The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Building a better seat for the composting toilet

Screw measurements

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.

Composting toilet seat, in progress

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....

Composting toilet seat liner

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.

Comment by Roland_Smith Thu Nov 7 14:23:54 2013
I just love you note pad.
Comment by Gerry Thu Nov 7 18:32:28 2013





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