Off Grid

Building a urine separating composting toilet

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Laura

As you all know, last year I did my business in the woods.  This year I am building a small bathroom addition to Tiny House Ontario.  Initially, when planning the build I had intended on putting this on the East side of the house.  Then I changed my mind and decided to put it on the North, but I am back to wanting it on the East again because I already have a small exit in the tiny house (an old window) which will be removed and become a very small door, to a very small bathroom with a composting toilet and running (rain water) sink and shower.

The Sparett unit, Privy 500 came in.  I am happy that it came in so quickly.  I like the separation unit idea because I believe that urine creates a lot of STINK.  I really do not want stink.

I was super easy to do!  Took about a 45 minutes start to finish and that included finding the tools and getting photos.  The template came on the box the unit are the three articles in the front, these cost $157.06 (including shipping).  The 1970’s end table was $7 at a thrift shop, tax included and the bucket was $8.  Total $172.06.  I also required to use my jig saw to cut the hole.

I marked the template and cut the hole.  Perfect fit!  I also cut the surface overhang off the back so that I can put this against the wall to vent it out.

With that done, I put the four screws in place and attached the Privy 500 to the end table.  I attached the urine hose to the Privy 500 and drilled an exit hole in the bottom of the cabinet because I will have this drain outside into a filtering bed.  The hose is ridged only on the outside.  I worried about this before it arrived because a smooth surface will make for a cleaner surface, right?

So far I am not sure what I think of the unit.  I like the idea and keep in mind that I have not used this yet; but if I was designing it I would make a few changes already just looking at it.  Sigh.  The problems that I see are that the separation section in the middle does not come up very high.  This is a problem for two reasons.  First the urine can get into the collection bucket.  But the bigger problem is that the bucket cannot go up to meet the plastic where the back drops down.  I would also have dropped the back (interior) down farther too, so that it goes fully into the bucket.

See?  There is a gap, if these two things were ironed out, then theoretically a person could put a top on the bucket, put a hole in there and the blue plastic privy 500 could be enclosed right inside the bucket.  The bucket could then be lifted right up tight to the unit so that no air or dirt leakage is possible inside of  my 1970’s reused end table.  Further, a VENT could be then put into the bucket lid and let out behind the unit.  There is LOTS of room for a vent and lots of room for improvement on this unit too.

The “insulated seat” that is included is nothing but a piece of styrofoam with a lid.  Cheapo!  The toilet seat version is not available in Canada but as the fellow told me on the phone it can be changed up to a regular toilet seat.  I am not sure really what to do yet.  I will know better after I use it a bit.

So here is what it looks like right now.  I think I will add a toilet roll holder to one side and a container to hold my coconut fibre.  Still not sure what colour to paint it.  Possibly just plain old white.

No matter, it will be GREAT to not have to venture out to the woods in the dark!

___________

Just cut a little bit out of the bucket and put the bucket on the board that was cut out for the Privy 500.  Made the fit a little tighter but did not resolve any of the issues above.

Categories: Off Grid, Simple living, Sustainable living, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario | 13 Comments

Shit happens

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Laura

I purchased a copy of the Humanure Handbook the other day, and a minute ago I ordered the Privy 500 in Canada they are ordered from Canadian Eco Products.  The dealer who I spoke to seemed to me like a pretty good guy.  He says that the unit should arrive here in a couple of days, (depending on the Family Day Holiday), I will let you know how long it takes to arrive.  I plan on building a box to hold the unit up and will take some photos of this process when I do.  I had intended to buy the Privy 501 but the Canadian dealer says that the toilet seat addition made the cost of shipping high and if you want a toilet seat for it, you can add one later.  Seems sensible.

Basically, my plan is to make something similar to this:

or this:

The difference is that I will have a drain for urine which is why I bought the Privy 500 unit.  Urine is what makes outhouses so funky, because it makes the pile o’poop wet.

The thing is, all you need to do is keep your poop bucket dry for it to be stink and pest free.  In the reading that I have done (I have not read the Humanure Handbook yet), I understand that many people vary on what they use.  Wood chips, peat moss and coconut husk fibre are the materials that seem to be favoured.  I intend to use coco fibre at least initially, because I understand this to be a renewable resource.

