Tiny House Poop Management: A Review of the Separett Toilet
One of the biggest questions people ask when thinking about going tiny is ‘what do you do with your waste?’.
One of the most popular toilet options available and one we use regularly on our builds is the Swedish designed and built Separett toilet.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The loo separates your urine into a large bucket that sits under your house while your poop and toilet paper go into a large bucket located inside the toilet.
When you sit on the toilet, a blue flap at the back automatically opens for you to access the poop bucket for number 2s and loo paper. When you stand up, this flap closes and your bucket is automatically rotated about 1 inch. So your toilet manages the waste distribution for you!
There is no smell because there is a powerful exhaust fan inside the toilet that sucks away any odour as you’re going to the loo as well as afterwards (this is vented outside, above your roofline). So, you don’t need to worry about having your bathroom right next to your kitchen. There is zero odour.
If you ever do experience bad smells, it simply means something is blocked or not working at maximum capacity so you may need to remove your fan and clean it (easy to do) or check the top of your flu vent (spiderwebs can block this up).
HOW DO YOU EMPTY IT?
For a couple, living and working at home full time, the buckets take 2 weeks to fill up. When they are full, you have some things to do…
1) HOW TO EMPTY THE URINE BUCKET: To empty the urine bucket you unravel the supplied hose, attach another hose to a water source and turn on the tap. Your very clever loo will then mix the urine with the water – 1 part urine to 8 parts water. This is a perfect nitrogen fertiliser that you can use directly on the garden, including citrus trees and the lawn. It takes 10-15mins to empty a bucket and is a little stinky for about 5 minutes after doing it. You can get rid of the smell faster by hosing the garden down briefly with just water after the bucket is emptied.
2) HOW TO EMPTY THE POOP BUCKET: The emptying of the poo bucket takes about 15-20mins. To do this, you lift up the top of the toilet, add a lid to the poop bucket then lift it out. Take it to the garden and add about 1 inch of soil on top. Vent the bucket slightly with a stick and store it away in the garden or under your tiny house for 6-8 weeks (the soil prevents any smell). While the loo is empty, you’ll want to clean it. I use a mixture of Pure Castile liquid lavender soap and water in a spray bottle because it smells great and deters insects. Whatever you do, don’t use vinegar as it attracts gnats which can be difficult to get rid of. Finally, get a fresh bucket, line the bottom with some folded newspaper and pop it back in the toilet.
So what happens to the buckets of poop? There is a native Australian fly called the Black Soldier Fly (pictured below) that loves eating all kinds of protein, including poop!
You vent the buckets so Black Solder Flys can fly into the buckets and lay eggs. When their larvae hatch, they digest all the poop and the loo paper in the bucket then crawl out onto the ground! After 6-8 weeks your bucket goes from a full load of poop and paper to about 1/3 of a bucket of what looks like just soil! It’s some kind of miracle! And the other cool thing is Black Soldier Flys deter normal annoying bush flys. Win win. I love these little creatures!
We have a 5 bucket rotation system with 4 buckets under our deck at any one time and 1 in the loo. We also have two larger compost bins. After 8 weeks, the oldest bucket is emptied into a large compost bin where it will compost for another 18 months or more. We then empty this beautifully composted humanure on the garden! Easy.
HOW DO WE FEEL ABOUT IT?
After living with our Separett toilet for 7 years now, we love it. There is something very satisfying about taking responsibility for your wastes and turning them into fertiliser for your garden. It also feels really good putting water on the garden rather than down the drain. The amount of water used to flush the urine bucket is equivalent to 4 flushes a day or just 2 flushes each! I also love that the toilet doesn’t smell at all and actually find normal flushing toilets pretty gross in comparison.
We’ve had a couple of issues along the way… a gnat infestation during a particularly wet and humid season (before I knew about the vinegar) and a couple of fan replacements (which are easy to order online and replace). We also make sure we have a camping battery in the house so if there’s a blackout we can still plug the toilet fan in! But overall, it's been pretty smooth pooping....
There are a variety of consumables available for the Separett including urine enzyme cakes for the urine diverter plus compostable bags and absorbent pads for the buckets. After using all of these, we now don’t use any. The cakes seem unnecessary, the bags take too long to break down so you get plastic in your compost and you can just use newspaper instead of the pads. Easy.
IN CONCLUSION...
I think when it comes to toilets in tiny houses, the most important thing to consider is odour management. There is no way I would want a flushing toilet in a tiny house. So to some extend, if you’re going tiny you’ve got to be okay with a little waste management.
If you have a garden, I'd probably choose a Separett. If you don’t, a Cinderella incinerating toilet might be a better choice… which we’ll investigate another time.
