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-   -   Spending a Penny in T2K (http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=434)

Littlearmies 12-20-2008 12:26 PM

Spending a Penny in T2K
 
Hi,
Following on from Webstral's Thunder Empire work I was reminded of a design for a Loo that doesn't use water at all. One major component of daily water consumption is the flushable loo:

"In the U.S., approximately 40 percent of all domestic water consumed is flushed down the toilet. One person using an older 5.5 gallon flush toilet will use 13,000 gallons of fresh water per year to dispose of 165 gallons of body waste."

But there are alternatives (both commercial and homegrown):

A Swedish engineer developed a composting toilet system some decades ago which is now sold around the world (the actual basic design is very simple and I would have thought could be built fairly easily). If you look at the products and services link on the page there are some good diagrams:

http://www.clivusmultrum.com/about.shtml

A rather cheaper composting toilet (at $25!) can be made at home:

http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/manual.html

Looking at the gallery here I can't see how any T2K house would be without something like this:

http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/pho...lbum/index.htm

Just was one of those little details that makes a T2K game come to life!

Adding the greywater butts and watering at night etc could really reduce water consumption for a household or community - you've got to wonder why these simple ideas aren't part of building code requirements in more places, huh?

I've also seen one self-build project where the greywater contributed to watering young willow trees which were then harvested for firewood (after being dryed for some time). This was in Norfolk (England) so a rather wetter climate than Arizona. Evidently the willows grow faster in their first few years so it makes sense to harvest them at a young age rather than at full maturity.

However, I'd guess that in Arizona growing food or fodder crops would be the big priority.

Thanks to Kato for putting Webstral's stuff back up (and of course to Webstral for being kind enough to put it online in the first place).

kato13 12-20-2008 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Littlearmies
Thanks to Kato for putting Webstral's stuff back up (and of course to Webstral for being kind enough to put it online in the first place).

You are very welcome. The biggest problem of any forum is when good stuff is hard to find. I will always try to make sure that happens as little as possible.

Mohoender 12-20-2008 10:31 PM

2 Attachment(s)
That works of course but that is also why toilets were located far away from the house, outside and at the other end of the garden. At least, outside. I would think that the most interesting picture is the one of the outside toilet box. If you are unlucky to still live in a city, you'll certainly be using any kind of small container that you throw out of the window in the morning. Cities will smell nice again and you'll better walk in the center of the streets;) . About alternatives, there is another very good one invented by a German. Just take the water you use to wash youself, the dishes and your clothes, put it into a tank and then use it for your toilet. After all what is the point of using clean drinkable water to flush the toilets (no chance you'll do that in T2K).

Littlearmies 12-21-2008 04:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mohoender
That works of course but that is also why toilets were located far away from the house, outside and at the other end of the garden. At least, outside. I would think that the most interesting picture is the one of the outside toilet box.

Actually they say that as long as you use sufficient covering material the composting toilet doesn't smell - not having used one of these things I'm not sure if I entirely believe them. But those homemade loos were pretty small and could easily be put in a cutained off corner of the room - and in mid-Winter that might seem like a pretty good option (I have a dog and taking him out first thing when I'm in my dressing gown can be no fun at all some days). Some people might choose to just use them on cold days or at night.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mohoender
If you are unlucky to still live in a city, you'll certainly be using any kind of small container that you throw out of the window in the morning. Cities will smell nice again and you'll better walk in the center of the streets;).

Unless the city has some organised government that imposes rules that people need to use the composting toilet or it's equivalent - you only need to look at Harare in Zimbabwe today to see what happens just a few days after the water purification plant goes down, water stops flowing and people are reduced to collecting water from dirty rivers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mohoender
About alternatives, there is another very good one invented by a German. Just take the water you use to wash youself, the dishes and your clothes, put it into a tank and then use it for your toilet. After all what is the point of using clean drinkable water to flush the toilets (no chance you'll do that in T2K).

Hmm yes, that is certainly an alternative for house dwellers - until leaks in the water pipes kill the water pressure (or lack of energy kills the pumping stations) and then the apartment dweller will need to carry litre upon litre of water from whatever source they can find up the stairs to their flat. I think any option you can find to minimise those trips up and down would be pretty popular.

