The Airhead Story
Thursday 5 FEB 2015 | Boat plumbing nightmare
Just ordered our Airhead composting head (toilet). I am elated. Can’t remember ever being so happy about buying a toilet. We moved on the boat a week ago and we have been using nearly only the onshore marina toilets. Occasionally during night, we used our existing conventional head – it’s cold out at night and the hike to the restrooms wakes me up too much.
As all landlubbers do, we had to learn how to use our existing marine head. Most boat owners will give you quick instructions on how to use their particular head, if you will stay aboard for a while. Not too complicated, most have semi-automatic or, like ours, manual pump flushing.
Last night, I got down from the v berth (our dock neighbor Wayne says all things bad happen at 3 am!), when my feet touched a wet carpet! Immediately I accused Samba, our Welsh Terrier, but realized that she couldn’t have peed on the carpet, because there was way too much water! Seems that we don’t have a float switch for the bilge pump, because the bilge pump did not start pumping while the water level was rising. Maybe some of the flushing water got into the bilge? Luckily, we had used the head only for liquids. We don’t know what went wrong yet and need to investigate further our boat’s plumbing system to resolve this. We got a hand pump and wiped the bilge clean and aren’t using the head anymore.
In the meantime, I am thankful for this experience and take it as a lesson to convince me that I only want gray water circulating in the boat!
Monday 9 FEB 2015 | The Airhead arrived today!
Our composting toilet is sitting in the middle of the cabin staring back at me. There is still so much to do before we can install her! The pipes and holding tank need to be pumped out and flushed and the pipes removed. The holding tank possibly too. Let’s see. Tomorrow, we will find out our black water system on board and what we can eliminate. In the meantime we use the Airhead as a very expensive coffee table.
Friday 13 FEB 2015 | Discovering the water systems of the Imagine
It took several days of crawling around the boat and twisting to look under floor boards to figure out, how all our water systems work. The black water system is straight forward and easy to find with its big wrist thick pipes. The freshwater system is more like medusa’s curls with a lot of thumb thick clear pipes leading everywhere. The former owner was in the process of putting in a water heater and some pipes were dedicated to that. He left another pipe to pump out the bilge (bottom of the boat below the floor boards). Practical and confusing!
After a couple days of twisting our bodies into the cavities of the bilge, trying not to dip our hair into the standing (yuk) water, we found out the reason for our leak.
First we thought, our water tank was leaking or the seal of the water tank was leaking and already imagined nightmare scenarios of re-sealing the tank or taking the tank gasket off through an impossibly tight access hole! Just when we were about to take it off and all intake pipes, we checked where all these intakes were coming from and discovered one intake came from the shower tray. Then, we thought that water tank was a leaking holding (black water) tank! We got quiet worried then. But after we had checked the other intakes and found only an icebox drain intake, we deducted that this tank was an altogether separate tank, and that it must be a gray water tank! We have a gray water system on board! A tank that captures gray water from the shower and the ice box. We suspect it was installed to capture water which is too unclean for the marina and to pump it out later at sea. An electrical pump under the sink pumps out this gray water tank. Phew!! And the ‘leak’ wasn’t a leak at all but just a loose fitting. What a relief!
In summary, the chain of events which led to our ‘flood’ were as follows: after the head (toilet) overflowed into the shower tray, water was shipped to the gray water tank, but some of that water escaped, because of a loose pipe fitting under the shower tray and then collected in the bilge instead.
As long as it took, we are glad for this incident, because we know now our complete water systems on board and made beautiful drawings of all installations, Radu is good at that, we can refer to, in case we forget…
And although it turns out that only gray water was spilling this time, I am glad soon to have a closed and simple system: a bottle and a bucket to do our business in.
14 FEB 2015 |Installing the Airhead
I love my Radu. I don’t know what you did on Valentine’s Day this year, but we started installing the Airhead. Our dock neighbors found it very romantic and I certainly think so! It is one of our goals, to live a sustainable life and a composting solution for waste, any waste, is awesome. The Airhead was his Valentine’s gift.
