Potty
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Matildas mate
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I was looking at composting toilets the other day and on the C-Head website i saw the following blurb on the front page...
“What kind of medium do you recommend?
I have recently found a medium that I think works the
best for most people. It is inexpensive ($3.32 a bale),
can be found at Walmart, Petsmart, Petco and online,
It is compact and one bale will last a month for two
people. It is called Aspen Bedding (for small pets,
mice and hamsters) and the brand name is Alphapet.
It has the perfect cut for churning, is 100% dust-free,
it's odorless and has high absorption.”
It is mentioned as a medium for their composting toilet but may be a good medium for a bucket potty as well.
“What kind of medium do you recommend?
I have recently found a medium that I think works the
best for most people. It is inexpensive ($3.32 a bale),
can be found at Walmart, Petsmart, Petco and online,
It is compact and one bale will last a month for two
people. It is called Aspen Bedding (for small pets,
mice and hamsters) and the brand name is Alphapet.
It has the perfect cut for churning, is 100% dust-free,
it's odorless and has high absorption.”
It is mentioned as a medium for their composting toilet but may be a good medium for a bucket potty as well.
lenny flank
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I like the lightweight kitty litter stuff that is made from paper.
I have a Casita in which I believe no one has ever put poop in the tank. (I have the nose of blood hound and would know.) I happened upon a boondocking solution to poop in the tank when my bad knees required a lifted toilet seat. With its back legs removed, my bedside commode (goodwill gets a lot of them) fit right over the toilet. I could take the inserted bucket out to pee and put it back in to poop. They even make specialized plastic liners/disposal bags for the commode. Since I can do one without two but not two without one and didn't want bags full of liquid, I put a bin of World's Best Cat litter in the bathroom to "clump" up the pee. Works great and it's nice to sit a little higher to wash my hair too.
I have a composting toilet in my van. I have tried cococouir, peat moss, kitty litter and pine shavings. In my opinion the pine shavings work the best.
I had high hopes for the cococouir after reading about it online. But it was a mess to deal with. It comes in a dry block and you have to break it down with water to make it usable. And even buying a small size block creates a lot of cococouir so I had to find a place to store it. Plus it didn't do all that a great of job with the smell which is the main purpose of it. I have a Sepparett composting toilet. There is no crank handle like on a Natures Head so that could make a difference.
The peat moss was just plain messy. Enough said there. It was a no go.
When I tried the kitty litter I thought I had found the best solution. It does a great job of drying things out. It also does a great job of covering up the smell. But in the end I kept smelling the kitty litter and it was driving me crazy.
One day at walmart I'm in the pet isle and I buy a bag of the pine shavings you put in a hamster cage. At this point I had no expectations of it doing anything. But it does a great job of keeping the smell away. It helps speed up the dying process. And if I do smell anything it is just the pine shavings that I smell and that's not too bad. So for me the pine shavings is the winner. I've been using it the last few months and have been very happy with the results.
I will add that when installing my toilet I didn't want to run the vent up through the roof. I didn't want another hole in my roof and I didn't want to chance rain water getting it. It might be fine for an RV with a black tank. It wouldn't matter if water got in that through the vent. But for the composting toilet it would be a mess. So my vent is run down though the floor. So I do have the added complexity of the vent smells that do not dissipate under the van as easily as they would above the roof line. Most of the smells were coming from the vent. Not the toilet. So even though I wasn't smelling anything in the van I was smelling it outside the van.
With the pine shavings that problem has gone away. Plus a bag of the stuff at walmart is super cheap and easy to store the extra in a few ziplock bags.
I had high hopes for the cococouir after reading about it online. But it was a mess to deal with. It comes in a dry block and you have to break it down with water to make it usable. And even buying a small size block creates a lot of cococouir so I had to find a place to store it. Plus it didn't do all that a great of job with the smell which is the main purpose of it. I have a Sepparett composting toilet. There is no crank handle like on a Natures Head so that could make a difference.
The peat moss was just plain messy. Enough said there. It was a no go.
When I tried the kitty litter I thought I had found the best solution. It does a great job of drying things out. It also does a great job of covering up the smell. But in the end I kept smelling the kitty litter and it was driving me crazy.
One day at walmart I'm in the pet isle and I buy a bag of the pine shavings you put in a hamster cage. At this point I had no expectations of it doing anything. But it does a great job of keeping the smell away. It helps speed up the dying process. And if I do smell anything it is just the pine shavings that I smell and that's not too bad. So for me the pine shavings is the winner. I've been using it the last few months and have been very happy with the results.
I will add that when installing my toilet I didn't want to run the vent up through the roof. I didn't want another hole in my roof and I didn't want to chance rain water getting it. It might be fine for an RV with a black tank. It wouldn't matter if water got in that through the vent. But for the composting toilet it would be a mess. So my vent is run down though the floor. So I do have the added complexity of the vent smells that do not dissipate under the van as easily as they would above the roof line. Most of the smells were coming from the vent. Not the toilet. So even though I wasn't smelling anything in the van I was smelling it outside the van.
With the pine shavings that problem has gone away. Plus a bag of the stuff at walmart is super cheap and easy to store the extra in a few ziplock bags.
