Composting toilets are becoming very popular with caravanners who are environmentally conscious or looking to extend the amount of time they can stay offgrid without worrying about a dump point.
Whilst it might seem like a big job, retrofitting a composting toilet, such as a nature's head or ogo isn't too difficult and only takes a couple of hours time.
We think that running a travelling business operating as a composting toilet retrofitter could be an interesting idea, so let's look at how hard it is to replace a popular chemical toilet, the Thetford C220, with the Nature's Head composting water separation toilet.
Here's the steps.
1. Turn off your water, flush toilet until water lines are empty.
2. Pull out the poo cassette
3. Look inside from the poo cassette side, there are 6 or 7 screws in a circular pattern that hold that big plastic frame to the rest of the toilet, unscrew them all.
4. Still looking through from poo cassette side, there are 4 screws going down through the toilet frame in to the caravan floor, remove them (short handled phillips head needed)
5. Isolate your power and pull the 12v spade connectors if you have them, otherwise just cut them.
6. Disconnect water hoses, they're John Guest fittings which can require a little tool to push the disconnect mechanism. I just cut it and tapped it since you don't need it for the new toilet. You can buy a John Guest termination plug quite cheap on eBay.
7. The whole toilet will now slide away from the wall on the inside and you can remove it.
8. There is a little piece left on the wall which is used to locate the toilet and sort of hinge the top against the wall. 3 phillips head screwdrivers in this and off she comes.
9. Install your natures head per the instructions. The only thing I did differently to the instructions was to run the hose down through the floor and then extend with some pvc pipe out to the exit next to the grey water hose. Apparently you can get a bit of a waft of an earthy smell sometimes and I didn't want that coming out where my family sits in the afternoon.
Obviously carrying a supply of composting toilets may be difficult, but in our experience the supplier provides super fast delivery so we don't see this as a barrier.
Like our content? Why not subscribe to our newsletter!
