Building a better seat for the composting toilet
When Bradley built our composting toilet
for us last year, we had to decide whether to have him put in one seat
or more. We opted for one, on the grounds that we'd likely change
our mind about the design later and want to make the second a little
differently. (Plus, it's hard enough to explain composting toilets
to visitors --- what if they accidentally used the wrong hole?)
Now that it's time for the bin swap, it's up to us to build the second seat.
The task was simple
enough that Mark let me try my hand at construction. So all the
photos will be from a distance, so you can't tell how edges don't quite
meet up right and a couple of screws didn't go all the way in....
We actually were quite
happy with Bradley's design, so I mostly did the same thing again.
However, I've noticed that the floor in front of the seat tends to get
wet when women pee, so I decided to make a liner out of metal
flashing. I figure this'll make sure everything goes straight down
the hole and doesn't end up soaking into the floor.
Hopefully there won't be
anything else to post about the composting toilet until this time next
year, but I'll keep you posted if we hit any snags.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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The seat is more or less built on top of the lid of the bin, right?
So why not swap the lids? They should be stable enough that they don't need to be screwed down. The lid for the toilet not is use only needs to be a piece of plywood.
If the lid with the seat is too heavy to lift, the superstructure would provide a way to rig a block and tackle to help you with that. Or you could take a $47 chain hoist lift that can lift 2 tons.