Composting toilet block

One of the first things we want on the property (after our symbolic veggie patch) is a toilet. Seems a no brainer to have a composting toilet, as we'll need to plant lots of trees in a few year's time. This is distinct from the smaller loveable-loo model we hope to have in our house - this structure has not been recognised by the council, though so far as I can tell it's in a legal grey area, and it's for the lead up to and during the build rather than while we're living there (though no doubt it will continue to come in handy into the future).

We've drawn great inspiration from Milkwood Permaculture's 'most loveable loo in the west' with bin specifics, amongst other various people who've done what looks to be about the same thing. We love Milkwood - whenever we decide we need to work out how to do something (build an outdoor composting toilet block, for instance), we set forth onto the Great Interwebs and seem to end up on their blog looking at exactly what we wanted. Essentially, two wheelie bins sitting under a corrugated iron shed of varying fanciness.

My initial (very rough) concept drawings give you a bit of an idea:

The patch of ground where we want to put the toilets is sloped down to the north, so we thought we'd take advantage of the slope to take some height off the building. The bins will be on the northern downhill side, so the chimney for the vents has lots of sun to heat it up and encourage air flow and the ground is naturally lower anyway. Entry will be from the south, up the hill a bit. There will be a retaining wall along the middle of the block, that the bins will butt up against when under the building. That way we don't have to create flooring that supports people's weight, we'll just use pavers from the tip to make a solid, level floor at two different levels (one for the bins to sit on, one for the people to walk on).

Since we have the space, and we're building a structure anyway, we figured we'd make each 'cubicle' big enough that someone could comfortably get changed in them, and have a bit of space for storage of things like extra toilet rolls.

We prepared the bins late one night, just before the shipping container was due to arrive as we knew we'd need them pretty soon.

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We've got taps on the sides rather than at the back, as the taps protrude a long way and I was worried they'd get knocked on the ground as the bin is being wheeled around if they were on the back. Vents are on the opposite side as that works well with what the chimney for the vents will be doing. We did two bins this first time around, one left hand sides one right hand sides. The bins cost us about $130 each to make up, most of that being the bin itself at $95 from the local big-chain hardware store. We made some expensive choices on things like tap fittings as we want them to last, and we went out of our way to get black coloured bins, but the rest came from the tip.

Out at the property the next day we took the bins along and laid out where we wanted them to go. We'd measured them of course, and had a rough idea of the size of the building, but wanted to mark it out on the slope itself as we didn't have a measurement for that.

We put the bins in place, then sunk star pickets along where the wall above them will go and where the retaining wall will go. Then we cleared the grass from that spot. You can see my pitiful little section on the left being rapidly overrun by Kyle's on the right - he's a lot faster at this bit than I am. In my defence, though, it's not quite as pitiful as it looks in this picture as post of it's hidden by grass in the bottom left of the photograph.

Accuracy didn't matter too much at this stage, as it's just to have grass-free space to sink the retaining wall and the posts that will form the structure onto which everything else will cling. The posts are the point at which proper measurements and making sure things are really square starts to matter. The grass doesn't care if it's square or not, and the star pickets are just our guide for where we needed to clear.

Clearing grass is hard work, but satisfying. Took us about an hour and a half for this bit, with frequent brief stops to check the rain that was looking a bit threatening on the horizon and the nearby cows that were becoming accustomed to our presence and getting a bit curious.

A few days later we returned to lay the retaining wall. We reluctantly bought two new sleepers after failing to find anything suitable at the tip a few weeks in a row. We dug out the downhill section of our little bare square, and settled the sleepers in place.

Then, we dug three post holes. Kyle had already cut the notches for lap joints in the posts. After much discussion we decided to piece the beam together into the lap joints and fix them in place (square) with brackets before we set the concrete to hold the posts upright. This worked quite well, as there were only two of us and we didn't have enough hands to hold everything in place otherwise and make sure it was all square.

 

We lay drainage tubing on the earthen side of the retaining wall for good measure, then started sinking the downhill posts as well. These were a bit easier, and we ended up doing them one at a time but held in place by a few star pickets sunk into the grass and tied with rope. We hadn't wanted to do this for the middle ones, as it would have meant disturbing our nice firm ground with star pickets just after we'd dug holes for posts.

We ended up with these a bit off square anyway, though not an insurmountable problem. We learned from this and fixed our methods a bit on the other side. Of course, being interrupted by a hail storm doesn't help much - all of this took place over several days.

