Vermicomposting Toilets Forum - Recent Topics

Drainage failure after ~3 years

julien — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 10:11:49 +0000

Hi Wendy, All,

I built my vermitoilet using your design, I've started using it (family of 6) early 2023, it has been good so far but 2 days ago, I found out all my worms were dead, the drainage is not working anymore, they were all drown. See picture below

https://i.postimg.cc/Gt0J8R7b/IBC-drainage-issue.jpg

I have 2 IBC tanks, the other one was never used yet, I'll call it passive tank. I had a lot of tree branches and large wood pieces for slow carbon release in the active tank, see picture below showing the other passive tank were I moved all the branches from active tank. Initially when I set up my tank, I added a lot of quick release carbon, wood chip, cardboard but it got depleted most likely, and because all the branches, I couldn't mix it up.

https://i.postimg.cc/VLtMr2nN/IBC-other-tank-wood.jpg

I think my system failed as the tank was lacking fast release wood chip to mix up with the rest, without it / carbon, it becomes too thick and blocked the drainage. Slow release carbon is fine but my branches were too long, preventing to mix it with new coarse wood piece.

The interesting bit, is on the 1st of June 2025, so not long ago, I saved all my worms from drowning, I had a blocked pipe, I fixed it and the water in the IBC tank flushed perfectly! I was really happy not having to dig into it more ... which I am doing now. So between 1st of June 2025 perfect drainage and now total failure, something happened. It was warmer than usual in Ireland, I guess it speed up the process of decomposition and led to this situation.

My plan is to:

1. Add more wood chip, the easiest to get in Ireland, to bring back the tank to a good consistency, good ratio carbon/poo & vermicast.
2. I will cut in small piece now my slow release carbon and may keep only one large for worms in case of, so I can mix the fast release carbon correctly.
3. I will start using the 2 tanks, I will switch between the 2 tanks every 6 months, something like this.

What do you think?

Thanks a mill,
J

Another cold weather question

OdinFarm — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 23:51:59 +0000

I live in a climate that has a frost line with a depth of 1m. With the design of the soakway recommended to be placed at a depth of 0.5m to remain in the aerobic level of the soil, this would be within the freeze depth of the ground in winter. my concern is the vermifiltered water leaving the tank and travelling into the soakway would freeze and block up the entire drain system until it reached the tote drain outlet. Any advice or prior experience with this would be greatly appreciated as I am in my design phase now. Thank you.

Geotextile Instead of Mesh Filter

JoeDawson — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 20:46:10 +0000

Hi Wendy, I am about. to construct one of these toilets and was planning on using a bidim geotextile above the gravel and around the drainage construction instead of the plastic mesh you specify. Do you think this will work alright?

Kind regards,

Joe Dawson

Alternating Bins To Handle 8?

SparksB — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 02:48:28 +0000

It was mentioned that in theory the 1m^2 bin could handle up to 12 people. We have one toilet serving 8 full time residents, plus 2 more people that frequent. It sounds like some systems on this forum have successfully serviced up to 6 people so far. I'm wondering about constructing a 2-bin system with a way to move the input from one to the other if/as needed, perhaps using a rubber elbow connector that could be loosened and re-tightened. The hypothesis is that the resting bin will break down and be ready to go back into use by the time the second one needs to rotate out. Does this sound like a reasonable approach? I guess my primary worry is that it might be at higher risk of clogging if I don't rotate it in time.

conditional permit received in USA

kimichip — Sun, 24 Sep 2023 18:06:08 +0000

I just added a blog post about the conditional permit we received to install this as an experimental septic system on our new house build in a very rural off grid property. It's at our blog BrownKawa.com

It is mainly introducing the concept and the fact that we got a permit; build info and photos will come in a later blog post.

To support others looking to go this route, I recommend googling "peer reviewed research vermifilter" and then follow up by finding references from the bibliographies of the articles you find there. Our permit took 2 years and lots of persistence, patience, and politeness!

IBC tote alternative?

dbodyssey — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 00:17:32 +0000

I live on a remote island in the Caribbean and it is proving to be difficult to find an IBC tote- are there any alternatives?

