THE CLIVUS TOILET ..r-.-J..-:'-'! '.£.::i-:-::✓. ~., ......... THE CLIVUS TOILET The Clivus composting toilet was invented in Sweden in 1939 to provide sanitary sewage treatment for rural homes where sewers and septic tanks were difficult to install. It has been commercially available in a refined design in Scandinavia since 1964 and in the U.S. since 1974. The Clivus is a large, sloped-bottom fiberglass container about 9 feet long and 6 feet high with three connected interior compartments. The first is positioned below the toilet stool and receives toilet wastes on a layer of peatmoss, garden soil and grass or leaves. As this mixture slowly slides down the sloping bottom, kitchen wastes are added through a chute into the second compartment, and the whole mixture emerges a year later at the back of the third compartment as a dark, fine compost ready for garden use. All three compartments have air ventilation tubes running through them which then exhaust through a roof vent as the composting heats the air in the container. HEALTH CODES: Most state health codes were written before the development of adequate sewerless toilet systems and have caused difficulties in gaining approval for use of such systems. That situation seems finally to be changing. Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have granted blanket approval for installation of Clivus toilets, and many other states are allowing experimental installations for evaluation. Oregon recently agreed to 100 experimental installations of compost toilets, and California is in the process of developing a new rural health code to ·deal comprehensively with sewerless waste systems. Clivus installations have been made in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Colorado, Montana, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Quebec and Manitoba. Maine has revised its health and plumbing codes to incorporate various kinds of dry toilets. Some improvement in requirements for drain fields for other household water still needs to be made, but the Maine legislation has become a model for other states to follow. Copies can be obtained from Donald C. Hoxie, Director, Division of Health Engineering, Department of Human Services, Augusta, ME 04333. Health tests have been performed in the compost produced by the Clivus in Finland in 1968, in Sweden in 1972 by the National Bacteriological Laboratory, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1975. It is currently being tested by the U.S. Forest Service and the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130. DO-IT-YOURSELF ... CAREFULLY! We built a homemade Clivus out of plywood and fiberglass back in 1972 in Minnesota to see if it really would work. We've since met and talked with people who have made divi and compost privies out of ferro-cement, tarred wood, fiberglass, and about anything else imaginable. Len Dawson, fc:mnder and director of Housing Assistance Service (HAS) in Seattle, Washington, has built four Clivi. These ferro-cement models cost only $100 each in materials vs. $1200 for the commercially available fiberglass version. Cast-in-place like a swimming pool, the sloping bottom requires normal concrete rebar. The sides and top use 1/2" non-galvanized welded wire mesh-concrete won't adhere to galvanized-from f-c boat builders/suppliers. Xypex (look under "waterproofing" in the Yellow Pages) was used to keep organic material in and water out of the Clivus. This product, normally mixed with the concrete, can also be used in a more concentrated form as a slow-curing plaster to putty into cracks or as an "ultra-plug" which sets 30 seconds after being mixed with a catalyst. The most recent HAS Clivus, built into Carl Nyblade's home in Friday Harbor, Washington, has toilets on both the 1st and 2nd floor connected to a plywood-particle board tank internally coated with fiberglass. (HAS, 4615 Bagley Ave., N., Seattle, WA 98103). Davis Straub, Clivus Multrum dealer for Washington state, cast a ferro-cement Clivus in place at Pragtree Farm in Arlington, Washington, and topped it with a beautiful cedar outhouse, that looks out on organic vegetables from amid the tall firs. This Clivus was pumped out and painted with Xypex concrete waterproofing to keep groundwater out in this high water table area. (PRAG, 747-16th Ave., E., Seattle, WA 98112) "Examinati~n of the Operating Characteristics of a Composting Installation for Organic Household Wastes," by Carl R. Lindstrom, 1969, 30 pgs., prepared for the Institute for Heating and Ventilating Technology, Royal Technical Institute, Sweden, available from Ms. Abby Rockefeller, Clivus Multrum USA. 14A Eliot St., Cambridge, MA 021 38. "A Simple Process for Composting Small Quantities of Community Waste," by Rikard Lindstrom, in Compost Science, journal of Solid Wastes and Soil, Spring 196S, pp. 30-32. "The Clivus Toilet- Sanitation Without Pollution," by Lawrence D. Hills, in Compost Science, journal of Waste Recycling, May-June 1972, pp. 8-11. "Effect of Treatment at the Sewage Works on the Number and Types of Bacteria in Sewage," in The journal of Hygiene, 47(3):303-319 (Sept. 1949). "Survival of Selected Enteric Organisms in Various Types of Soil," in American Journal of Public Health, 41(1): (Jan. 19S1). The Farallones Composting Privy is one of the simplest designs we've seen for careful, sanitary composting of human waste. We've used several of them-both the elegant one at the Green Gulch Zen Farm shown on the other side of this poster and the ones at the Farallones Rural Site in Occidental. The design can be built for about $100 in materials and is presently completing careful testing by California health authorities as well as by entomologists on the Farallones staff. The need occasionally to turn the compost with a pitchfork is also one of the privy's more helpful features-heavy use that would tend to overload many systems can easily be corrected with addition of sawdust and turning of the compost. More detailed background, c information is available in Te Composting Privy, $2 from Coleman Valley Rd., Occide above are for the working pa construction of the rest is up as the Green Gulch privy or ese privys are traditionally o with a low window just at sq own carefully-designed view. THE FARALLONES P RI V Y Materials Needed: • 2/3 cubic yards concrete for slab and grout ~ -<,:·· .. ... HONEY DIPPERS • one sack mortar • concrete blocks: 40 8x16 stretchers 20 8x16 corners 8 half blocks • 40 linear feet rebar 3/8", 4' lengths • 8 10" foundation bolts • 1 sheet 4'x8'x5/8" plywood • 1 sheet 4'x8'x3/8" plywood • 5 2x4x8' redwood plates • 6 2x2x8' runners • 4 square feet insect screening • 12 ft. 4" diameter plastic pipe for vent Construction Sequence 1. Level site, layout, place vertical rebar 2. Pour slab 3. Lay blocks, cure 24 hours 4. Fabricate top, access panel 5. Place vent pipe 6. Make squat plate 7. Build enclosure ~ , tJOt.r~ET INHCtT ··,-c-a c:er..ar~ 3) Japan is one of the most cleanliness-conscious countries in the world and is remarkably free from sewage odors, flies and other sewage-related problems. Yet only 17% of Japanese households are hooked up to sewers, and septic tank systems are virtually impossible because of land shortage, building density and paddy agriculture. Most toilets are connected to holding tanks that are pumped out periodically by vacuum pump equipped trucks. These highlyevolved descendents of the lowly honey-dippers or night-soil collectors, often equipped with chrome wheels and trim and shining purple, red or blue paint jobs, scarcely reveal their lowly origins! Truck collection of undiluted sewage in Japan has avoided the construction of vast sewer systems, massive water supply, sewage treatment, water repurification and fertilizer production facilities necessary in American sewage systems. ~ost c_ompariso1:s suggest that sewerles~ system~ are alreaqy becoming economically competitive with centralized sewer systems, while offering many advantages. Residents of Washington, D.C., who now pay about $30 per year for sewage service, are expected to have to pay up to $200 per year by 1980. Disregarding water savings, such changes would pay for a Clivus in six years or a Farallones compost privy in six months. Pumping a holding tank system that collects 165 gallons of waste per person per year would cost only about $50 per year per household!
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