Thursday, June 1, 2017

composing on compost


COMPOSING ON COMPOST
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note: the donations for May, all included with Amazon commission, CD sales, Kindle sales and cash, was a smidge over $300.  Most excellent!  Many thanks to my loyal minions.  Just like April, I know it is not sustainable, but a welcome respite. 
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Back in the day, I wrote more than a few articles of disposing of your waste while living off grid.  I got a lot of minion complaints ( then, later, after I’m NOT talking about turds, I get minion complaints I’m not covering enough “country how-to’s”.  You can’t win ) because I guess it is better to talk about the best scopes for your AR than it is about your sewage.  I had to try a lot of different low cost methods, which made the discussion far more “interesting” than it had to be.  If I was a Yuppie Scum survivalist there would have been no other option than spending $1,000 on a Home Depot web site ordered compost toilet.  Which doesn’t necessarily work better than a $5 bucket except it appears more conventional and will probably keep Child Protective Services from taking your kids you drug out to the boonies ( kids don’t care-they live in the dirt happily ).  And that would have been the “cheap” option.  I love reading how Yuppie Scum think they can prep frugally-it is really quite hilarious.  Not so hilarious when I spend $5 on a Kindle book and it turns out they are full of crap and I wasted my money, but I still try to see the lighter side of their utter moronic retarded douche bag cluelessness.

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Human sewage is an easy problem.  It has its own compost pile.  That is about as complicated as it needs to be.  Keep the rain and bugs off of it and you eliminate other issues which might arise.  And urine is just like rain.  Don’t mix your solids with your liquids.  Urine diluted eight or ten to one, water to pee, makes a great fertilizer and doesn’t have the pathogenic issues that solids do.  It is just nitrate fertilizer ( if you aren’t using it for black powder manufacture, use for fertilizer ).  If you have a covered turd compost pile you eliminate most grossness factors ( besides the catching and hauling aspect ), and if you have a solar covered turd compost you eliminate the need to mix and aureate.  Dig a hole, throw in a decent size plastic trash can ( with a heavy duty trash bag inside if you want to cut down on odor absorption ) and cover the whole with a piece of glass.  Boom, solar composting toilet.

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Now, there are a few more details.  You’ll want to keep this sucker under glass at least a year after filling, to assure that all the little nasty bastards really are dead.  On cloudy and cold days the microbes lay dormant, reanimating as soon as the heat pick back up, so the process isn’t continuous.  That means you’ll need more than one hole dug.  And more than one plastic trash can.  Obviously, trash cans will be in short supply after Wal-Marts turn into charred ruins after the riots and after the last slow boat from China has ceased deliveries ( fun filled fact.  Container ships use “bunker fuel” which is a grade of petroleum UNDER asphalt.  The stuff is solid enough to walk on when unheated.  Polluting as hell, too.  Amazing someone figured out how to burn the stuff to propel huge ocean going vessels ), but the cans are just for use now to keep the appearance of your toilets sanitary should any humping county inspector show up.

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After the zoning police no longer appear, just fill the hole ( without a trash can ) and leave the glass over it unopened for two years and you should be just fine.  The difference between the compost toilet and an outhouse is that a composter is safer and doesn’t smell.  There is no need to use lime or suffer during its use.  It might fill up faster with the organic material additions and need to be moved more often, but you can use the toilet inside and transfer your waste.  No visits outside in the middle of winter and no flies buzzing around.  The hole doesn’t need to be so deep, either.  It is safer to use on human crops, should you choose ( I’d only use as a planter for a tree, rather than in the garden, but if needed…).  All you need to do is make sure you have dried material to use in a receptacle.  Dried leaves, sawdust, etc.  Fill the bottom of a five gallon plastic bucket with that, do your business ( remember, solids only ), sprinkle some more on top.  The bucket should have an unmovable seat built around and on top of the bucket.  The snap on seat for $20, made just for buckets, is easy and lasts a long time but it isn’t as comfortable as a permanent cabinet built around the bucket.  Nor as sightly.  Keep the sensibilities of the wife in mind.  Also remember that modern toilets are not as…conducive… to helping in the elimination process.  A bucket partially buried in the floor, still in a cabinet, or a foot rest raised quite a bit up, allows the position of the body to be more natural.  In other words, sitting in a chair is unnatural for the act of defecation.  The ass closer to the feet than the knees is much better.  So they say.

