Composting Head for Liveaboards ?

[2simplywanderin]

Originally Posted by rebel heart

The bugs we got were extremely small. Arguably invisible to the human eye unless under a flashlight, originally we thought it was just dust or lint. But each speck of lint turned out to be ~500 little crawling bugs. These were all over the boat, and the compost was the source of them. There is no screen small enough to keep things like this out and from all I know they came in from a human's ass.

I was never able to identify what they are. Google "tiny white bug" and count the billions of possible results. They were immune to every form of pesticide I could find (and I bought all of them), including using bombs. They most closely resembled "springtails" or "book lice", but not quite.

We are currently having this bug invasion! We discovered the little intruders last night and are looking for answers. The only difference is we are not finding them all over the boat. In fact they are not even all over the toilet! Just the seat and the lid (BTW it's an Airhead). Did you manage to get rid of the bugs or ever figure out what they are? I am cleaning the head like mad to keep up with them!

[mtenzer]

Try using coconut coir rather than peat moss.

[Reiheld]

Excellent advice! Here we are in the bug capital of the western world, yet we have had no trouble using coir, readily available from Amazon and garden shops. The compressed bricks take up little storage space, and expand in a zip lock 2-gallon bag with added hot water, providing enough desiccating fiber for a couple of changes, at least for our C-head. The other thing we have used with good success is sawdust and wood shavings left over from our cypress paneling project. Smells pleasant, not dusty, messy or insect-infested, like peat can be, and the price, free and abundant, was right. Other people claim success with pine pellets or cedar hamster bedding available at pet stores. Peat, unfortunately, seems to be the most troublesome choice, bulky, dusty, buggy, and non-renewable. Once you have beasties, I am not sure how you eradicate them. Borax or diotomaceous earth liberally sprinkled in the solid waste bucket?
Good luck.

[bletso]

For the bugs throw in a handful of diatomaceous earth and in no time no bugs.

[mtenzer]

I have not had the success with the diatomaceous earth that others have had. I put in copious amounts and it did nothing for the gnats

[worldoceans]

Originally Posted by unbusted67

Hey guys I am looking to hear from live aboards that have had a composting head. Is it possible? Does it really not smell? Why not just route a solar vent to our existing holding tank for the same general effect?

We have one (Airhead) on our Brewer 42. They do not "smell" like a toilet AT ALL - they often have a faint but pleasant pine smell from the peat. Our urine bucket is plumbed into a holding tank so you don't have to keep emptying it - that tank has a faint smell but I think it is the hoses. Urine doesn't usually smell in a tank.

After having repaired and replaced many heads - the fact there is no plumbing (unless you choose to do what we did) is simply awesome. You are also immune from being cited if boarded and inspected.

For us the downside is the cleaning issue - even though it doesn't smell it is not easy to clean and always seems to be urine stained. Not having a flush takes some getting used to and if your aim is not good, or you had a vindaloo the night before, or you are half asleep and forget to open the flap, the cleanup can be awful. Add to that the revulsion that visitors (non boaters) seem to have to the idea of composting one's faeces in such a small space, and then having to empty it into a bag again in a small space, the disadvantages stack up.

They are also a little awkward - keeping the urine out of the solid chamber present challenges in aim, positioning etc. I think at sea it would be a real challenge.

It's a personal choice, but it is certainly a great environmental solution. They are amazing and I never would have believed they don't smell. But they DON'T. For us the jury is out - but we may be leaning toward installing a standard head so that we don't have to explain to guests that they need to sit on a fancy bucket that has weeks of our poo sitting in it :-) We may regret it, but it's all about comfort levels.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by worldoceans

We have one (Airhead) on our Brewer 42. They do not "smell" like a toilet AT ALL - they often have a faint but pleasant pine smell from the peat.

...

For us the downside is the cleaning issue - even though it doesn't smell it is not easy to clean and always seems to be urine stained. Not having a flush takes some getting used to and if your aim is not good, or you had a vindaloo the night before, or you are half asleep and forget to open the flap, the cleanup can be awful. Add to that the revulsion that visitors (non boaters) seem to have to the idea of composting one's faeces in such a small space, and then having to empty it into a bag again in a small space, the disadvantages stack up.

They are also a little awkward - keeping the urine out of the solid chamber present challenges in aim, positioning etc. I think at sea it would be a real challenge.

Hi worldoceans, we have a Nature's Head, so very similar to your AH. I infer from your post that guys pee standing up with your setup? My understanding is that both AH and NH toilets are designed to have both (all?) genders sitting while peeing. In that position everything just flows to the right spot. At least with the NH, the design fits the anatomy. No chance of missing, although I did raise the lip a bit (with a bead of 5200) to prevent any back flow from the urine funnel to the feces trap door.

I've never found emptying the head to be a particularly hard chore. It's much like emptying a large flower pot of soil. A bit heavy and awkward, but nothing offensive or untoward.

We don't many guests on board, but those we've had have not had any trouble adjusting. Most people seem to appreciate the idea. But any guests we have are fellow cruisers and/or good friends, so they already know we're weird .