What would you do?

a) Wood chips

b) Peat Moss

c) Coconut fibre

d) Poop in the woods

e) Are you kidding?  I would never consider any of this as an option!

Categories: Environmentalism, Off Grid, Sustainable living, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario | 5 Comments

The Trees: Speaking to the Issue

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Laura

My friend Colleen and I were chatting this morning, as we do from time to time.  Our chats are filled with banter about animal ethics, environmental issues, and we also very often speak about the problematic ways in which human beings behave.  There is often an emphasis on sheeplism and our frustrations in dealing with this.

During our banter, she mentioned a song called The Trees which is both written and performed by the iconic Canadian rock band Rush.  Since I have always been about as far away from the mainstream as possible, I had never heard this song.  My loss.  It is really great; meaningful on a lot of levels.

The way that this song connected to something that has been on my mind for the last bit was timely.  For the last few days I have been thinking a lot about the rules.  Not the dating book series, but the rules of society.  These rules, while put in place for the good of the whole, lost sight of a lot of things that are perfectly sensible.  Specifically, I am speaking about Tiny Houses and the Bylaws that prohibit people from making choices that are better for the land, environment, mental health and in a million and one ways are greater than any McMansion can ever possibly be.

I have for three days had the story on my mind about the fellow who bought some acres in the US and whose neighbour harassed him from the day that he moved there.  The story* messed up on so many levels, sort of Deliverance meets the Tiny House movement.  The post is interesting but here is my synopsis of it this Deliverance story, the blogger bought land and put a tiny house on it.  He hoped to live there for two years but made it only 5 months, in the time that he lived there he was constantly harassed and subjected to all sort of crazy from a weirdo next door (my words, not his).

The question is, who would you rather have for a neighbour?  A quiet person whose house is so small that you can’t see it and who leaves the land as natural as it was when the planet formed, or a lout who blares his music, lets his kid, big scary dogs and insanity into your life every day just because you happen to live next door?  You guessed it, the lout called the government and they are making him remove his Tiny House from his land.  It seems wrong that an innocuous Tiny House can be considered wrong in anyone’s mind.

I am of the opinion that the legality of Tiny Houses should not be questioned.  This should not be an issue.  If indeed laws are put in place to protect people then who exactly is this law protecting?  Why would anyone think that a Tiny House is dangerous?

Is this because refusing to participate in a consumer lifestyle is not acceptable and therefore a crime?

Here are the wonderful lyrics to the song that I think speaks to this issue.

“The Trees”

There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas
The trouble with the maples
(And they’re quite convinced they’re right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can’t help their feelings
If they like the way they’re made
And they wonder why the maples
Can’t be happy in their shade
There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream ‘Oppression!’
And the oaks just shake their heads
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
‘The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light’
Now there’s no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw
.
.
Categories: Art, Environmentalism, Forest, Materialism, Money, Off Grid, Ontario, Open your eyes, Sustainable living, Tiny House Ontario | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments

Escarpment lookout potential

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Laura

Wikipedia says: An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that occurs from erosion or faulting and separates two relatively level areas of differing elevations.

The land under Tiny House Ontario is on a limestone fault, at a quite high elevation when compared to the surrounding land.  There are a lot of rock piles here too.

The closest city to us, is Kingston, Ontario, Canada.  Kingston sits at about 25 feet above sea level, whereas Tiny House Ontario, which is within 30 Km of Kingston sits at about 200 feet above sea level.  The difference in height is not so great; the approximate height of a 20 story building, and the gradient upward is not a sheer drop.  As a matter of fact probably about half of the height is covered in the distance before you arrive at the escarpment, and it is somewhat hilly too, so unless you are on a bicycle or on foot, you would probably not know that you are going up hill.

Along the same escarpment where the road goes though, they have the same elevation as me and because the road is through, you can see Kingston’s water tower, radio towers and also lots of the windmills on Wolfe Island.  I have included here some images from two different seasons near the edge of the escarpment on my land and one where the road is open so you can see the height and view.

