I can’t help but think that you are trying to reinvent the wheel. Why not go for like a Sun mar composting toilet with a basement collector. Every few months you lug the fermented crap out to your garden, or away to town and you are done. Now you are just left with greywater to deal with, and you probably can figure out how to deal with that without to big a hassle ie a small leach field. If you are really committing to RO, you can just recycle the grey water indefinitely. Can you just buy a large cistern and rely on snow melt for additional water?. I assume you have the snow pack so it is just a question of harvesting it Lets talk nuts and bolts of water conservation. Most of it is consumer education and good product selection. 1. Leaks have to be dealt with immediately. 2. You are going to want a hot water recirculator system- most home waste a fair bit of water waiting for it to get hot at the tap. You can go with point of use water heaters, but you probably don’t have the electrical juice to do it. 3. Showers I find most people can find a shower head ~ 1.5 gpm that they are happy with. Much lower and people notice the difference. 0.75 is miserly and unsatisfying. 4. Faucets- you are looking for 1-1.5 gpm aerators on the 1.0 side for bathrooms and 1.5 for kitchen. 5. Dishwashers and clothes washers can use up a lot of water. Go for units with the energy star/ watersense logos. Dishwashers look for 2.5 Gal per cycle max. 6. Front load washing machines are a must Go to this site and search by water usage to get relative water consumption numbers. http://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/product/certified-clothes-washers/results?scrollTo=1&search_text=&sort_by=annual_water_use_gallons_year&sort_direction=&load_configuration_filter=Front+Load&brand_name_isopen=&volume_cubic_feet_filter=2.5+and+4&markets_filter=United+States&page_number=0&lastpage=0 Good Luck, Interesting project Cheers, Eric Sorry for the lack of paragraphs, I have never been able to get them to work right on this computer.

Posted By Eric Anderson on 15 Jul 2014 12:00 PM
I can’t help but think that you are trying to reinvent the wheel. Why not go for like a Sun mar composting toilet with a basement collector. Every few months you lug the fermented crap out to your garden, or away to town and you are done. Now you are just left with greywater to deal with, and you probably can figure out how to deal with that without to big a hassle ie a small leach field. If you are really committing to RO, you can just recycle the grey water indefinitely. Can you just buy a large cistern and rely on snow melt for additional water?. I assume you have the snow pack so it is just a question of harvesting it Lets talk nuts and bolts of water conservation. Most of it is consumer education and good product selection. 1. Leaks have to be dealt with immediately. 2. You are going to want a hot water recirculator system- most home waste a fair bit of water waiting for it to get hot at the tap. You can go with point of use water heaters, but you probably don’t have the electrical juice to do it. 3. Showers I find most people can find a shower head ~ 1.5 gpm that they are happy with. Much lower and people notice the difference. 0.75 is miserly and unsatisfying. 4. Faucets- you are looking for 1-1.5 gpm aerators on the 1.0 side for bathrooms and 1.5 for kitchen. 5. Dishwashers and clothes washers can use up a lot of water. Go for units with the energy star/ watersense logos. Dishwashers look for 2.5 Gal per cycle max. 6. Front load washing machines are a must Go to this site and search by water usage to get relative water consumption numbers. http://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/product/certified-clothes-washers/results?scrollTo=1&search_text=&sort_by=annual_water_use_gallons_year&sort_direction=&load_configuration_filter=Front+Load&brand_name_isopen=&volume_cubic_feet_filter=2.5+and+4&markets_filter=United+States&page_number=0&lastpage=0 Good Luck, Interesting project Cheers, Eric Sorry for the lack of paragraphs, I have never been able to get them to work right on this computer.

You have most of what im doing right. Every thing in the house will low water use. IE dishwasher, washing machine.... Water heating will be taken care of using electric tankless and solar thermal, no gas. this means that showers will waste a very small amount of water waiting for it to heat up. the added solar thermal will just reduce the electrical demand. Electrical supply wont be an issue as I'm stacking the land with way more solar than I need for basic house operation. Any excess power gets used to generate more water.

