The suggestion about lining the dry toilet with bags and using it as you would a bucket toilet is excellent. Plus, it frees up another bucket.

Call your local sporting goods stores and find out if they have (in stock!) a toilet seat that clips onto a standard 5-gallon bucket (they're about $10). One name is Luggable Loo. If they have the seats, they probably carry some buckets. Use a new one that hasn't gotten brittle sitting in the sun (about $6).

They're stable, they're easy, they can sit in the bathroom, and kids and old people can use them with no problem.

Find a garden supply (etc) or woodworking place that has sawdust. Fresh raw sawdust (directly from trees) is best, but sawdust from non-treated wood will do.

1. Line the bucket with a heavy-duty plastic bag that fits.
2. Clip seat/lid onto bucket.
3. Add about 2" of sawdust to bottom of bucket.
4. Keep another bucket or two of sawdust nearby.
5. Every time someone makes a deposit, add a scoop of sawdust over it.

When full enough, fasten bag securely and put it where you store stuff to take to the dump.

More complete info, see FREE online book The Humanure Book by Joseph Jenkins, including photos and drawings.
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/default.html

Sue

Good info, and an interesting resource, Sue. Thanks.

This link discusses emergency sanitation (putting together an emergency chemical toilet). Not feasible for situation at hand, but for long-term planning: "Composting Toilet World."

OK, let's talk about this a little more seriously.

First of all, we're talking about managing OUTFLOW not inflow. In this case, I'd call a portable toilet place, and get one, ASAP. They are not that expensive. As far as water goes, if you're NOT using the toilets, there's not any reason at all to worry about dumping most of your other water right onto the ground for a while. It's jsut greywater. To be blunt, it's really only fecal matter that's the problem here, that's what's going to carry your disease.

If you don't want to/can't rent a portable toilet, then go shopping at the grocery store and grab a BUNCH of the plastic grocery bags. These fit nicely on a spackle bucket, and yes, you can rig up a toilet seat right over the bucket if you want. Squat, bag it, tie it shut, toss it out. Not fun, not pleasant, it will work.

Because we are in town with neighbors close on either side, I'd like to spare them the view of a porta potti peeping up over the hedges. If this were truly an emergency, rather than a large inconvenience, I would seriously consider it. As I may have to if the fixed-by-Monday estimate turns out to be overly optimistic.

Frank2135

o man. tough break. if i were you, i would be calling in all the debts owed to me by friends right about now. i can see spending a night or two in a lean-to, or building a fire-bow from scratch, ya know...for practice, but call me a prude, unless it is a SHTF ( hah! ) scenario, i just cant see myself saving my poo, much less that of a signifcant other, when ive got neighbors, friends, public bathrooms, and of course a hotel.


i DO like the sawdust idea though...but only in dire circumstances. heck, after it dries out, it might make a heck of a fuel source. 8D

I second the baking soda suggestion. Great for keeping flys and stink out of the trash. Recently I found out it works great for keeping mosquitoes out of stagnant water.

Just a thought ...
A friend of mine had a sewer line blockage on his city lot. Turned out to be roots from a tree invading the pipe. The plumber used a concentrated sodium hydroxide solution to 'burn' the roots out. Later I saw the same stuff for sale at Home Depot (it was labelled for that exact purpose).

Regarding outhouses/potty boxes:
I can vouch for sawdust from personal experience. I've been using dry sawdust from a truss manufacturer as kitty litter and down my occasional-use outhouse for two years. I used to use dry, cold wood ash; but nothing beats sawdust for moisture and odour absorption. It works astonishingly well ... better than commercial kitty litter ... though the cat tracks it a few feet ... it helps if I mix in a little dry black dirt. I'm going to try it in a camper, in a five-gallon pail, for 'liquids only' one of these days, as a test. The result is compost; I'll just put it on my trees (I live in the country).

(Aside: I plan to add some vertical ventilation to the outhouse as well - moving it toward a homemade composting toilet, the essence of which is removal/absorption of liquids and constant positive ventilation.)

Hope this trying situation resolves itself okay.

I would not advise using kitty litter that is made from clay. If you don't have several indoor cats and three litter boxes like I do, you may not realize how HEAVY it gets when wet. Hey, it's heavy enough when the stuff is dry!

And yes, I have tried the bucket/sawdust(etc) method, to make sure I had something viable to fall back on in case of emergency. I live in an earthquake/volcano/flood area, and storing clean water to flush a toilet seems close to the ultimate stupidity to me.

I've tried raw sawdust, kiln-dried non-treated sawdust, paper-based kitty litter, Eagle Mountain Bedding (from large animal feed store -- it's just pressed sawdust that resembles broken pellet stove pellets), and a 5-gallon bucket of rolled oats with bugs in it from a neighbor.

All did very well, and there was absolutely NO ODOR. None whatsoever.

Dried shredded leaves and finished or half-finished compost is supposed to do well also, but I haven't tried those.

I guess many people would sneer at this method of disposal, but when I was watching mile upon mile of vehicles trying to escape Katrina, I remember thinking that most of those people would probably have found them really useful.

Sue