How our Centrex 2000 composting toilet works

I have had a few friends ask me how our composting toilet works. For a little more background information, we have a bit of land in New South Wales, Australia, that is really what you would call 'off grid', a result of both location and desire to run the home as self-sufficiently as possible.

Our options here were composting toilet or septic. We went with a composting toilet. The Centrex 2000 composting toilet is a split system 500ml/half litre flush toilet which can be installed so the composting unit doesn't have to be directly beneath the pedestal. A pedestal is supplied with the unit that looks almost exactly like a regular toilet, except for the trap door in the bowl of the toilet and pedal that you push with your foot to open the 'trap door' that allows your waste and toilet paper to travel down to the composting unit by a 3 inch (75 mm) pipe. The Sun-Mar Centrex 2000 allows the installation of a split system composting toilet where there is only 900 mm between the bathroom floor and the ground. In our case the composting unit was placed on an outer edge of underneath our home for easy access. The composting unit can be up to 5 m from the pedestal.

We chose this pedestal system as we rent our bush house out to holidayers and we thought they may prefer a more regular looking toilet. Also because our oldest daughter gets very creeped out by sitting on your regular composting toilet pedestal.

For a photo of our composting unit (drum and cassette) under our house, take a look at the photo on our Facebook page below:



How does the Composting Unit work?

The horizontally mounted composting drum provides optimum composting conditions with its tumbling action to aerate and mix the contents. A liquid drain outlet is provided for any excess liquid run off that runs a fair distance away from the house, down the hill and runs off under a large gum tree (that doesn't seem to mind). The final processing is completed in the finishing tray/cassette isolated from any fresh material. The finished earth like composted humus is odourless. It is removed from the composting toilet only a few times a year and is normally used for soil improvement. Trust me, it does not smell one bit. I was wheelbarrowing it around the yard when I had morning sickness with my second born, and I didn't hurl once! lol.

So there you go. Anyone else interested in composting toilets? Any other questions?

That looks great Tallulah, where I am buying it has an existing septic, but I don't yet know it's age or condition,(plumbing inspection yet to be done) if I ever need to change my system, I'll be seriously looking into something like this.

What did it cost you?

Hey,

I think it cost just over $2000. The not so fancy ones were a little cheaper but the only read difference was the actual toilet "pedestal" so the difference wasn't that much.