As for using a standard composting toilet. I dont want a pure dry system. used them before and it reminds me to much of using a porta toilet. I want the water because I will have 3 to 4 toilets between 3-4 buildings. a main house and two to three smaller bed/bathroom cabins. the water will act as a transporter only. this way i dont need 3-4 systems. Not really trying to reinvent the wheel just think the wheel needs some truing. I want the compost to feed into my bio reactor to feed the algae for the bio reactor. this will further prosse the waste. the left over algae cake and unused compost will be dried and used in the garden for food production. the algae oil is used to make bio diesel to run the DC generator. In the end VERY little if any water will need to be disposed of. I can come up with a use for almost all of it.


I'm working on a flow chart to map out my system that I have in mind. I think it will be clearer as to how water will be used in the home.

On the shower head I've learned a trick. go with the lowest flow shower head you can find, and ramp up the pressure. you end up using far less water and spend less time in the shower.

If you are so far removed from civilization that it requires a 4-wheeler to get to the home, have you ever lived so far off-grid like that?

What do you do when you need emergency help or when you get older and can't maneuver like you do when you are young?

If the waste system you get requires heavy manual labor every so often, are you going to be able to accomplish that if you are elderly or sick? If not, you will end up literally living in your own waste. I got a stomach virus a few weeks ago and I was darn glad I had a toilet that allowed me to flush the waste away and not worry about having to deal with.

As a society we have advanced and "off-grid lifestyles" is a step-backwards in time. When everyone lived off-grid 100+ years ago, it was because they had no choice but to. Once the grid came, everyone wanted to be connected to the grid to have a better way of living. Electricity is good and so are functioning toilets and waste systems.

I just hope you understand what you are getting into. Many of those who strive to go back to the pioneer days and live off grid, I believe the stat is around 4 out 5 return to the grid. It's not an easy way of living, it never was.

When I was a kid my Dad told of the Hippies he found living in tents when elk hunting in Colorado back in the sixties. I think the hippies are just getting a little more high-tech. hehehee

OP has some ideas there, we work with a lot of survivalists, end-of-days and some folks that just don't like too many people around. The air is rarefied up there and so is the lifestyle.

You go get 'em OP.

Posted By Lbear on 15 Jul 2014 06:11 PM
If you are so far removed from civilization that it requires a 4-wheeler to get to the home, have you ever lived so far off-grid like that?

What do you do when you need emergency help or when you get older and can't maneuver like you do when you are young?

If the waste system you get requires heavy manual labor every so often, are you going to be able to accomplish that if you are elderly or sick? If not, you will end up literally living in your own waste. I got a stomach virus a few weeks ago and I was darn glad I had a toilet that allowed me to flush the waste away and not worry about having to deal with.

As a society we have advanced and "off-grid lifestyles" is a step-backwards in time. When everyone lived off-grid 100+ years ago, it was because they had no choice but to. Once the grid came, everyone wanted to be connected to the grid to have a better way of living. Electricity is good and so are functioning toilets and waste systems.

I just hope you understand what you are getting into. Many of those who strive to go back to the pioneer days and live off grid, I believe the stat is around 4 out 5 return to the grid. It's not an easy way of living, it never was.

I get the feeling you think Im going to be haulling stuff in 5 gallon jugs and wheel barrows. Im an automation specialist so damn near every thing here will be automated.

That stat of 4 out 5 is interesting and im actually shocked its not more like 99 out 100. I think people compromise their life style to much and its a shock. One of my primary goals is not lose that. I believe that turns people off to living off the grid. One of the other things i want to do is no so much convert people to off grid living but simply show people that there are far more efficient ways of doing things.

People speend all their life working so they eat, have a place to live and get energy (Power/Gas/Water/Fuel/heat...) If all this can be produced in a closed loop system with very little waste and very little introduction of out side supplies be it water/food.

I appreciate the heads up and the looking out but even if it doesn't work as a full time home, it will be a great get away! and the leasons leared there can be translated into my next home. a leason is never a waste!

Posted By BadgerBoilerMN on 15 Jul 2014 06:23 PM
When I was a kid my Dad told of the Hippies he found living in tents when elk hunting in Colorado back in the sixties. I think the hippies are just getting a little more high-tech. hehehee

OP has some ideas there, we work with a lot of survivalists, end-of-days and some folks that just don't like too many people around. The air is rarefied up there and so is the lifestyle.

