composting toilet in a roadworthy housebus

[David]

Hey!

I've been thinking about whether it would be feasible to build a Clivus Multrum style composting toilet into a housebus. So imagine my delight when Damien referred to his composting toilet!
Damien, is it a gravity type, like a Clivus Multrum, or does it have a drum that needs to be turned, like a Sun-Mar?
I want to use my housebus on the road, so what I've been wondering (particularly regarding a Clivus Multrum style) is whether I would have problems with the sludge getting compacted in the bottom of the composting chamber because of road vibration, starting, stopping, etc. I know you haven't really moved yours much, but did you consider that in the design?
And maybe it wouldn't matter with a drum-type, since turning the drum over would aerate the sludge it if it had gotten compacted. Maybe it wouldn't even matter if the sludge just stayed compacted anyway.

[Damien]

Hi David,
You seem to know a lot more about composting toilets than I do. I saw an ad in the back of (I think) popular mechanics and decided to call their 1-800 number. Imagine my surprise to find that "Sancor" ... which makes the toilets ... is in Toronto! I've become quite friendly with Norman Smith who owns the company, and of course it is one of his "low water" systems that I have in the truck. He sells his units to the most wacky places you can imagine ... the first time I talked to him he was installing toilets on the trains in China. I bought mine back in about 1995, so I would imagine he's got a lot of new stuff happening since then.
I have my true doubts about "composting" toilets being all that "composting". My feeling is that basically what happens is that the "waste" winds up in a big box where it dries ... and more importantly, has all the volatile "odour" molecules removed via the drying tower. You can see this sticking up above the back end of the truck, with a wind turbine on top of it.
The final overall effect is you wind up with a relatively dry (although not very, due to the urine being constantly added) pile of crap that has virtually no odour or smell about it. This to me is the big issue ... and once a year or so I open up the side of the unit and either shovel out ... and then blast with hose to finally clean it out ... all the stuff inside. I've added soil to get this "compost" issue going ... but in the end what I'm really happy about is the plasticine-like odourless residue which I can quiclky dump into the flower beds as good fertilizer for the plants.
The big problem with shit is the smell ... and believe it or not ... it doesn't.
Taking this gunk and mixing it in with some good topsoil, that, in my books, might finish or bring about the "composting" everyone is going on about. Drop by any time and take a crap and I'll show you how it
works!

Sancor Industries (Toronto): 416-299-4818 Att: Norman Smith.