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Old 10-15-2012, 06:34 PM   #4
Ran D. St. Clair
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 212
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Some more thoughts on "bag and toss" designs vs. a true composting toilet...

Unless you are living in your rig more or less full time, or away from civilization (and a dumpster) for a long time, a bag and toss design might be the way to go.

Expanding on the Loveable Loo concept, I noticed the on line vidio didn't go into much detail about how you dump the buckets. I assume you just dump them into your compost pile and then rinse them out with a garden hose before re-use. That sounds like a fine solution if you have all those facilities, and don't mind cleaning stinky buckets, but it might not work so well in an RV.

The obvious solution is to replace the bucket with a bag and then toss the bag and all. You might assume that you would just line the bucket with a bag, but that leaves you with many of the disadvantages of the bucket, one being that the top opening is too small. I tried one of the cheap plastic toilet seats that is made to snap on to the top of a 5 gal. bucket, but found it difficult to get all my body parts to comfortably fit over the opening. (Not bragging I assure you.)

If you used a heavy duty kitchen trash bag you could create an oval opening the size of a normal home toilet. You could even use a plastic kitchen garbage pail as your bag holder, possibly cut to a shorter length.

It would not be difficult to make a simple scissors mechanism to open and close the bag underneath you via an exposed lever. Then you could sit, open the bag, do your thing, close the bag, and then get up. (taking care not to pinch tender body parts of course). The point being that any fumes are immediately contained, and there is nothing icky to look at when the bag is closed. Of course, if you then open the bag to toss in kitty litter, well you do what you must...

I would still put a tiny 12V evacuation fan in the space under the lid to vent any accumulated fumes overboard. The box for such a design should ideally be insulated since the area under the loilet seat is effectively "outside". The seat might get uncomfortably cold so I guess you could buy a heated seat if you wanted to get fancy. Make sure the top lid has a good weather seal because its outside air under that lid.

The capture bag could be used for multiple dumps with sawdust or kitty litter, or you could use it once and toss. Either way, you would want the replacement of the bag to be easy and well thought out so you don't get icky doing it. A few well placed magnets could do the job. If there was plenty of extra bag folded over the opening then all the messy bits would be well down inside the bag so you would never have to touch it.

I would think that the entire inner space should have a 2nd "safety bag" just in case of an accident of some sort. Pulling the safety bag would beat having to clean the entire space in the case of a leak or a spill.

Now all you need is a little side cabinet or opening for peat moss, sawdust, kitty litter, spare bags, etc.
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