Essential Composting Toilets ― A Guide to Options, Design, Installation, and Use

From wastestream to mainstream, a practical guide to composting toilet systems.

Composting toilets are a key feature for local resilience, money saving, water conservation, resource recovery, septic system replacement, and an improved bathroom experience in rural and urban buildings.

Essential Composting Toilets is a streamlined manual that takes a practical, how-to approach to composting toilet system selection, design, installation, and operation, while meeting universal health and safety objectives. Drawing from existing regulations and research, this book dispels myths and provides tools to assess various systems. It includes:

• Easily-understood drawings, plans, and photos
• Coverage of all main composting toilet systems
• Selection criteria including site considerations, urine separation pros/cons, renovations/new builds, ventilation, servicing, and composting details
• Design and installation details.
  

Offering a professional approach accessible to DIYers, homeowners, designers, building consultants, water conservation advocates, and regulators, Essential Composting Toilets provides key information for redesigning toilet systems anywhere in the world.

Gord Baird, BA, ARCSA AP and Ann Baird, BSc are the co-creators, designers, and builders of the award winning Eco-Sense home in Victoria, BC, Canada, the first internationally recognized Living Building Challenge petal residential project. They implemented greywater systems, rainwater harvesting, and composting toilets into North America’s first legal two-story seismically engineered load-bearing cob home. Gord is Water Commissioner for the Capital Regional District’s regional Water Supply Commission and Juan de Fuca Water Distribution Commission, and was a technical editor for the BC Ministry of Health’s Manual of Composting Toilets and Greywater Standard Practices (2016). Ann works on regional climate action initiatives involving water, food, and energy resiliency in climate adaptation and risk management. They currently give tours of their eco-sense permaculture homestead in Victoria, BC. www.ecosense.ca.