Once all the posts were concreted in, Kyle got a bit hammer-happy and put up bracing on all the walls. This will be what we screw the corrugated iron wall cladding to later.

At this stage we have 8 out of the 9 posts in (we would have had all of them, except for our hail storm interruption) and all of the structural cross beams are in. The next step is getting the roof beams on, then attaching the corrugated iron walls and roof ($50 at the tip for a big stack of it, what a find). After that it's things like seats, probably some shelves inside, and finding a source of sawdust.

Waterless Composting Toilet approval

I've mentioned previously that Kyle and I are pretty keen to go with a waterless composting toilet. We've done a lot of research and concluded that building our own is the easiest/cheapest/most reliable path for us to take to get there. We know that for an owner-built model NSW Health does not need to approve our system (this used to be required, but as of 2006 ammendment to the rules, and a later complete regulatory update, NSW Health delegates authority to the local council to approve so long as you aren't manufacturing them). We also know that most people in Australia who have built something similar haven't sought council approval. This isn't an option for us, as details of waste management are required as part of the development application for the house so if we don't succeed with this we'll have to put in a septic system and flushing loo's, which would be a shame. But it means we don't have much to go on about how to actually get it approved.

The Council hadn't had an application for an owner-built WCT before and weren't sure what kind of paperwork to ask for, so we politely suggested we might use the guidelines from the original regulation (from back in 1997) and see how that went.

Given the Council's unsure-but-game attitude we figure there's then a little bit of pressure on us to dot our i's and cross our t's so we don't muck it up for anyone else who wants to do this in the future. If Council has a good experience this time around, and are confident of our ability to avoid risk to the public health, they'll be more likely to look favourably on such applications in future. To that end, I've prepared what I hope is a very thorough application for a Waterless Composting Toilet.

Firstly, what is even required in such an application? According to the old rules:

1. Plans and Specifications for the proposed WCT (details of which are specified further)
2. Householder's Reference Manual outlining installation/operation/maintenance/trouble-shooting (the contents of this are specified further)
3. Placard with basic instructions to be hung on the wall next to the WCT
4. "Any further information required by the Council" (they haven't yet asked for anything in particular)

After initial approval, there's a process of inspections every few years as well (more forms and money to be paid).

What we wanted to do in the beginning was simply get approval to use a Jenkins-style loveable loo. However, the regulations specifically state that owner-built models must be the owner's own design, and that the health department is aware there are plans available on the internet. So really, if you want someone else to design it for you you have to buy an officially registered model. Since the only officially registered model that even approaches the functional simplicity and published evidentiary basis of Jenkins version is over $900 (which is more than double what it will cost for us to apply for approval and build the thing anyway), and then you have to order specially designed extra buckets on top, we decided to push ahead with a more 'original' version. I've done a lot of research, and have spent a lot of time trying to walk a delicate borderline between existing models that are evidenced to work well (being totally original strikes me as a fundamentally bad idea for this kind of thing) and designing for our particular circumstances and environment as the regulations require.

So, this is what we're sending:

For anyone reading this into the future, I will point out that you cannot use this document in Australia as the basis to put forward your own application (so far as I'm aware - specific local councils might have set up their own regulatory frameworks). The regulations are very specific that owner-built models must be of the owners own design, not simply plans downloaded off the internet (it states this in pretty much those words). This document is intended as an example, because that's exactly what would have been helpful to us to look at before we had to write our own.

At this point various people from the Council have already seen drafts of this document and offered advice, however this has not yet been approved. I've emphasised to everyone we've spoken to that we want to get this right, and whilst we've done our homework and are committed to this pathway we understand there are good reasons why regulations exist and aren't seeking to sit outside of them, just trying to find our way through them. Whilst it's often taken a long time to get answers from them (quite understandable as the questions we're asking aren't exactly run-of-the-mill) they've been reasonably helpful about it all.

I'll post a follow-up when we find out one way or another letting everyone know what the official Council response is.

Reclaiming Timber

We've spent almost every weekend for the past 2 years or so at the local tip - there's a shop attached, where they sell on anything that looks vaguely reusable for dirt cheap. This weeks tip finds included two large rolls of barbed wire, an assortment of tools/hinges/other odds and ends, and a collection of hardwood beams that all matched. $40 for the lot was pretty good.

The wood had a lot of nails still in it, but as they were all sort of sticking out a bit we figured we'd just spend an afternoon pulling them out before we do anything with them.

