Composting Toilets?

[carolynt]

Wanting to hear opinions / experience with composting toilets.
The two popular choices seem to be Airhead and Natures Head.
Thanks

[TheGreatleys]

Oh man. Brace yourself.

I bought the AirHead. My thinking was that it would be nice to have the seat you can lift so that I could stand without peeing on the seat. I also thought it would be nice to have an opaque liquids container so my urine was not on display.

While installing, I learned that one of the fittings of my $1,000+ plastic throne is a scrap of tube that I'm supposed to glue around another fitting to hold the air hose in the solids tank. Why they couldn't engineer a proper bulkhead fitting is beyond me.

On our first outing, we overflowed the liquids tank. See, unless the liquids level is within a very narrow range to see the surface through the viewing window, it's impossible to tell how full the thing is. If you don't check literally every time you pee, you'll miss it.

So what happens when it overflows? Well, pee goes everywhere. The NH has a liquids tank that sits inside some secondary containment, but the AH sits right on the floor so you don't have to open the solids tank to empty the liquids. I got news for you -- the solids tank doesn't smell AT ALL when you open it, but several day old urine smells like holy hell.

Finally, there are directions for where to pee while standing to avoid splashback. It doesn't work. No matter where you pee, you will at least be misted with your own urine. I am now a full time squatter.

Other than my above complaints, install is pretty easy, and the solids tank lasts longer than you'd think. Definitely still in support of the composting toilet, just feel like the very expensive one I bought should have been better for the price.

My suggestion? Get the NH. There's a coupon code for it on gonewiththewynns.com last I checked.

[trekerboy]

We use the NH with our full timing family of 4 and love it. Only complaint is that we wish it was somehow more noticeable when the liquid tank is full. It's happened twice now where the tank was full and we didn't notice right away and it overflowed when emptying it (stinky).

[Tincampers]

Originally Posted by trekerboy

We use the NH with our full timing family of 4 and love it. Only complaint is that we wish it was somehow more noticeable when the liquid tank is full. It's happened twice now where the tank was full and we didn't notice right away and it overflowed when emptying it (stinky).

Same here although we've not overflowed ours, but it is a concern during the 3 am natures call.

We like our NH, it has really changed our whole lifestyle. We don't need to worry about the black tank and finding an RV dump station. They are getting harder to find and are getting expensive.