Saturday, June 18, 2011

Giving up on composting toilets!






We've had it with the composting toilet thing. We paid a lot of money for a Biolet toilet and absolutely hate it. Of course, we bo't the basic model because we were concerned about our electricity useage, which may be part of the problem. But, the whole process is just too smelly and a pain to empty. In this humidity the bugs hatch really fast, so we're emptying it a lot. Whatever the reason, when I went back to Oregon and was able to actually flush I told Art that I wanted to upgrade to a water flushing toilet. Hard to get excited about something this basic, but we are.

When our family visited recently, we had trouble with the one in the guest house as the vent odors permeated the bedrooms. Ick!


We've hired Rene's sons to dig the septic and build the system. Originally we tho't we'd have to have two septics, but upon advice of an American contractor friend of ours, we moved the site to below both buildings and will drain both into the one. We could have had someone come in with a backhoe, but did that with our cistern and it made an even worse mess than we have now and cost a lot just to get them up here. The boys dug a neat hole and they really need the work. It's money better spent. They just finished the hole and will pour the floor tomorrow. Our biggest problem is getting rid of the pile of marl that's now littering our yard. Will probably have to load it in the pickup and put it on our road.

2 comments:

Dave Rider said...

Hi Guys,

We thought about composting terlets when we first moved down here. Probably the only reason we didn't go with it was at that time, we really didn't understand how easy it was to ship stuff down here from up north.
After reading your post, I must say I'm glad we didn't. You're probably right on the money about the humidity being a major factor.
I think you'll be happy with your septic system. Ours works fine, I just wish we had a hill to have gravity work a bit more for us.
Good info for folks to keep in mind.

Cheers,
Dave

Suzanne McDaniel said...

We decided to pass up the composting toilet idea as well and will soon be digging out a septic tank area here in Costa Rica.