My wife is Lebanese and lived in Beruit right through the civil war - she is 50 now and her back was ruined because she was the only person at the time under 50 in her block of flats. When the power went out, which it did often, she had to carry fuel for the generator that each flat had (the generators used to sit out on the balconies, you can imagine what the noise in that street was like when the power was off) and gas for the cookers for each flat - 12 flats over six floors. Lugging a 15kg gas cylinder up a flight of stairs is no fun - imagine if you are a 4'11" tall female trying it over six flights.

I can see how blocks of flats would have advantages and disadvantages in T2K - anyone trying to break in would have limited choice of routes if you lived in the upper floors, if you were in a low rise area you could have better observation of the surrounding area, and the flat roof could mean you could do limited gardening there without you crop getting ripped off. But you'd have to lug an awful lot of stuff up those staircases (and down again with the "humanure").

Actually it occurs to me that one medieval job that would return in T2K in organised settlements of any size would be the "night soil" man. 20 Litres of "humanure" per person per week would add up to a pretty big pile of poo for just a small family unit over the course of a year (over 4000 litres). A lot of people aren't going to have immediate access to open space where they can store a personal compost heap so it would make sense for the government to organise removal to a central location where they can run a sequence of compost heaps. This would have both health benefits removing the actual waste from the residential area, and in ensuring that the compost is allowed time to finish the process safely before being used in the fields ("jumping the gun" can allow micro-organisms back into the food chain with poor health results).

Given human nature to be lazy in the short term even when knowing the possible long term consequences of taking the short cut I can see local militiamen being obliged to keep an eye out for people tossing their shit rather than disposing of it properly. An opportunity for a ref to insert some "local colour" (presumably brown in this case) into his description of the town?

pmulcahy11b 12-21-2008 06:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Littlearmies
"In the U.S., approximately 40 percent of all domestic water consumed is flushed down the toilet. One person using an older 5.5 gallon flush toilet will use 13,000 gallons of fresh water per year to dispose of 165 gallons of body waste."

I think my usage has been somewhat higher lately...

Mohoender 12-21-2008 12:42 PM

I agree with all that you say but I expect any city in T2K to be more or less like Harare except of course if it has some kind of ruler (assuming he is competent).

I also expect people to grow more resilient to eventual disease. Don't forget that these people already survived several (cholera, plague, flu...). If you could bring someone from the middle ages to our time he would die in no time. The fair point with this is that if you could be brought back to the middle ages you would die as fast (disease, lead, polution..., name it).

Whatever, when things go as sour as in T2K people start to care about the instant and, in most of the world, no one would be around to put up what you suggest. However, if you have that knowledge, I'm sure you'll use it for the better. In addition, these solutions might become more common when things start to settle down and in the most organized areas (in the parts of UK under HMG's control for exemple).

For flushing your toilets with 2nd hand water you don't need any complicated device. Just throw about 20 liters of water in your toilets from any kind of can (or tank) and it's flushed. I do that with the water I collect from the dryer and it works fine. I'm not really an ecologist but that is 20 liters that won't go on my bill and I have to throw it away, so.

Anyway, if I was living in T2K I would simply dig a hole in the ground, put some kind of chair above it (+ some kind of colth for a little privacy), and when it start to be too stinky, I'll cover it with dust and start digging a fresh new hole. If I'm lucky, I'll be living next to a river and do everything right into it. If it's too cold outside or if I live in a city, I'll fill up the tank and throw it by the window on the dreaming pedestrian walking outside. Just to bring him/her back to the nice and happy reality of T2K :D

pmulcahy11b 12-21-2008 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mohoender
Anyway, if I was living in T2K I would simply dig a hole in the ground, put some kind of chair above it (+ some kind of colth for a little privacy), and when it start to be too stinky, I'll cover it with dust and start digging a fresh new hole.

We did that in Korea when I was in G3 and the DTAC was in the field in all its glory. It was a simple wooden box with a hole cut in it and a toilet seat attached. You dig a cathole under it, put the box over it, do your thing, then cover the cathole. A canvas privacy screen was erected around it. Of course, if Kim Jong-Il actually had decided to cross the border, it would have been left behind, along with a ton of other junk...assuming we got out of Casey alive...

