The Shed & Bathroom
Our shed has been a fun building experiment with a small dip into living off grid. It was conceived to serve a dual purpose: storage and . "convenience". First, we needed a place to leave tools and supplies and random stuff]. But - vacant for a decade - the property had served as a sort of local community park. So, we looked to walls, a roof and some locks to give us peace of mind. Second, from the beginning we knew we wanted to camp with a certain level of comfort. This required some sort of bathroom facility. County regulations did not allow for a pit outhouse so we decided to look into composting toilets. Initially we looked at a self-contained toilet but found that they seemed cumbersome and not very visually appealing... Not the experience we wanted. A composting toilet with a separate composting chamber that goes below the floor was a bit more expensive but allowed the toilet to look like what you expect a toilet to look like. Some of our friends were having a little trouble getting comfortable with the idea of using a composting toilet, thus if we wanted them to visit and be at peace when doing their business this was going to be the better option. The change in direction required the structure around the toilet to have space below, but the building still needed to work as a storage shed that things could be wheeled in and out of. Building on slope limited the build sites but would fit the need.
The shed is divided into 3 areas; storage, bathroom, and composting chamber. Since we are off grid without power to run electric lights, light is let in through clear roof panels. A rain water barrel is at the back of the shed feeding a sink in the bathroom for hand washing while a water jug with a spigot (that we carry in) is positioned near the sink for drinking water. Ventilation for the composting chamber uses a small 12v fan hooked to a portable battery pack for now. in the future I hope to change this over to solar. A small front porch that is covered by the roof allows for storage of fire wood up off the ground and a nice place to sit when hanging out by the shed.
On the rainy morning of June 27th the lumber arrived. I was pretty sure I was going to be spending the day ferrying wood in since large trucks do not fit well down our rough driveway right now. But the delivery guy showed up with an amazing little fork lift that was strapped to the back of the big one. Even better was its ability to drive sideways allowing the really long boards to fit between the trees. This saved tremendous time and work to prep the site could happen right away.
Over the next few days my dad & I build the majority of the shed. Armed with a circular saw running off a generator, two battery-operated drills and a few hand tools, we went to work. Below you can see a time-lapse video of the build. Cheryl joined in as we wrapped up the main structure providing expert oversight and management along with her painting skills. :-)
July 17th the composting chamber and toilet arrived at our apartment in Queens. We had a problem. I was banking on the delivery guy helping to get the box up our front steps and into the house. Unfortunately, the delivery person was a very out of shape and could hardly manage the cart he used to get the box off the truck. Waving the invoice in my face claiming that it said nothing about location of delivery and that he was only responsible for curbside delivery, I was now faced with a large box on the sidewalk. Since Cheryl wasn’t going to be home for a while, I set about dismantling everything in order to carry all the parts up into our apartment.
July 26th was composting toilet and chamber installation day. My impatience also got the best of me for installation. I had gone ahead and used their rough in drawing that was detailed for the same system but used a low water toilet. I had pre-cut some holes in the floor which turned out to be off a bit. But once those were patched everything went in reasonable smooth.
With the toilet in we were ready to camp!!!! Cheryl and I headed up for the weekend. First thing on our agenda was to get the mix of wood chips, microbes, and moisture right and into the composting drum. Cheryl studiously read the instructions while I put finishing touches on the installation. Composting is part art and part science (kind of like baking). The mix and conditions have to be just right to allow the microbes to break down the solid waste into compost that is safe to use in a garden. I have to admit that I am still not sure if we got it right since the process takes a while.
Our system is a Sun-Mar Centrex 2000 Non-electric. We choose this one over other models due to its beautiful simplicity with only a very few moving parts. Waste falls down into a drum with a few various trap doors. Turning the hand crank one way rotates the barrel for mixing which you do every few days, depending on use. Turning the crank the opposite direction empties the contents of the drum into a finishing drawer where it completes the last stages of breakdown before it is ready to be garden compost. What is interesting about the product is that you can almost see that two different teams engineered and designed it. Much of the product is a beautiful lesson in design and engineering simplicity and function; other aspects of it look like later modifications that were executed poorly. Many of these can be easily solved and at some point in the future I may tackle them with a few modifications of my own.
Laying two paths, one to the shed and the other to the bathroom (complete with a few solar powered path lights for night-time navigation) gives easy access through the trees, and we are now in business. I would do a few refinements if I were to build it again but overall it has brought a level of comfort to our camp site.
With the toilet now operational, finishing out the bathroom and rain water system became priority.
The rain collection system is a simple gutter that feeds into a barrel raised off the ground to allow gravity to feed water to the sink. By having the rain barrel on the high end of the slope you can easily access the spigot on the outside of the barrel and also create a moderate amount of water pressure when running a hose down to where the composting chamber, which is a big help when cleaning is necessary.
Lastly, we can not forget about the storage side, which instantly became crammed full and became multi purpose doubling as the kitchen :-) Next summer we will move the grill up to the camp site but for now we have been able to serve up some pretty nice meals out of the back of our shed!