Systems: toilet

Over the years I have used every kind of toilet available; Pee behind the bush, crap in a hole in the ground dug with my heel, outhouse, bucket, portable, composting, incinerating, marine and flush. After years of trying all these options out under real world conditions I have come back to the portable toilet. It’s compact enough to fit neatly into a modest cupboard, light enough to pull out and slide into the back of the van for use, it can be dumped into any available flush or vault toilet if no dump station is available, in my opinion is actually easier and neater to dump than the traditional black water tank with its corrugated hoses that always drip and connections that are prone to jump out of place under the sudden rush of – stuff – when the dump valve is opened, and if anything ever goes wrong with my little portable toilet I can walk into any sporting goods or large department store and replace the whole thing, toilet, water reservoir, and waste tank, for less than $200.

Being on my own, therefore with limited ‘deposits’, I have opted for the model with a small waste tank. Even if I were to fill the waste tank all the way to the top, it’s still light enough to carry without busting a gut – or something else, then pour out without losing control of it. Another advantage of using the small version (~2.5 gallon capacity.) is that In order to get the seat height up to something anyone larger than a munchkin would find comfortable, I built a pedestal for the toilet to sit on with the whole combination just barely short enough to fit under the shelf where it’s stored. Inside this pedestal is a handy place to keep toilet paper, bowl liners and an extra bottle of tank deodorant.