DIY Composting toilets & California's worst drought ever

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Jonathan Cline

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Mar 25, 2015, 6:31:34 PM3/25/15
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Whether or not this is the worst drought for the state in the history of the modern world, some people think so:

""With California facing one of the most severe droughts on record, Governor Brown declared a drought State of Emergency in January and directed state officials to take all necessary actions to prepare for water shortages. The state has continued to lead the way to make sure California is able to cope with an unprecedented drought.""  -- http://ca.gov/drought/


Topically, last year I built a composting toilet for use, and I am using it, using inexpensive building materials from Home Depot (ref:  "The Humanure Handbook", http://humanurehandbook.com/  ).   [I'm not posting pics.]  So far the DIYbio group has not had any DIY postings related to toilets (maybe I mentioned a couple topics years ago, and in the FAQ).   Yet there is real funding out there for solutions, especially 3rd world solutions to combat disease and water contamination, such as The Gates Foundation, etc.  Tangentially this past week I ran across a story in the financial news related to precious metal recovery from solid human wastes (ref: "Gold in faeces 'worth millions'" -- BBC news), targeting gold, silver, and "rare earth metals such as palladium and vanadium."    Validity of this depends on the current price of metals of course.


Toilets waste a lot of water.  And frankly the composting toilet is a better feature-wise solution [note: there's a built-in fan, there is no smell] compared to today's current water-driven-ceramic-bowl.   Certainly composting is a better solution than using the water-filled-ceramic-bowl then not flushing at all.   I haven't yet designed a bidet mechanism although I keep thinking of ways to solve that too, and would be a very neat addition.

Note: The compost is not to be used on a garden bed containing edible materials - unless certainty that the composting process has really completed.  Though it's fine for flowers, etc.  This is covered in the book referenced above.

Personally I consider this also DIYbio and an important environmental topic. Though perhaps sewage is not a typical topic of conversation - other than fecal transplants, which everyone else seems to love talking about, for reasons unknown, mums the word.


 
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Simon Quellen Field

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Mar 25, 2015, 6:46:54 PM3/25/15
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I have a guilt-free flushing toilet.
I have a 310 foot deep well.
I pump the water up using solar power.
I have a leach field six feet deep, where the septic overflow goes.

So I pump water from 310 feet, and put it back into the ground under the meadow in front of my house. After a few years of percolating through rock and sand, it ends up in the Silicon Valley water supply, just like the water would have if I hadn't pumped it from the well.

:-)


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Jonathan Cline

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Apr 1, 2015, 2:00:12 AM4/1/15
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That's pretty cool.  I assume your water has been tested?  You could be getting some good nitrate liquid fertilizers out of the deal too with some upgrades.  The other aspect of hacking toilets of course is to add biomedical sensors.  Some Japanese vendors have had fancy smart-toilets in the market for years which attempt these features.  I'm not too familiar with the success rates of their technology.  It is definitely an area that is overlooked in the diy area and in the west in general.


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Jonathan Cline

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Apr 1, 2015, 12:43:06 PM4/1/15
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Along with about 88.8 million other people's private records, all of my medical and financial data has likewise been stolen, according to auditors of Anthem insurance.  Hmm, thanks.  Good that I never assumed any medical related department could keep data private anyway. 

Technical details on the hack, from Infoworld.com

""" What is known is that the Anthem attackers created a bogus domain name, "we11point.com," (based on WellPoint, the former name of Anthem) that may have been used in phishing-related attacks. Companies try to detect such confusing domain names -- a practice known as typosquatting -- but are not always successful.  One of Deep Panda's attack methods is to create fake websites that imitate corporate services for companies. In Anthem's case, the attackers set up several subdomains based on "we11point.com," which were designed to mimic real services such as human resources, a VPN, and a Citrix server.  By targeting Anthem employees with phishing emails and luring them to the fake sites, it may have been possible for the attackers to collect the logins and passwords and eventually access the insurer's real systems."""

Ref: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2898658/security/premera-anthem-data-breaches-linked-by-similar-hacking-tactics.html
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