why no privy's

[CarlZ993]

Last March, Grand Canyon National Park had their wheel-chair accessible toilet inspected to ensure it met ADA standards. The inspector was flown down into the canyon at Indian Gardens... which is 3000' below the South Rim. Pretty tough ride in a wheel chair to use that toilet.

It is absurd beyond belief.

[Don H]

How about portojohns at road crossings. There are pay ones thet cost a quarter or two to use if price is a issue

Portajohns at road crossings is asking for trouble. Ever seen a shelter within a mile of a road? It's often trashed and a nightmare to keep the garbage picked up.

[Don H]

Can someone explain what's involved with the maintenance of a Moldering Privy? Please be as graphic as possible!

[gunner76]

Heres a link with some info http://conservationengineers.org/con...lets_Kozik.pdf

[Pedaling Fool]

Heres a link with some info http://conservationengineers.org/con...lets_Kozik.pdf

That link is only a power point presentation with very little information; it's designed to be presented in a classroom setting where questions can be answered.

This has more information. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...USnvyXEBVOKz7A

[swamp dawg]

The " King of Kincora" related to me that the little microbes that break up waste do not work well at the altitudes in the deep winter months so the stuff just sits there and doesn't break down. The boys who issue permits for such stuff will not let the King and his crew build these structures because of inactive winter time microbes ....and so it goes. swamp dawg

[Cosmo]

Can someone explain what's involved with the maintenance of a Moldering Privy? Please be as graphic as possible!

Here's how it works in Southern New England. We use a crib with two 4ft square bins that sits on the ground and is between 18" and 24" tall. The outhouse sits on one of the two bins and the poop goes right on the ground and piles up (we "knock down the cone" from time to time so the full volume of the crib can be utilized). Users are asked to toss in a handful of duff that we harvest from the forest floor in the area when they are done making a deposit. High use sites often import sawdust or wood/bark chips because the forest can't supply enough duff. The duff/sawdust mostly provides a "bulking agent" that keeps the poop from compacting into a solid mass. The idea is to get air circulating which promotes the activity of aerobic bacteria as well as other surface organisms that help break down the poop. By contrast, a pit privy has little oxygen available, and the poop breaks down much more slowly.

When the side with the outhouse on top gets full, it is slid over onto the empty side while the recently filled side "rests" under a cover to keep critters and campers out of the pile. In Mass, this is typically 9 months to one year. When the resting side is ready, volunteers dig through the composted poop taking out any inorganic material. This is typically plastic tampon tubes, baby wipes, and food packaging. In a typical 4ft square crib, this is about a 5 gallon bucket worth of waste that is packed out. The rest of the composted former poop is shoveled into buckets and spread out in the forest away from the privy/campsite and water sources. This can be up to 10-15 five gallon buckets. The compost has no bad smell, and looks a lot like duff, it's fairly dry and loose.

As others have mentioned, climate can play a role in how fast the poop breaks down. Mid-way through the resting process, we stir the resting side and check that it is not too wet and break up any large clumps (this is not particularly esthetic, but speeds decomposition). Most of our sites are between 1500 and 2000 ft and we are able to handle all the waste with one privy per site--except Upper Goose Pond Cabin which has two. Sites at higher/colder locations, such as the Whites or Greens, or sites with heavier use have more complex methods of composting solid waste. AMC and GMC have some pretty detailed protocols to manage this.

It is important not to get the pile too wet, so we ask users to pee elsewhere. Further, the pee really gets stinky (as it never gets diluted by rain), while the poop tends to 'skim over' shortly after it's deposited. Odor from the privy is pretty minimal--much better, in my opinion, than many pit privies. All but four of the overnight sites in Mass are composting privys, the pit privies that remain are at sites where there is low use and where digging new pits is relatively easy. A pit privy at these sites will last 3-4 years, some even longer since use is low.

The legality (in terms of Mass Sanitary Code) of the moldering privy is not clear; and while no truly scientific studies have been done, as trail managers we feel that the moldering type has less negative impacts on the environment and hikers than the pit type. We have not observed any changes in the forest where the composted material has been scattered (no accelerated or retarded growth of the understory). Depletion of natural duff is a concern at some sites, and we'll likely need to start importing a bulking agent at some point (we already do so at UGPC).

Cosmo

[Don H]

Cosmo, thanks for the info. It helps to understand the process so we can be better users.