You go get 'em OP.

hahaha Thank you!

I'm not really a survivalist, or and end of days guy. I'm also not an isolationist, I just like to have people around on my terms I want have a place to bring my kids on the weekends and let them experience the outdoors with out any one else around! I want to use my telescope with out having to tell my neighbors to turn off their dam barn lights, or have any other lights. I want to see the milky way clearly on moonless nights!

Well, OP, you sure sound ambitious. I wish you luck and hope you keep us updated. I always prefer to learn from other peoples mistakes ;-)

Using any water, let alone enough to move solids from remote houses does not work in composting because the moisture will turn the batch anaerobic. Compost needs to stay aerobic.

I have not got time right now to search it but there is an outfit in B.C. and probably elsewhere, that makes intake plants for septage. If all they deliver is effluent, then the cost is much lower then if it is a slurry or solids. The principal of the system is a screw press (like the old tomato juicers).
The septage flows through the inline screw press and it sends the effluent on through and stock pile the squeezed dry solids for incineration or maybe a reactor? If you have a mid sized tank to stock up the sewage and then every so often run the press, you should get pretty clean separation. I think if you are somewhat handy, you should be able to manufacture some type of press that works along these lines.

Of course another way would be centrifuge of some sort, think of old fashion cream separators.

Using any water, let alone enough to move solids from remote houses does not work in composting because the moisture will turn the batch anaerobic

Unless you aerate it - but then it's called ATS. Friends of mine created a septic tank system with an additional tank so they could let it dry (while the other tank was in use) and hand dig it out when needed.

You can get an alternative septic system approved, but one of the requirements will probably be that it is a part time use residence. You will probably have a black water system and a gray water system. Unless you do the composting toilet or incineration, you will almost certainly have a leach field of some kind. I've seen ones that have dry wells to disperse the effluent.

Your best option is the aerobic system you posted. I have a similar one called a whitewater system and the effluent is crystal clear. Reportedly, you can drink it and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case. My Whitewater system has a mixing chamber in which an aerator is the only mechanical function, besides the pumps needed to move the waste from chamber to chamber. The air pumping also does the tank mixing by creating a vortex using ribs in the tank walls.

Check out the Aquatron system. It's Swedish. Rosie's Natural Way (in New Jersey) is the importer and the dealer for Vermont was on Cape Cod. We're installing one soon. It should arrive tomorrow or Monday. I'm going to try to install it myself simply because there just isn't anyone around here with any experience. We're hooking it up to an Ecotech Carousel. So, I don't know if it works but if it does it's what you're looking for. Flush toilet that will compost. It's like the above commenter said -- it's agravity-powered centrifuge. My wife insisted we keep a flush toilet.... You'll need a UV filter though to sterilize the water because if #1 and #2 mix, it's considered black water, even if there are no solids. Living off the grid is great, by the way. Feel free to contact me if you have any composting toilet questions. I'm not an expert or in the business but I have spent the last 4-5 months learning all I could about the topic. Check out David DelPorto's book. If you call Ecotech, he's the guy you'll talk to. He's like the world expert or something. Good luck!

Check out the Aquatron system. It's Swedish. Rosie's Natural Way (in New Jersey) is the importer and the dealer for Vermont was on Cape Cod. We're installing one soon. It should arrive tomorrow or Monday. I'm going to try to install it myself simply because there just isn't anyone around here with any experience. We're hooking it up to an Ecotech Carousel. So, I don't know if it works but if it does it's what you're looking for. Flush toilet that will compost. It's like the above commenter said -- it's agravity-powered centrifuge. My wife insisted we keep a flush toilet.... You'll need a UV filter though to sterilize the water because if #1 and #2 mix, it's considered black water, even if there are no solids. Living off the grid is great, by the way. Feel free to contact me if you have any composting toilet questions. I'm not an expert or in the business but I have spent the last 4-5 months learning all I could about the topic. Check out David DelPorto's book. If you call Ecotech, he's the guy you'll talk to. He's like the world expert or something. Good luck!