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Partially fill a bucket with dried organic material, fill, dump in the composter and leave undisturbed otherwise, then leave unopened a year after filling.  Make another spot to use in the meantime.  And that is about it.  I would suggest a plastic liner, if available, for the bucket.  Thrown away after every filling. It keeps the bucket smelling fresher.  The pee bucket?  Don’t take too long in between cleanings as the urine smell gets horrid.  And of course don’t fill too much before disposing of.  And don’t dump undiluted urine in the same spot or the smell will become a factor.  Now, on to the really easy solar toilet. Not composter, toilet.  I’d advise against using in a wet and rainy clime, obviously.  This is more of a Western use unit.  A piece of plywood for a platform, then two auto tires stacked on top of that.  Then a glass sheet over the tires.  Leave your turd in the middle and allow to dry.  Baked to a completely moisture-less lump.  Throw away somewhere relatively far away off walking trails.  Safe and non-stinky.  Leaving them unburied is better as it keeps them mostly dried out with no microbes brewing ( you’d probably want more than one turd oven for cold overcast weeks ).  I know there is methane manufacture, and is actually the best use of your turds, but I’m really not conversant on the building methods ( I don’t like the tire tube method as those aren’t long lasting.  Perhaps a sealed five gallon plastic bucket and a copper tube to a propane tank?  I’m not sure.  Perhaps a future article, but only if you are lucky ).

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12 comments:

  1. I previously built a couple rectangular plywood boxes, bare plywood on the inside, painted on the outside, with an approximate 45 degree tilt on one side so a 30 20 aluminum window could slip inside and seal it off. My primary intention was to use it as a food dehydrator, controlling the heat retention by opening the window a certain amount, and the screen to keep flies off the food. Now I'm wondering if I could pour a 5-gallon bucket of poo in there and dehydrate it that way. Would it then be worthless as fertilizer after it was desiccated? Long term, keeping plants/soil healthy, I wonder if it would be better to compost since other forms of fertilizer would be in short/no supply.
    Peace out

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    1. I can't say if dried is safer than fresh. I can say I'd do everything I possibly could to NOT do it that way. Seems very unsafe.

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  2. Trillions of dollars wasted because we are not smart enough to care for our own crap. I find piles of crap and tp out in the wilds unburied and it pisses me off. (Just bury in top two inches to break it down quickest) These idiots are allowed to vote. Crap! They are aloud to reproduce!

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    1. Hell, trillions wasted just on poor bookkeeping in Iraq. What's a few quadrillion between friends?

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  3. More good stuff. My initial plan is to go in a bucket that's lined with rubbish bags and to dispose of those bags at my mortal enemies house who lives a couple of streets away. He's such a scum bag I suspect he will cross the wrong person early on in the opening phases of "Teh Event". If he survives that he'll be one to watch out for.

    Have you considered writing "The Frugal Survivalist - The next steps"?

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    1. "the next steps", has of course been covered before like everything else. I try to minimize my re-treads, as it were. I probably could easily cover all the add on items to flesh out the plan, but it would be more of a Whole Earth Catalog.

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  4. On the homestead, we've been using a Sunmar Composting Toilet for over twenty years. So if you average the cost over that length of time, it's a small price to pay to keep mama happy :)

    The one for the house we bought brand new, but I was able to find a used one for a couple hundred bucks to put in a guest cabin I built. Imagine that, there's not much resale value in a used composting toilet LOL.

    Even with a commercial composting toilet, you need to watch the "liquid" input. Best to find a tree or bush during the day. You need some liquid to keep the compost moist so it will decompose properly -- not too wet and not to dry. Add a peat moss/wood chip mixture to balance the nitrogen and soak up the liquid; rotate the drum once a week or so, and empty when it starts getting full. That's about once every three month or so for us. Dig a hole in the woods and dump it in.

    Overall, I have been very happy with it and would buy it again even with the high price tag. Of course, I would look for a used one first.

    Idaho Homesteader

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    1. Even at $2k, the actual cost is compatible with a septic tank and permit combo and you save the wear and tear the well.

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  5. Bison - Ahead of the curve in advocating full sized rounds ;-) AKA everything old is new again http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/05/25/army-chief-calls-for-762mm-round-for-m4-rifle.html

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    1. New headline just found: "Army Chief pulls head out of ass and discovers air too fresh". The M16 has been around for so long being the worst of most worlds I think the noise for anything else is just that.

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  6. Saw a post apocalyptic urinal that consisted of a large plastic funnel mounted to wall of bathroom. Tubing was hose clamped to the funnel's nozle and routed through wall to a collection vessel outside. A ping pong ball served as a float in the funnel and a seal when not in use to reduce fumes inside the bathroom.
    I have been using empty 1 gallon plastic jugs with screw top lids for urine collection. When full I pour directly on top of the current compost pile, making sure I have a good balance going on with enough dry carboniferous stuff to absorb it. In piles that are lacking nitrogen inputs such as manures or enough food scraps, the urine is definitely a help.
    I have read that urine can be roughly equivalent to blood meal for nitrogen content.
    James, Long time reader here and I have sent you a PayPal in past. Just wanted to say sincerely that your writing has gotten even better since you deep-sixed the previous job. You have always been the gadfly of the survival blogs/movement. You have more original ideas than most of the rest put together. Ideas anybody can implement. So, well done lately. I really like the increase volume. Thanks, Steve in FL.

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    1. Thank you for the words of encouragement-nice to know I'm not just spinning my wheels. I love the idea on the funnel pisser-I might have to steal it.

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