We first had to cut and cap all pipes leading to and from the head. Pipes need to be heated for the caps to go on easily, so we used a heat gun to do so. Do this with good air ventilation, because I am sure that the fumes are toxic! Heat it until it smells a little and stop when it slightly smokes. Then, we were ready to remove the old head (toilet). It was actually brand new and had only been used by us a couple of times…
During my research into marine composting heads, I found out that the Airhead was the smallest contained composting toilet on the market. Our head (bathroom in this case) is very small, positively tiny at 38″ (97cm) deep and 36″ (92cm) wide! We angle our body slightly to walk in and out, and when I bend down to get something from out from under sink, my butt is halfway out of the door. Snug is good when underway. Especially when doing something with both hands while the boat is heeling you want to be wedged in.
Luckily the slender airhead, only 18″ deep, just fits. It is a little small for Radu with his 6’1″ and wide frame! But he can make due. Kids and people around 5′ have to climb up on it, because the seat is 19″ (48cm) off the shelf. Like a high chair!
After we finished the assembly of the airhead unit and installed the fan, we cut a new shelf to accommodate the larger airhead. We now have to fully to step up onto the shelf to be able to sit on our airhead. It’s a true throne!
Dealing so closely with our ‘creations’ is like a throwback to medieval times, when city streets were lined with open sewer ditches and houses had outhouses. The stench in those times would overwhelm us completely, as the people of the Middle Ages would not be able to endure the noise level of our modern world. Modern inventions are a trade off, we know, but a composting toilet still seems rural, if not a bit rudimentary!
22 FEB 2015 | Using the Airhead
After a couple days of use, I am glad to report that there isn’t any smell! If anything, Radu says, it smells of freshly cut wood. Effective separation of fluids and solids and the constant air evacuation seem to make decomposition process odorless!
To give you a comprehensive tour of the unit and use:
There is a bottle for the liquids in the front and a bucket for the solids at the back of the unit. The liquids and solids are separated by the bowl design and but it is advised to do one before the other. The bottle for the liquids sits under a sifter, which acts like an air filter as well. The holding capacity of the bottle is about 2-3 days for one person at 5-6 uses a day. For two people the bottle needs to be emptied every 1-1.5 days, which is way better than doing the hike to the on-shore restrooms every time. And way better than the musky smell of old black water hoses throughout the boat!
For the solids I use the supplied bowl liners, which are in effect coffee filters, as a ‘moving agent’ and to keep the bowl clean. Then I activate a trap door to evacuate everything into the bucket below, where it falls onto a bed of coconut coir. As advised by the manufacturer, we hydrated the provided coir brick with 6 cups of water for about an hour and filled into the bucket prior to the first use. A couple of turns with the crank handle moves everything under. And voila!
Pretty simple, but no multi-tasking! Doing one business at the time needs a little practice, but easy enough to get the hang off.
25 FEB 2015 | The catch with the bottle
The bottle for the liquids comes with a gauge hole, a small viewer window, through which we supposed to see when the bottle is full. Not so. The liquids are way too light to show up and we had to experience that we didn’t know when the bottle was full… Details spared, we now hold a strong flashlight onto the bottle ‘window’ and can see clearly where we are at, so to speak.
7 MAR 2015 | Two weeks later
I am the one test driving the airhead. Radu leaves this gladly to me, partly because I can close my nose from the inside (by exhaling very slowly through the mouth) and are therefore well equipped in case any smells should occur. So far so good. I followed the manufacturer’s advice to use a disinfecting rinse of about 1/2 cup of vinegar on 2 cups of water or more in between uses and to add about 1/2 cup of sugar in the bottle before mounting it back into its place. The sugar supposed to cut down the smell of the liquid while exchanging it and pouring it out. I use biodegradable baby wipes and wipe the bowl after every use. To prevent calcium build up I spritz a mixture of vinegar/water (2/1) into the bowl and sometimes ‘flush’ with it (about 1/4 cup).
