe and into a big [ er ] container with a tap on the top of it.

He needed a bit of poo to start it off, but after two weeks of it sitting there, he connected a pipe to the tap on the lower tank, and fixed that to a gas stove,....and cooked his first meal on it..... so a great idea, from methane to mealtime,.... a very simple idea

[Luci_ferson]

nice one, love the idea.
ive seen something similar from a docu in bosnia. a familly where cooking oin a stove that ran on methane from their toilet, didnt know the full exacts of how it worked, but remembered thinking great idea since it gives off methane as it decomposes anyway.

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i can just about plan one in my head , but it would use up a lot of space, and need emptying occasionally , although all you would have left is good compost for flowers (not in human food chain).
but like i said it would take a lot of space, the one i saw in the docu in bosnia didnt, unless a lot of it was underground somewhere.

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his house was only a single room brick hut though with a curtain area round the toilet. and a board sectioning the kitchen off. so cant see where he could have put the internals.

[Highlander]

This one didnt take a lot of space at all,...in more detail......

The toilet was an oil drum with the seat fitted, with a hole in the bottom,... from the bottom hole [ excuse the pun ] he ran a largish pipe about 3-4 inches, he ran it slightly down hill to another container, this consisted of two containers, one inside the other.

The lower container might take a little to describe,... bear with me.

Think of a mug without a handle sitting on your table,.. then get a slightly larger mug without a handle and put the bigger one over the smaller one,... thats the lower container

When you `flushed` just enough to get the solids to move, the waste ran down the pipe into the lower container, the solids remained in the lower half, [ the smaller mug ],.. as the methane was created it rose up into the top part [ the slightly larger mug ],... this part of the container rose up a little with the gas, showing you how much gas you had collected

The tap was on this top half,... you need to go to your local farm to get a bit of muck to start it off,.. but once its going, then normal use is enough to produce enough gas to cook with,....its a great idea, and so simple

[Luci_ferson]

its simpler than what I had in mind, and uses a lot less space.
probably same way as the bosnian had done it.
I suppose I was aiming for too high a gas yield, when you really only need enough to cook on twice a day.

[Anything Really]

I've just been thinking about this as i read the thread. I would block the toilet, sink and bath but I wouldn't abandon the bathroom i think that would be a waste of space. Mine is south facing so I maybe able to grow veg in the sink and bathtub, or as water storage or if after a period of time i could remove them to create a new room.

[Mortblanc]

(9 March 2013, 21:14)Luci_ferson Wrote: 20 years is great, but how do you empty it after 20 years. ( i know nothing about them)

A septic system operates as a tank where bacteria breakdown the solids to liquid. In my area the zoning requires a 500 gallon tank minimum.

The intake for the tank is about two feet higher than the outlet to the field line. This means that the sewage in the tank bottom is decomposing as bacteria turns the contents into a liquid.

The liquids then escape into a field line that is a perforated pipe allowing the liquids to soak into the soil and be absorbed normally.

Occasionally one will have a bacteria die off due to cleaning chemicals or overuse for the size of the field will cause the system to stop working properly.

When that happens one has to have the system pumped out, and new bacteria introduced to start the process over.

Normal life expectancy of a modern well maintained system is 30 years.

You can google septic tank installation and get the entire process.

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Generally, after the 30 year life span the entire system is removed and replaced. te tank is pulled and the field line replaced.

As long as a system continues to work most people just keep on going with what they have. Some systems last 50 years, especially if only a single toilet is on the system and all waste water goes to a separate system.

My home is small, one bathroom with a separate gray water system. It was installed in 1973 and is still doing a good job and has never been pumped to my knowledge.

My neighbor just had his replaced at a cost of $15,000, which is why most folk just go till it stops working.

[Highlander]

We have an old fashioned brick built septic tank, better we think than the new fibre glass bulb type, and our systems lifetime is 30 years,... but in theory these tanks should be able to go on indefinitely, providing they are looked after, i.e. as Bortblanc says, easy on the chemicals

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I have never heard of anyone emptying and replacing a whole tank though, our tank is the one they built with the house

[SecretPrepper]

Could you not turn the loo into a flowerbed? Fill the whole bowl with soil and put in some plants that grow upwards. I wouldn't of thought the Ubend water would evaporate. if it did partially the water vapour would condinsate in the pipe and not go anywhere.

[bigpaul]

when the "collapse" comes and the power and water is shut off, we are going to compost all the waste, old gardeners knew this was a resource not something to flush away and forget....with only 2 of us this will be easy.