Vermicomposting Toilets Forum - Recent Posts

RE: Documentation & convincing of municipality (North of Portugal)

Hugman — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:41:24 +0000

Hi All

I am planning a 10 unit (2-4 occupancy per unit) glamping site in Madeira, Portugal with Vermicomposting waste systems.

Has anyone recently obtained Camera Municipal (Águas e Résiduos) license to install a Vermicompost system in Portugal?

Best wishes.

Hug

RE: Drainage failure after ~3 years

Wendy Howard — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 13:54:59 +0000

Yes failure can be sudden. It's entirely dependent on the unique circumstances with every tank, so hard to say what caused it. Personally I would add far more of a well mixed and varied assembly of organic material to each tank. Easier to pre-mix than do it in the tank. They both look much too low. It makes them more vulnerable with less material. Maybe consider topping up more regularly?

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

RE: Alternating Bins To Handle 8?

Wendy Howard — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 06:37:02 +0000

@sparksb I don't know for certain, but at least 2 of the facilitators have worm tanks at home so likely they will have added more organic material (unlikely to be woodchips - they're not easy to come by here - we use naturally sourced material for the most part). Next time I see them I will try to remember to ask about the toilet paper, but in this country it's customary to put toilet paper in a bin rather than the toilet, so very possible they do that.

RE: Alternating Bins To Handle 8?

SparksB — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 00:41:41 +0000

Wendy, thanks for the info! Do you know if they continued to periodically add more bedding (e.g. wood chips)? Did they have to do anything to manage the abundant toilet paper?

RE: Drainage assembly

Wendy Howard — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 13:57:42 +0000

The drainage assembly only becomes the pathway for liquid to leave the tank IF the tank is blocked. That's its primary failsafe function - to stop liquid buildup in the tank drowning the worms. Otherwise, gravity does what gravity does. Monitoring the tank is manual and should be done on a regular basis. As I've said elsewhere, this is a natural ecosystem in an unnatural containment situation so it's up to us to check on its health regularly. There's really no substitute for human monitoring and I would say it's a habit to encourage ourselves to get into rather than avoid by using some technological substitute.

The secondary processing area - whether greenfilter bed, trench or mulch pit - IS the treatment stage prior to infiltration/soakaway. That's why it's part of the system design.

Hope that helps make it clearer.

RE: Drainage assembly

jack_sprat — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 11:30:46 +0000

Hi Wendy,

First - great website, and lots of fantastic information and experience-sharing.

Regarding your proposed drainage assembly: I'm a bit concerned that there's a risk of creating a preferential drainage path, i.e. if the vermifilter becomes clogged anywhere, then liquid will reduce or stop passing through filtration and take the short-cut through the drainage assembly; have you any means of monitoring the flow through filtration vs drainage pipe?

I take your point about the importance of not drowning the worms. Also, if there is scope for a treatment stage prior to the infiltration/soakaway then blackwater liquor is less of a concern.

best wishes - JS

RE: Alternating Bins To Handle 8?

Wendy Howard — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 23:45:08 +0000

The greatest number of people served by one 1m³ tank I've heard of so far is our local community education project which handles 40-50 children and 5 adults 3-4 days a week during term times. Those worms worked their little asses off! Amazingly, the tank never blocked (kids can use a whole heap of toilet paper which can lead to problems) although it did fill up within 2 years so they installed another and now switch between the two.

I certainly wouldn't recommend pushing a tank to its limits, but it does show what's possible with a system when it's working well. I think the 2-bin idea is a good one. It's what Anna Edey did with her original system. And it offers a handy and convenient solution for dealing with a temporary oversupply situation in one tank, which will often correct itself when given time to adjest.