And the solids tank? No smell, even when the trap door is open, and no sign of filling yet. I use a commercial size coffee filter as a traveling agent, for cleanliness, to harbor the deposits before the disappear into the bucket via trap door. I guess I could just open the trapdoor without using the coffee filter, but I am not that bold yet…
I must admit, this is a very new experience! Or more like a total mind shift. We are used to flushing and not being involved with our waste at an intimate level. I am generally not very squeamish, probably partly due to my German upbringing, but this takes getting used to even for me. I imagine this to be like changing diapers and that it will get easier in time. I just want this to work out for us and push back any doubts. Relearning or un-doing parts of our modern conditioning is challenging. When we lived in Romania, we still could find out-houses in the country side, although the vast majority of famers has now indoor plumbing. On the ‘Imagine’ we want to advocate the old ways with a modern twist. Our composting head is very practical for marine use as it separates liquids and solids, and has evolved from the one hole one bucket concept of out houses and porta-potties. Joseph Jenkins of humanure.com advocates a one bucket composting toilet where the deposits are covered with a drying agent like sawdust after each use and the composting process is completed in an outdoor compost pile. That could also work on a boat. Jenkins brought his concept as far as Haiti, where he installed many units in re …… http://humanurehandbook.com/about.html
Saving drinking water is behind some of our efforts on the Imagine. Billions of gallons of drinking water are used for flushing toilets worldwide, which could be done by using gray water (re-use of water from sinks and showers) or a foam like the Bullit Center in Seattle uses, the first US office building with composting toilets throughout the building.
On my recent visit to Seattle to buy the Imagine, I had the luck to be joining a tour of the center and just had to check out their toilets. The Bullit Center houses next to the Bullit Foundation, known for initiating Earth Day, the Living Future Institute. The institute initiated the ‘Living Building Challenge Certificate’, a kind of LEED Platinum on steroids. With the imperative of net plus water and net plus energy, a ‘Living Building’ cannot afford to be using drinking water frivolously on toilet flushing! Pushing our imagination of what buildings could be to the limit, his way of thinking is very inspiring. I had worked on an ‘Living Building Challenge’ renovation in rural Romania, where we upgraded the old style out-house with composting toilets. Local laws and building codes here in San Diego still prevent buildings from installing composting toilets and the Bullit Center got a variance from Seattle City Ordinances for their composting toilet installation. Imagine my glee when I discovered that composting toilets on boats are legal
28 MAR 2015 | first cleaning of the bucket
It’s one month later and the bucket is slowly filling up and after 4 weeks I wanted to clean it out. I was too curious to wait any longer although it wasn’t completely full yet. So got prepared with a trash bag (we are still in a marina), laid out plastic in the head for eventual spillage and practiced holding my breath. I got prepared for the worst! I took the liquids bottle off, unscrewed the airhead from its bolts and the air pipe and then rotated the seat off and held my breath.
I was totally sure it would stink. I knew that I had used the head so how could it not? Then I willed myself into taking in a whiff. I had to because this was an experiment and smell indicates the state of composting.
Easier said than done. But eventually I did and, I am as surprised as you, I can only report that there wasn’t any bad smell at all. It smelled like coconut coir or like forest floor and nothing like what I had expected! That was crazy even to my lovingeverythinggreen mind! As I poured the content of the bucket in the plastic bag, I noticed that the coffee filters had not decomposed yet, but all the solids were well on their way and at the bottom of the bucket was true and pure compost! I left this compost in as the starter medium for the next month. Then I added 3 inches of pre-soaked coconut coir to bring the content up to 1/3 of the bucket, so that the turn-coil can catch the deposits and can turn them under the medium. I reassembled the composting head while still in disbelieve how easy that all had been.
It is hard to believe unless you’ve lived it, they say. Or just take my word for it: it did not smell at all!
PS: Our grandson is visiting this week and at the tender age of 7 he took to the composting head like a fish to water, coffee filter, trapdoor and turning the knob and all. Today he said that using it makes him feel like a grown up because the toilet is so tall!
