Country Toilet From A Barrel: From A 200 Liter Tank, Making A Cesspool With Your Own Hands In The Country, A Peat Toilet From A Plastic Barrel

2024 Author: Beatrice Philips | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-18 12:09

Modern man is accustomed from birth to the benefits of civilization. Every house has a sewage system and a water supply system, thanks to which you can wash your hands and relieve your natural needs at any time. It is much more difficult for people in small villages, villages and even at their own dacha. In places remote from the city, there are no water and sewer pipes, which is why you have to arrange amenities with your own hands. In the absence of financial opportunities, the toilet room is located on the street, by creating a cesspool from a barrel.

General requirements

A country house is a place to relax with family and a group of friends. Gatherings in the gazebo are accompanied by tea ceremonies, after which there is a need to relieve natural need. The well-maintained houses have both a sewerage system and a water supply system. An analogue of this luxury is a street toilet.

The easiest biological waste storage option does not require large investments . It will be enough to purchase several barrels of the required volume and bury them in a previously dug hole. On top of the barrel base, a booth with a window for ventilation and a door is installed. This completes the installation of an outdoor toilet. It remains only to bring beauty to the inside and outside of the structure. The whole process of work from the owner of the site takes no more than 2 days. The presented version of the bathroom is intended for year-round use.

Unfortunately, even today, even some outskirts of cities do not have a sewerage and water supply. Accordingly, the toilet room is equipped in a street format. And so that a street toilet in a private house, and, of course, in the country does not violate comfortable living, the owners of the site and their neighbors must adhere to the established rules of sanitation.

• The minimum distance between a toilet and a residential building should be 5 m.
• The distance of the toilet building from the fence should not be less than 2 m.
• An outdoor toilet should be located at a distance of 4 m from the main road.
• The distance from the bathroom to the well with drinking water should not be less than 50 m.
• The distance of the toilet structure from natural water bodies should be 30 m.
• Toilet structures should be located at a minimum distance of 5 m from fruit trees and garden plantings.

So before you dig a hole to install barrels in it, you need to make accurate measurements of all important objects. In this case, the selected place should be located in the lowland. But even here it is not so simple. The bottom point of the hole to be dug for barrels should not reach the groundwater. Ideally, the distance between them should be 1 m. A maximum error of 15 cm is allowed.

Many people think that outdoor toilets made from barrels are not good. At the same time, arguments are given that are in no way combined with the main material of the barrels. In fact, barrel storage systems have positive and negative sides. Their benefits include:

• long service life:
• ease of installation;
• low cost of the required materials;
• you do not need to buy complex tools for work.

The disadvantages include the following parameters:

• there will be an unpleasant odor in the ventilation pipe;
• it is necessary to regularly pump out sewage from the collection pit;
• when choosing a place for installing an outdoor toilet, it is necessary to follow sanitary standards;
• it is required to use special antibacterial compounds on a regular basis;
• decrease in the absorbent properties of the filtration layer;
• lack of environmental friendliness of leaky barrels.

Based on the last point of the disadvantages, it becomes clear that only high-quality materials that do not decompose in the ground have the property of tightness. That is why, when choosing containers for the storage system of an outdoor toilet, you should be extremely careful.

Barrel selection

On the modern market, there is a wide variety of barrels designed for arranging a storage system for an outdoor toilet. However, it is not recommended to pay attention to the cheapest containers with the highest characteristics . It is highly likely that they are made from a large number of chemical compounds that will subsequently cause great damage to the surrounding nature. Or, at least, several summer cottages.

One of these materials is plastic … Everyone knows that plastic products take about 200-400 years to decompose. This material was developed by man through the artificial synthesis of petroleum products. Not a single element of the composition is natural, which means that a conflict begins when plastic parts decompose in the natural environment. Some owners of summer cottages use metal containers when arranging an outdoor toilet.

However, this material also has a number of impressive drawbacks that directly affect the service life of the structure

• Low resistance of metal to corrosion … After 4 years, such barrels become unusable, and it is not possible to restore metal products.
• The cost of metal drums is quite high , which means that the purchase of several containers for arranging the storage system can seriously hit your pocket.
• Difficulty installing metal drums is the need to use special equipment.
• Ideally, use products with a wall thickness of 16 mm . However, it is very difficult to find them on sale.

The advantages of metal drums are resistance to sudden temperature changes and a large mass, contributing to a firm fixation of the container in the ground . However, plastic barrels are in great demand among summer residents. Basically, plastic containers with a volume of 200 liters are purchased. According to the technical characteristics, plastic has more advantages than metal.

• Long term of use … Plastic will easily serve its owners faithfully for at least 40 years.
• Minimum weight plastic containers allows you to equip a biological storage without the use of special equipment.
• The plastic is completely biological waste is not scary human life activity.
• Elements present in waste treatment formulations do not interact in any way with the walls of plastic containers .
• Durable material prevents impurities from entering the soil , which is an excellent protection of the environment.
• The cost of a plastic barrel is acceptable for any person . Accordingly, the purchase of several plastic containers will not affect the family budget in any way.
• Plastic has a high level of strength , thanks to which the material easily transfers the pressure of overlapping soil and drains.