I always thought the duff was used to introduce bacteria into the process.
Do you really have problems with campers getting into the pile? I can see where you would have problems with critters but campers!?
Does the TP break down or do you have to pick that out? And I guess baby wipes don't break down?

And thanks for doing a thankless job!

[Cosmo]

That's what we thought too, but after we started using sawdust there did not appear to be any reduction in the rate of composting. Probably enough critters just in and around the place to do the work. We used to introduce red worms, but found that unnecessary too--plenty of natural fauna out there. TP pretty much goes away--regardless of it's construction or thickness. The wipes are the biggest issue, they provide an attractive medium for roots, and so can be a little clumpy--and there are often a lot of them, relatively speaking.
We've not had hikers getting in to the resting side, but I'd hate to see anyone get confused during a 3am visit...

It's not all that bad a job, frankly. The really gross part is when you slide the outhouse off of it's active side onto the resting side. The fresh top layer of 32 cubic feet of poop is something you won't forget. The worst was when we found a sleeping bag in the one at Laurel Ridge. Wear old gloves, and make liberal use of hand sanitizer before lunchtime. It still beats the hell out of digging a 4ft deep hole in New England rocks every couple of years.


Cosmo

[Pedaling Fool]

That's what we thought too, but after we started using sawdust there did not appear to be any reduction in the rate of composting. Probably enough critters just in and around the place to do the work. We used to introduce red worms, but found that unnecessary too--plenty of natural fauna out there. TP pretty much goes away--regardless of it's construction or thickness. The wipes are the biggest issue, they provide an attractive medium for roots, and so can be a little clumpy--and there are often a lot of them, relatively speaking.
We've not had hikers getting in to the resting side, but I'd hate to see anyone get confused during a 3am visit...

It's not all that bad a job, frankly. The really gross part is when you slide the outhouse off of it's active side onto the resting side. The fresh top layer of 32 cubic feet of poop is something you won't forget. The worst was when we found a sleeping bag in the one at Laurel Ridge. Wear old gloves, and make liberal use of hand sanitizer before lunchtime. It still beats the hell out of digging a 4ft deep hole in New England rocks every couple of years.


Cosmo

Yes, build it and they will come You don't need to put anything in a pile of ****, nature has been disposing of this stuff since animals started crawling out of the oceans. Mixing anything organic in there, including sawdust, TP, leaves... will only do good because it provides bulk for the pile so it doesn't colapse on itself, once that happens air gets locked out and anaerobic bacteria take over and that is one stinky method of decomposition, it's also very slow and even the larger organisms don't want anything to do with that and that's what happens in a pit-style privy -- nasty, nasty.

Also, we've been fed a bunch of **** on worms. It seems to be that everyone thinks that all the earthworms here in North America are invasive, because the last iceage killed them off, but the glaciers didn't cover the entire continent and why would they survive in Europe and not here

Turns out them people are wrong; yes we do have some invasive earthworms, but basically all worms look a like and it takes a very well trained eye to differentiate, so everytime all them "naturalists" out there see a worm the say it's invasive


But now we have scientific proof that North America has its own natural population of worms http://www.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/...hColumbia.html

Excerpt:
"Until relatively recently, researchers thought that the earthworm fauna found in Canada was comprised only of alien species introduced from Europe (McKey-Fender et al. 1994). However, research has now shown that native species of earthworms are present in Canada and are species that survived glaciaton in unglaciated regufias on the west coast of the continent--on the Queen Charlotte Islands, Vancouver Island and along the northwest coast of the United States (McKey-Fender et al. 1994). Researchers have termed these native earthworms 'ancient earthworms'' (Marshall and Fender 1998). The ancient earthworms are forest-dwelling species found in forest soils (Marshall and Fender 2007)."



When I first got into composting and started reading about the best way to do it, virtually every book I read said I needed to buy red wigglers; I never did, they just invited themselves into my pile upon building it. It really is no different with a pile of ****, it's a food source for things that have evolved to eat it.




.

[Another Kevin]

In pit toilets as well as composting/moldering ones, it's best to keep the P out of the rivy - the ammonia winds up slowing down the decomposition (it still happens, but requires a complicated ecosystem of at least four different groups of bacteria). So get in the habit of draining your kidneys in the woods before you commence your privial pursuits.