2 MAY 2015 | 2nd cleaning of the bucket
The second month was very much the same as the first one, but ended in a very different experience. Listen up so you don’t make the same mistake as I did! Feeling like the queen of composting toilets, fueld by the nosmellandIlovemycompostinghead moment, I had changed the recipe. After all I was test driving and I wanted to try a different speed… So, I had left on the bottom of the bucket what I though was compost as a ‘starter’ for the next month and added only half a brick of the coconut coir. I thought my bed, so to speak, was made… What I forgot to do is to check, if the substance (compost) was dry. After two weeks the head started smelling! I thought that ‘I can fix that’, because another couple sharing their composting experience online just added more coconut coir when their head started to smell. So I did that to. To make matters worse, I was not so good in separating my business, which only added to the mess. Oh man. Believe you me, not fun, not at all! Even a fly showed up, ready to spread the word. That’s how bad it was.
I learned today the very hard way, NEVER to change the recipe. Stick with what works in baking and with composting heads! Start with a dry, dry, a very dry and clean bucket and keep it as dry as you can!! You will get a nice non smelly bucket in return once it’s cleaning out time!
A friend has a Nature’s Head Composting Head and complained about her liquids dripping into the bucket. After close inspection we found that her trap door doesn’t have a spring to push it up against the bowl, so naturally the liquids leak. After talking to the company she was advised to put the coconut coir into her bucket and that solved the problem. I still think that the Airhead is way better build: apart from being smaller, it has a lid and a toilet seat like a normal toilet, and both with thick sealers to keep the unit air tight. Also the surface of the bowl of the airhead is sealed with a very smooth surface which makes cleaning easy and actually not necessary. I wish that sealer was on all inside parts of the head!
26 JUNE 2015 | 3rd cleaning of the bucket, 3rd month of use
I was traveling in Germany this month for 2 weeks, so it wasn’t really 8 weeks between clean out more like 6 weeks. I pushed the limit this time, until it was really full. It might change something, I though, but it didn’t. The clean out went smooth, no pun intended. Same as the first clean out, where I had followed instructions and had cleaned out the bucket fully. This time around, again there was some compost about 6″ high at the bottom and above that dirt looking kind of stuff, which also smelled like dirt. This is strange to me still. I mean, I intimately know what goes into the bucket and then to see a composted product feels like nothing less of a miracle. That’s nature for you. I have heard of earthworms ingesting toxic substances, which their digestive system turns into an organic fertilizer, we called in the landscaping trade, “worm gold”! We humans are not quiet that capable and would die if we attempted this, but what is in my bucket is totally transformed with the help of coconut coir and constant air venting.
This is fun and feels like an accomplishment in some sort. I would encourage anyone to try this. Although it’s not the same if you share, I think. So buy a composting toilet just for yourself. Because your worth it!
The only thing I haven’t gotten the hand of it yet is that some coffee filters (brown and unbleached) and transporting blanket wrap around the spinner and sticks to it. It looked worse than it was and washed right off. This month I will throw my baby wipes into the bucket also. I am curious how fast those compost. Natracare makes the only truly biodegradable wipes I have found so far. All other ones had some degree of plastic in the ingredients!
And I do wish though that the bowl would come apart into 3-5 pieces for in-depth cleaning, because the liquids flow around a corner and through a kind of seal/valve to prevent smells… Got to talk to airhead about it because I might have missed something. First I’ll read the manual again. It’s amazing how many things I missed the first time…. If you’re anything like me, you get excited about new toys and can’t be bothered with reading manuals in depth.
27 AUG 2015 | 4th cleaning of the bucket
It’s official: composted poop doesn’t stink. Nature has an uncanny efficient way of treating waste. The coconut coir with the exhaustion vent do their trick. When I cleaned out the bucket this time, again there was no smell. It is a miracle to me and hard to believe. Every month I expect it to be bad and it turns out being the same and just fine…
13 DEC 2015 | 5th cleaning of the bucket
… and fine it is again this month! A part of me wishes that there would be a disaster, obviously I prepare myself each time for the worst. But no! I smell only a forest floor like smell, only the smell of the coconut coir.
