Getting to the bottom of the matter, without taking the piss

• Fittings
• Interior

In an earlier post I said I would return to the subject to of loos.  So, here we go.  If you are a bit squeamish, or just don’t want to know the – mucky details – then read no further.

On a boat (any boat) you have to be self contained.  You have no mains electricity, water or sewage.  So, you have to plan for all three.  Water is taken care of by monitoring the contents of your tank and filling up regularly at the many water taps along the canals – this is provided, along with things like showers and rubbish disposal by the Canal and River Trust, as part of your license fee.  Electricity is generally stored in a large battery bank, which is charged while the engine is running or by an on-board generator.

Toilets, however, are another matter and are probably the most talked about subject in online forums and amongst boaters themselves.  Opinions tend to be very fixed and advocates of the options available tend to be very definite.  On inland waterways you do not just dump bodily waste over the side any more.  That will have happened long ago, but not now – at least not officially.

This means you have to find a way to store such waste on-board and be able to dispose of it.  Until fairly recently there were two ways of doing this.  You either use a cassette loo system (such as you would in a caravan), or you have a large holding tank which is pumped out when it gets full.  With cassette loos, along with many of the facilities provided by CRT there are many disposal points where you can empty the contents.  (In my opinion, not a very pleasant operation.)  If you have a holding tank, you normally go to a marina or boat service station and pay around £20 a time to have the tank pumped out.  Not so bad and you don’t usually have to do it yourself (you can buy self pump out units and use the same disposal points the the cassette loos would use, but then it is messy and hard work.)  You would normally have what is ostensibly a perfectly ordinary toilet, which ever system you use – it is just a matter of how you store the produce. Pump-out loos, by the way, become the biggest problem when iced in for an extensive period of time.  You can carry in water and fuel, but you cannot empty a full toilet tank.

This, however, is the route we are taking:

Composting loo

Composting loos have been around for a long time, but are more associated with sheds and locations away from mains sewage.  The concept is similar to an earth closet – a hole in the ground, with a seat that consists of a plank of wood with a hole in it.  They have, until recently, tended to be rather on the large side.

The Nature’s Head loo, however, is no bigger than an ordinary toilet.  It is also completely self-contained.  No plumbing, no storage tank, and no trips to a smelly disposal point.  The secret to this is keeping the liquids and the solids separate.  At the front is a large plastic bottle which stores the liquid. Underneath is where all the other stuff goes – including paper.  Solid waste breaks down quite quickly when it is kept dry and uncontaminated by urine. Gentlemen are encouraged to always sit as it makes it easier to ensure this separation.  The result is a bottle that you empty pretty much daily, but the contents is easy to dispose of under the hedgerow or wherever, as urine is basically sterile.  Solids go straight down into the main container where it is mixed with a small amount of  peat moss or coconut fibre to facilitate breakdown.  When not in use, the “trapdoor” remains shut and as there is a small fan continuously drawing air through the chamber and out into the exterior of the boat, there is no smell.    The air flow encourages the natural bacteria to break the contents down into compost.  The main chamber should not need emptying more than once every month to six weeks and the contents can be disposed of in a couple of bin bags with the normal rubbish.  Better still is to transfer the contents into a spare container for another month or so, after which it can even be used as fuel in the stove! Not completely “in-convenient”, but we hope it will be a lot less trouble than the more traditional loos.

So, there you have it.

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