[Reiheld]

There seems to be a downside for those larger-capacity composting heads, then. Ours seems to be quite easy to clean. A gallon jug of urine is no more awkward and obvious to carry and empty than any other similar sized container, but 2.2 gallons gets heavy for this old.bat's walk up a long dock toward the shoreside toilet. The same goes for solid waste. My C-Head needs to be tended to a bit more often, dumping the lumpy stuff into a dedicated and vented 5-gallon bucket, or for our short trips, tossed into a plastic bag and heaved into a dumpster when we are near one, but it seems no more trouble than taking out the galley trash. You pays yer money and you takes yer choice.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

[Simply Sailing]

Originally Posted by mtenzer

I have not had the success with the diatomaceous earth that others have had. I put in copious amounts and it did nothing for the gnats

I agree. I think it depends on the type of bug you have. The ones we had that resemble yeast (they're the tiniest little things) don't seem to mind the diatomaceous earth. I think they may be too small. But some people swear by it, so maybe it's a matter of different stuff for different bugs.

[Simply Sailing]

Originally Posted by worldoceans

They are also a little awkward - keeping the urine out of the solid chamber present challenges in aim, positioning etc. I think at sea it would be a real challenge.

We've used our Air Head at sea and as long as it is installed properly (not athwartships) and used properly (it's recommended to sit when underway) then there's no issue with keeping the liquids and solids separate. We've never found it awkward or difficult or challenging.

[Reiheld]

The bowl isn't designed on any of these composters, for use by those who insist on standing to urinate. It is too shallow, and splatter is a problem, to say nothing of the fact that the stander is aiming at the wrong hole. Most seasoned mariners know better, though, right? Sit. My male guests are directed to the lee rail or shoreside, if they anticipate difficulty with this requirement.

[Reiheld]

One more note, this about cleaning the solids bucket. I leave that to my spouse, because as one whose day (and night) job involved dealing with people and their physiology, he is pragmatic about such things. After some experimentation, he has settled on cheap disposable rubber gloves, followed by soap and water. After a weekend cruise, when he eventually gets around to it, he dons a glove, reaches into the sawdust bucket, removes the dried, odorless, sawdusty lumps, puts them in a plastic groceries bag, and dumps the lumps into a toilet on shore. Removes and disposes of the used inside-out glove and washes up. Works fine for our fairly short trips. Best of all, it isn't my job.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Reiheld

There seems to be a downside for those larger-capacity composting heads, then. Ours seems to be quite easy to clean. A gallon jug of urine is no more awkward and obvious to carry and empty than any other similar sized container, but 2.2 gallons gets heavy for this old.bat's walk up a long dock toward the shoreside toilet. The same goes for solid waste. My C-Head needs to be tended to a bit more often, dumping the lumpy stuff into a dedicated and vented 5-gallon bucket, or for our short trips, tossed into a plastic bag and heaved into a dumpster when we are near one, but it seems no more trouble than taking out the galley trash. You pays yer money and you takes yer choice.

Yes, C-head takes a different approach than the other two biggies. I really like it’s use of non-proprietary containers, and quite frankly the visual aesthetics are superior to my Nature’s Head. However, for us, the smaller urine and feces tanks were a negative.

I’m sure it takes more effort to dump our main bin, but for us, this is preferable than having to dump twice as often. Same goes with the pee bucket. But it really does depend on the person. Both approaches work just fine. I don’t find the task particularly difficult, nor offensive. We average about five weeks between dumps, and two to three days for the pee bucket. Works for us.

Men definitely need to sit while peeing in these heads. Speaking as a man, it is a PITA, but it’s a small sacrifice to make. And it really is better while under way.

[AmericanVagrant]

Originally Posted by Ram

How many poops can this pooper handle in a day, I think this could be the qustion- If it could handle 10 poops a day for 2-3 days this might work?? How many poopers did you have onboard Ben to poop the pooper? - ?- Im really looking at trying one if theres a good chance this could work for me?

I have had a Nature's Head aboard with 5 adults on a 3 day cruise to Catalina and I gotta say, it's not the dookie that becomes problematic, it's the urine. With a bunch of young guys all drinking beer after beer after beer, the bottle required emptying once or twice a day and it still overflowed a couple times.

Overflowing the urine bottle is awful, it spills over into the the compost bin and turns it into a terrible slop. On the Nature's Head, the outlets on either side for the crank are not watertight, so you'll get leaks if the level goes above them.

With that said, there's no reason you can't make a composting head work. Rather than using the urine jug I'm going to install a nipple on the outlet so that I can run the urine down to a larger bladder in the bilge (I believe the AirHead comes with this as an option). I might even hookup a discharge pump so I can easily empty the bladder once we're away from land.

The bladder is going to be a very cheap collapsible water jug, like this: http://a.co/7ZwQUyR

[Reiheld]

Check out the C-Head web site while you're at it. Sandy offers a good bit larger urine reservoir kit. I'm not tempted, because that works so well for the two of us. (We just screw the lid on the containers we remove, set it aside out of the way, pop in a clean empty milk jug, which will easily buy us another day. Of course, we need to stop and refuel every so often, so emptying and rinsing the gallon disposable containers is easy. As noted above, the poop isnt, or hasn't been, so far, a problem. A month or so, I'd guess, but really,