TYIA

Greenfilter Soakaway on slope?

SparksB — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 01:33:16 +0000

Can I run the greenfilter soakaway pipes downhill at a 10-15% slope? If so, what design changes might be needed? My understanding is that typically the soakaway piping runs on a level contour, but it could be so much more useful if I could run it down the slope to water a hedgerow/windbreak.

Balancing airflow and insulation in a coldish environment

kimichip — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 18:59:58 +0000

Hi all,

We are finishing up a build at 7200 feet in northern New Mexico, USA. We can get lows below freezing pretty much any day from October through May. Daytime high temps are usually ~20-40 degrees F (~10-20 degrees C) warmer than nighttime lows. At the worst we can get a week long stretch with highs below freezing and lows around 0 F (-17 C). In the summer we can get a week straight with high temps above 90F (32C) and the sun is intense.

Our IBC tote is partially submerged about 1 meter below grade in back and 1/2 meter in front. The housing is made of earthbags -- as a retaining wall below grade, up to about a foot (30 cm) above the tank with a sloped metal roof. From about 2 feet (60 cm) below grade the earthbags are filled with scoria (lava rock) for insulation. The walls are ~15" (~45 cm) thick. There is an air gap between the walls and the tank.

The tank has reached above 110F (143C) with the UNinsulated roof on.

We are insulating the underside of the housing roof (including access trap doors) with rigid foam sheets and spray foam. We included two 4" (~10cm) air vents through the earthbag walls just above grade -- 1/2 way up the tank in front, just above the tank in back.

* Our question is whether we have enough venting and enough insulation. *

We are thinking of just sticking in clean trash bags filled with recycled packing material in the big openings where the plastic tank is sealed (so where ventilation is not an issue).

Above the tank opening/access port we are thinking of sewing a ~5" (~12cm) thick burlap "box" with a footprint a bit bigger than the access port that we can stuff with straw, so we will have a somewhat breathable insulation over the opening. This would sit on top of the tank cage which might allow a little gap between the tank and the burlap. We will leave an opening so we can change out the straw periodically.

Thoughts? Does this sound like the right balance between insulation and ventilation? Of course we will be monitoring temps before (and after) introducing worms. Does anyone drill ventilation holes around the top of the tank side walls? Of course this would be a nightmare if the tank ever overflows. We won't do that unless it seems like we have a ventilation problem, and if we did we would make sure the holes are higher than the drainage pipe.

We look forward to any input -- and thank you to Wendy and all forum participants! This website is hands-down our best resource for this work.

(I tried to include a pic of the wormbin with earthbags -- before plaster & roof & insulation & vents were added)

wormbin.jpg

human waste layer heats up

Joseph — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 01:27:21 +0000

Hi from Barichara, Colombia and thanks Wendy for sharing this fascinating system!

About three months ago we have introduced worms in our newly built system, and it is now in use for the last two months. Because of a slight smell of the human waste layer we almost daily have been adding a thin sprinkle of carbon rich material (ripped carboard pieces, wood shavings, etcetera). Since at some point the temerature of the organic material started to rise and worms creeped up and left the tank, we started to wet it down daily. After digging a bit today into the human waste layer, it turned out to be even hotter further down.. and steamy! So we have the folowing questions:

- How could be explained what happended?

- Should we stop layering of the human waste with carbon rich stuff?

- How can we (quickly) lower the temperature and create good conditions for the worms?

Thanks in advance for your answers :) Greetings!

Earth worms and urine

Stefanerb — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 09:05:54 +0000

Hello. How much urine do earthworms tolerate? Obviously, the earthworms in the system described here have no problem with the urine content. Is this due to the dilution with water? Is there any risk that the concentration of urine would be too high, so that earthworms would be negatively affected? My background is, that I compost all my feces and urine in a pile with kitchen and garden waste also of other people and the earthworms I've added on different occasions to the pile have, obviously, all died, maybe due to the high urine concentration? Any hints are highly appreciated. I'm planning a vermicompost-filter as described here for other people, but in my special case, composting the feces and urine together with the other organic waste is a lot simpler.