The frustrations of waiting on a succession of Other People before I can get on with what I want to get on with were starting to get to me yesterday. Not only were there the ‘more schist’ and ‘less shit’ items above, I was also expecting a delivery from the local builders’ merchants, some parts of which were already a week overdue.

There I was with 3 (paid! in advance!) workers and nothing I could think of that they could be getting on with. Even the usual fall-back projects couldn’t be progressed further without the delivery from the builders’ merchants. It was beginning to look like a day of strimming and clay pointing.

Think, dammit! What do you do with a good roofer when he can’t work on a roof? The compost bin and log store! It had been sitting around in its incomplete state for so long (8 months to be precise) I’d stopped seeing it. Somewhat surprising given the bright blue-green tarpaulin keeping the rain off the firewood, but you know how it is once you get accustomed to living with half-finished jobs …

Now I can see it again. And I really like it! Great job, Michael and Chris!

The roof poles came straight from our woods. Necessary thinnings. The planks and tile battens (cut from planks) were already onsite, as were the old but sound roof tiles. These older flat terracotta roof tiles are generally better quality and longer lasting than the newer ones or the half round ones so favoured locally.

While on the subject, I should note that the compost bin has been performing really well. It’s been maintaining enough heat to produce steam even on warm summer mornings and the contributions from the composting toilet and kitchen bins are already recognisably compost by the time it comes to adding the next batch – generally just 5-7 days. (Quite a revelation to someone accustomed to the painfully slow and largely anaerobic mouldering process which is the most you can hope for under Scottish latitudes and rainfall.) The wash water from cleaning the bins, which we also empty onto the heap, seems to have helped keep enough moisture in the heap throughout the long dry summer to stop everything from drying out.

We use fresh fine maritime pine sawdust (which we collect free from the local sawmill) in the toilet to provide sufficient carbon for the humanure composting process to kick off (without it, the mix of urine and faeces is too nitrogen-rich to decompose thermophilically), and add it to the compost heap in a mix with kitchen peelings, plain paper and cardboard, and garden waste (which is kept in a separate pile next to the compost bin and added as required). Joe Jenkins recommends using old rotted sawdust to prevent any likelihood of natural oils and resins in the fresh wood retarding the composting process, but so far we’ve had no problem using fresh sawdust.

We don’t turn the heap to aerate it. Not only does it appear not to need it, Joe Jenkins discovered that turning upsets the natural layering of processes and organisms in a thermophilic compost heap.

“When one builds the same pile continuously for a year, one will find during the course of that year that the thermophilic area of the pile is on the top where the fresh deposits reside. The lower sections of the pile have already heated and are now undergoing a cooler decomposition by fungi, earthworms, etc. The pile is constantly growing on top and constantly shrinking beneath, and the thermophilic layer is therefore constantly rising to digest the newer deposits. When a pile such as this is turned, the thermophilic layer on top becomes diluted with the cooler, thermophilically-spent lower layers, and the carbon/nitrogen balance consequently becomes disrupted. The thermophiles don’t have the proper balanced diet, and they cool down and die off, oxygen or no oxygen. All the oxygen in the world isn’t going to ensure a successful compost pile when the other requirements for successful compost are not met.” (The Humanure Handbook, 1st edition)

Oonagh helped for a while, but was really more interested in rehearsing her outfit for carnaval. So Helen and I did most of the work. Both compost bin and log store are now functioning, but we still need to build the roof to keep the rain off.

Oonagh “helping” to build the compost bin

Poles were provided by the fallen trees I cleared and prepared earlier, planking a combination of sawmill offcuts and some recycled remains of the big cowshed at Whitmuir, our local organic farm in Scotland, which I brought out in a vanload of other stuff. Pallets courtesy of a local builders merchants.

Helen removing the insect-harbouring bark from the sawmill offcuts

We’re following Joe Jenkins‘ method for our composting toilets, so this is how we built our compost pile, using bracken as our organic sponge. Bracken harvested at this time of year has the additional advantage of holding together very well when it’s shaped into a ‘nest’ to hold the material to be composted in the centre. As well as mixing in green stuff with the humanure and sawdust, we also add kitchen scraps and the wood ash from the stove.

We started the heap going with 6 bin-loads. I accidently managed to splatter myself with the contents emptying one of the bins. Unpleasant as that may sound, it underlined to me what I’d assumed when I chose to follow this composting toilet method – that this is not a particularly offensive job. Certainly far less obnoxious than emptying septic tanks, clearing blocked house drains or even cleaning out chicken sheds.

The thunderbox

The toilet itself follows the same principles as Joe Jenkins’ “Loveable Loo”s, but rather than construct a purpose-built container for our bucket, I’ve adapted an old chest. The WWI-vintage wooden army chest (then the property of one Company Sergeant Major Grist of the Royal Corps of Signals) has seen over 30 years’ service with me as a linen chest, toy box and dressing-up box before ending up as the thunderbox. A circular hole is cut in the lid of the chest which exactly fits the diameter of the 20-litre plastic containers that fit inside, cut off-centre so that the space in the chest to the left of the toilet accommodates a substantial bulk pack of toilet rolls. The sawdust is kept in an ‘Edinburgh bin’ – a traditional Scottish heavy duty hot ash or coal carrier which has a lid and carrying handle.

Total cost (excluding the chest which I can’t remember the cost of): around £32. £15 for 3 x 20-litre white plastic containers and €19,95 for the toilet seat. Time: around 2 hours to cut the circular hole in the lid, fit a wooden brace across the centre of the lid, fit the circular cut-out from the lid to the base of the box to create a raised base of exactly the right height to slot the rim of the plastic containers into the hole in the lid, and fit the toilet seat. Ease of emptying: couldn’t be simpler! Lift the lid, take out full plastic container, swap for empty one. To my way of looking at it, this system’s advantages over any other composting toilet system are a no-brainer.