My cousin Kenny, who knows this land, says that I should remove a few of the softwood trees so that the hard ones will grow larger with the light and I will have a better view.  What would you do?  Cut a few trees so that you would get a better view and more light?  Let it stay the way that it grows naturally?

**Please note that I changed the title of this post from view to lookout because Tiny House Ontario sits far away from the ridge, so any potential for seeing into the distance would be purely as a place to walk to, and lookout from.  At Tiny House Ontario, you can see only inside the forest.**

Categories: Forest, Nature, Off Grid, Ontario, Open your eyes, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario, View | 4 Comments

The Trouble with Driveways

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Laura

The forest where Tiny House Ontario sits, has had very little human intervention.  I had a few trees go missing on the South East ridge in 2010 (a former neighbour cut them down, to burn for fire wood; they were not his to take).  This was all the damage done to the land when I considered my Tiny House build.

I would like to live there but I also do not want to harm the forest.  I did not want to cut any trees at all, but reasonably, I needed to have a route in.  An entry just makes life so much easier, not just for my own purposes of living, but for the cement delivery, lumber delivery and so on, I required a road.

I did not go about this all helter-skelter and without a good deal of forethought.  In order to put in my driveway I chose the point of least damage through; I made a lot of effort to keep from taking any trees over 3 inches in diameter, and I also did not want to cut a single shag bark hickory.  These hickory trees are rare and protected so it is not only illegal to cut them, it is unethical.  I managed to keep every hickory, but there were a few maples that had to go, so I could have an entry point.  My friends John and Leo cleared the lane all the way back to the ridge, but got four pick up trucks of firewood from a 600 foot long and 8 foot wide lane way, which is a very small and reasonable loss.  They did not clear cut, certainly, but did cut a swath out of the woods.   About half the wood they got came from a large dead maple which wanted for reuse, and thus put the driveway right over it’s old trunk.  Aside from the large dead one, I believe that there were about 20 trees that were larger than 3 inches were cut, but only two were larger than 8 inches.

There were no trees cut down in order to make space for Tiny House Ontario.  A spot was chosen where there was a natural clearing.

It was not just trees and that had to go.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, a lot of what was removed to get through was a swipe through the “prickly pear” (which I think is a sort of a fruitless rubus cane).  There were also a lot of small saplings and trees that were less than 3 inches in diameter, these were sacrificed.  I also covered a lot of leeks, wild lilies, mayflowers, a few trilliums, and a small patch of wild ginseng too.  What I mean is that you cannot buy land which has a low yielding potential for farming, to build on and expect that you will not damage any of the natural features in the process.  It is a pity but it had to be done, if I am to actually enjoy the use of this land.

A nice side effect of the little bit of clearing, is that the new openings will allow two more benefits for me.  Both are because now there is light coming in.  I will be able to add a vegetable garden and solar panels.

While I did my best to be as conscientious as possible, I absolutely caused damage to the forest.   Here is what I did to get it in step by step, with a small slide show for you to see the process.

  • I picked the route of least resistance.
  • I made a path with some bright yellow string.
  • Permit was applied for and attained.
  • John and Leo came in and cut everything within 10 feet of the line (except one hickory which is 8 feet in and makes a narrow spot in the driveway).  The photo of me with my chainsaw is taken on a former property when I lost a half dozen huge cedars to a flood.
  • Myself, and my husband cleared the “prickly pear”.
  • Myself, and a few lads cleaned the sticks up with a chipper.
  • The planned driveway and tiny house location were clear to take some (minimal excavation and) gravel.
  • The gravel was brought in load, by load, and flattened by my cousin Kenny’s tractor and accessories.
  • Tiny House Ontario hole was dug and filled with stone, cement was brought in and laid and then it was built.
  • Several final loads of gravel were brought in right up to the Tiny House that I tamped down.
  • The culvert was installed by the road, but not accepted by the county (twice so far), so I do not have an entry permit as of yet.

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Categories: Building code, Environmentalism, Forest, Nature, Off Grid, Simple living, Tiny House Ontario | 2 Comments