It's a bit tough at first, but once you get the hang of it it's sort of meditative. There's a big sense of triumph when you finally pull out a really tough one. And then you get to play silly games, like who pulls the nail that's bent the most (awarded today to the below offender who was the source of at least 20 minutes frustration), and guessing "what was this all used for originally anyway?" (we suspect someone's deck).

And then there are some nails that are buried deep, and surprise you when they finally get hammered out by being screws after all.

Express delivery of fresh manure

We discovered yesterday, after the shipping container had arrived and we went to check on our veggie patch, that the surprise cows had politely done a cow pat in the middle.

That's a pretty top-notch express delivery service, I reckon. We're going to try and track down who owns said cows and see if they'll just leave them there for a bit, as it's really quite handy.

Shipping containers

Yesterday our long-awaited shipping container arrived. This was quite exciting, as now we can store tools and building materials on site out of the weather rather than having to cart everything back and forth and unload the car a gazillion times.

We arrived a little while before the truck, and were a bit surprised to find about 30 cows and a handful of very small calves on the property.

We suspect they're the same cows that were in the next paddock over a few days ago that looked at us suspiciously when we were digging our veggie patch. We don't mind at all that they're there - in fact we'd been having discussions on and off for weeks about who we would need to talk to to arrange to borrow some cows or sheep. You see, the grass is getting quite long, and whilst my dad very kindly offered to lend us his ride-on lawn mower that seems like such a waste! We could certainly use it to cut down paths or rough driveways, but mow an entire 25 acre block? It'd take a week and way too much fuel to bother with.

Unfortunately, the cows were comfortably settled right on top of the spot we'd left our concrete blocks the other day, which we needed to go under the shipping container. So Kyle had to chase them off down the hill, poor dears.

The truck with our shipping container arrived right on time - apparently there aren't any problems with the 5km or so of unsealed road, though we had extensive phone conversations with the driver beforehand giving directions and making sure he was well aware of the road conditions and the layout of the property.

We talked through where the truck could reasonably get to without sliding or hitting rocks (not very far, it turns out, as the ground gets a little soft as you get further into the property).

I'd had a very amusing (for me at least) conversation with the person in the office that does the ordering for the containers - she kept insisting I had to think carefully about which way they had to load the container onto the truck. We had to, apparently, make sure we'd measured the space we wanted it to go and ensure the doors had space to open. If they didn't, we had to rethink. I said I thought we'd be ok either way, but she was very insistent that it trips up a lot of people. Nice of her to check I guess.

While the container was dangling a little on the crane we rushed around to the corners and put a concrete block under each one. We got these from the tip a few days ago for about $2 (for 10 of them - love the tip!).

Top tip - check that the doors open and close properly before the truck leaves. Our spot isn't entirely level (just a little bit off) and we didn't want it to cause the container to twist and make the doors impossible to open. This would be hard to fix later without the crane.

Of course the first thing we did after the truck left was do a little happy dance and put stuff inside.

It's very dark, though, so we'll need to get some lights with magnets to clip to the walls we think.

The container itself is a 40-foot high-cube - we figured if we were going to the trouble of getting one we may as well get the biggest we could find, as if we went smaller and regretted it it's hard to change. Cost a bit less than $4500 AUD all up, including delivery (about $1400). We went with the mid-level model - they have brand new ones, which were expensive, 'cargo worthy' ones which are old and rusty, then the mid level is basically the cargo worthy ones cleaned up a bit and given a fresh coat of paint. The one bit that wasn't really painted was the wooden flooring, so Kyle will go over that with some very basic paint before we really start to fill it to make sure it lasts for a few years.

I got quotes from every shipping container supplier I could find on the internet (about 10 different companies could deliver to our area). We ended up going through Port Container Services. For price these guys ended up around about the middle of the various quotes we got, but were extremely pleasant to deal with.

A few colleagues of mine have had very negative experiences with getting shipping containers delivered, from various other companies - issues with delivery time confusion, miscommunications, etc. We were very keen for this to go smoothly, as our window for when delivery could occur was very narrow (we wanted it right at the start of our two weeks off work, so we'd be there when it came but could make the most of it while we're on leave). Port were very lovely, everything went exactly as they said it would, and they were very clear about every step of the way. The only thing that was a little different was it showed up with no lock box, but looking back over my quote requests with them I requested a lock box on every other quote I got but theirs, so totally my fault not theirs and it's not really a big deal.

In the spirit of a happy relationship with the council we did check we are allowed a shipping container, and they did confirm this was fine so long as it was 10m from a boundary .