We always assumed that if there was an invasion, there would be no alert siren as such. The "alert siren" would consist of the explosions of 122mm rockets impacting on post!

Earthpig 12-21-2008 06:06 PM

Heck in combat, I wouldn't worry about the hole too much(unless in a fixed position):)

Graebarde 12-22-2008 09:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b
We did that in Korea when I was in G3 and the DTAC was in the field in all its glory. It was a simple wooden box with a hole cut in it and a toilet seat attached. You dig a cathole under it, put the box over it, do your thing, then cover the cathole. A canvas privacy screen was erected around it. Of course, if Kim Jong-Il actually had decided to cross the border, it would have been left behind, along with a ton of other junk...assuming we got out of Casey alive...

We always assumed that if there was an invasion, there would be no alert siren as such. The "alert siren" would consist of the explosions of 122mm rockets impacting on post!

My son was in an MLRS unit in Korea. Their FIRST firing position was the motor pool. Seoul is what.. a minutes flight from the Z??

I was luckier, I was down 60 k north of Kunsan on the Yellow Sea.

But back to topic, the Korean toilet at that time was a tank with wooden lid. The lid had a banjo shaped hole in it where you squated over the hole. "gotta go to the banjo". It was collected periodically and they used it in the rice paddies.. same in all of the far east.

Grae

Graebarde 12-22-2008 09:51 AM

In the farmhouse I grew up in, we did not have indoor plumbing. We finally got a cold water tap, and eventually a hot water tap, and that water ran off to the garden area, but the comode was a bucket in a curtained off area in a small closet. It was chemical, using a pine oil of sorts, which we dumped down the outside toilet. I think the dry composting toilet would have been better. We used the outside from spring till freeze though. I usually held it until I got to the barn in winter. Heck I had to shovel the cows, one more dump was nothing more.

A better solution than the compost heap is a methane digester. They are relatively easy/simple designs. Any small community, or farm for that matter, could/should have one. The waste, human and animal, is put into the digester and the methane gas (what stinks...) is harvested for cooking fuel or to run generators or what ever, depending on the number/size of the digester and source of fuel. The digested matter does not have the smell of the ripe, the bugs have been killed in the digestion (or so I'm led to beleive) and make an enriched fertilizer.

And YES there would be a job of collection. Smelly and people would look down on them probably, but one of the most important functions in the community. There's mention of 'surviving from disease.. cholera, plague, etc... THAT is were the disease comes from, directly or indirectly. Cholera is transmitted from feces of the sick becaues of unsanitary conditions. The heaps attract flies, the primary culprit for MANY diseases. (A good reason for free range chickens on the farm is they scratch the manure pile and help keep the fly situation down by eating maggots.)

As stated it will be LEADERSHIP that helps the masses survive, and often a big stick for the noncompliant. "Well Joe, you don't want to follow a simple rule of sanitation eh? You have garbage detail for 30 days." Judge Judy 2001 The Big Town

Grae

headquarters 12-22-2008 12:00 PM

outhouse at the cabin
 
I have been to a fair amount of outhouses and have to say -unless its cold (freezing ) you will need at least 30-60 feet to the outhouse -preferably having a secluded place away from everything else .A compost toilet will stink a little -especially if temperatures rise in the summer etc .

sawdust is pretty effective in taking the stink if it covers the turds and helps the breakdown of the shit .once in a while the container under the seat has to be brought a few hundred feet from the house and dumped in a dithch with other organic material and covered to kep the worst buginfestatiosn at bay .

As for peopel in T2k or any other situation were th ewater stops - getting a regular pail of water (need not be clean obviously ) and pouring it all in the wc at once will build up enough weight to make it flush away .No good of course if it all spills out through cracked pipes close by .

The quest for keeping shit out of the water source is tough in any community ,failure means epidemics and sickness ,increased childmortality etc etc .Imagine how many people work keeping the water safe in the western world -and they have chemicals ,labs to do tests,filters etc .

The militia/security force would have to keep on keeping on with no end .(Noone wants to wall 300 meters to the cesspool when they can just dump it in the ditch 50 meters away)


Piss buckets could be inside if too cold to run out the ditch designated for sprinkling .


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