For 2 months now I don’t put any sugar in the bottle anymore. I find that the smell is not different with the sugar and I am more exposed to the bottle smell while putting the sugar into the bottle, plus the sugar crystalizes in the bottom. I don’t rinse out the bottle after each emptying, because we are in a marina and it frankly takes too much time. If we would be on passage, I would probably rinse the bottle out after each use, before hauling it back on deck.
I noticed also the last months that while using the supplied white coffee filters there wasn’t any gunky paper stuff around the ‘mixer’. Then I switched to unbleached coffee filters (better for the environment etc) and there was this paper gunk on the mixing rod. That gunk is frankly gross. Must be that the unbleached filters are thicker and decompose slower, because now that I am using the white ones again and I can’t see any build up of paper gunk around the rod anymore. Again you will make your own experiences and fine tune the use to what you are comfortable with.
APRIL 2016 | 6th clean out after leaving the marina on our shake-down & MAY 2016 | 7th clean out
I empty the bottle out while underway near the transom and rise it a couple of times with salt water… just like new after! The salt water is just abrasive enough to clean out some calcification. We sit very low in the water so that I just hang over the side.
Finally emptied the solids bucket twice at sea. We go out past the 12 mile zone, just like boats emptying their waste tanks. I attach an old line to one of the handles of the solids tank, make sure that the fastening screws are very tight, so that they don’t fall off into the sea. I put the motor on slow forward, just enough that we move away from the dumping point and then there it goes. I hold on tight to the line and let the buckets drag in the water for a bit, have gloves on and clean the bucket with a bit of biodegradable soap. I rinse the bucket and the gloves. That’s that. Way easier and faster than in the marina.
EPILOG
I spoke to somebody recently, who has a composting head on his boat. He made a good point, that they purchased a composting head, because they don’t want to dump unprocessed sewage into the ocean and that theirs is now pre-composted.
That got me thinking about whale poo and how much whales release into the ocean. I found a great picture of a whale with a poo cloud as large as he is (see below). I also found an article about how whale poo is a major fertilizer of the oceans, because whales are vegetarians and eat crill, they release enormous amounts of nitrogen balancing the nutrients of the oceans. The declining numbers of whales in effect endangers the whole ocean ecosystem.
Then I came across the fact that the poo of a particular whale, a sperm whale, is highly valued, because it is used in the perfume industry to make perfume last on the skin longer. Ha ha. We don’t know half of what is done with and to the products we consume, yet, we deem them clean. We have unlearned the natural, learned to be disgusted by the natural and instead value the artificial. The synthetic became the new clean. Composting your own makings and being so up and close to it everyday, is something to get used to for sure. I admit, that it took me a while, but it was determined to stick with and to like it. And I learned and it does work for us.
QUICK TIPS
Get a 2nd liquids bottle. Way easier to clean out, if the you can switch them out. 1 bottle for 2 people for one day.
Rehydrate the coconut coir with a little water as possible, don’t make it too moist, it needs to be moist enough to be able to break it in pieces, but dry enough to absorb moisture.
Take enough coconut coir with you, or research where you can find it in the countries you’re traveling to. Luckily, coconut coir comes in bricks and are easy to store.
Upgrade the supplied fan to the largest computer fan you can fit into the encapsulation. Well worth it. After having it installed for 2 months now, I consider it a must! The one supplied by Airhead is too small for 2 people living on board full time, it doesn’t keep the medium dry! Also take spare fans. Ours died after 15 months of running 24/7. Luckily we had a larger one on board, which we ground the edges with a Dremel to fit inti the mount. After 2 years, Radu made a larger box for a larger fan and mounted the ventilation pipe onto the new box. Very nice and very efficient!
Clean out calcification in front of the bowl regularly every 3 months when your cleaning out the bucket and the Airhead is already taken apart.
Clean the bucket by flushing with vinegar or, most effective, ocean water.