The disadvantage of plastic is frost intolerance. So that nothing happens to the capacity of the street toilet, the barrels are wrapped with insulation, for example, mineral wool, before installation. Another drawback - with a small mass, there is a possibility of lifting the plastic barrel. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to fix the storage structure as tightly as possible in the ground.

Septic tank construction device

Not all summer residents have the opportunity to build a normal sewage system on their own plot. That is why they are looking for alternatives. One of these is composting toilet . In its system, biological waste is processed into compost. In everyday life, such structures are called peat. And all because the waste is sprinkled with peat, which blocks the unpleasant odor of sewage and absorbs liquids. The peat composition, after getting to the sewage, triggers chemical reactions, during which moisture and carbon dioxide are released.

Many summer residents believe that a peat toilet is the most harmless, and its design, in principle, does not differ from the arrangement of an ordinary toilet with a toilet bowl. The peat version has a comfortable seat and a biological reactor, which is a sewage receiver and a composting container. On the underside of the peat structure there is a retractable container. At the top, there are stocks of dry peat. Exhaust ventilation is mandatory, due to which the unpleasant odor is minimized inside the toilet building. The presence of oxygen, which also gets inside, is the correct process of decomposition of biowaste.

The exhaust pipes must be upright. However, most often they are installed at an angle. In order for the main function of the hood to work correctly, a ventilation type fan is installed in the pipe. To get rid of moisture, a drain hose is present in the structure. With its help, it is possible to get rid of unnecessary liquid, otherwise, instead of compost, the fermentation of sewage will occur.

If the volume of the composting toilet is small, you may not need to install a drain.

In addition to the peat structure, there is one more successful layout of an outdoor toilet, involving the use of barrels without a bottom … The main advantage of such structures is that there is no need to pump out sewage. The accumulated daily liquid enters the soil, but due to the small amount of waste, it does not have time to penetrate into the groundwater. The daily volume of sewage should not exceed 1 cubic meter. m. Otherwise, the environment will be harmed. And the unpleasant smell from the storage pit will certainly not bring pleasant sensations.

Instrument preparation

To build an outdoor toilet from barrels, you need to stock up on some materials and tools:

• barrels - the material of the product depends on the wishes of the owner of the site;
• grinder for separation;
• shovel for digging a hole;
• a bucket with a strong rope for scooping up the earth;
• coupling for connection;
• pipe branch;
• pipes;
• sealant;
• crushed stone;
• cement mortar;
• a container for diluting cement mortar;
• high quality geotextiles.

For easier work, it is best to use a container with a hatch and an outlet pipe.

Step-by-step installation instructions

Building an outdoor toilet with your own hands is not difficult. The main thing is to correctly install the structure, following the step-by-step installation instructions.

• Choose a place that meets all sanitary requirements . Otherwise, you will have to redo the outdoor bathroom.
• It is necessary to start digging a cesspool . Its shape must correspond to the selected containers. But the dimensions of the pit should be made 20 cm larger than the indicators of the container itself.
• At the end of the digging of the cesspool, a layer of rubble is poured onto its bottom … A layer of sandstone is laid out on top of it. After that, a thorough compaction of the powder is done.
• If groundwater occurs nearby, on top of the sand layer should make a concrete pad .
• After the cement mixture has dried, a barrel is lowered to the bottom of the pit . In the case where the tank is already equipped with a branch pipe, the contour of the pit must exactly match all the branches of the tank.
• After lowering the barrel to the bottom of the cesspool, water is poured into the container … The gaps between the walls of the barrel and the dug hole are filled with sand. The sand from each shovel should be carefully tamped down to firmly fix the container in the ground.
• With the help of a double-sided coupling, a connection of pipes with a branch pipe is made installed at the top of the barrel.
• The final stage of installation is to bury the soil … On the outside, only the hatch and ventilation pipe should remain. Water poured into a dug-in tank must be pumped out.

When installing a metal tank, you will have to work with a grinder. Before submerging the container, you will need to make drainage slots. Then mount the receiver branch pipe, and treat the joints with sealant and geotextile. Only after the sealing mass has dried can it be possible to put the container in the hole and bury it. As it became clear, it is not difficult to dig the container into the ground. The workflow doesn't really take more than 2 days. But the main thing is that such a design will not harm the garden and vegetable garden.

Operating tips

The operation of the plastic drums installed in the base of the outdoor toilet is not difficult. Like any other outdoor bathroom, structures with plastic tanks require regular cleaning, or rather, pumping out biowaste. After each cleaning, the structure must be inspected from the inside, the container must be checked for leaks. Similar rules apply to outdoor toilets with metal tanks.

It is equally important to use biological agents to eliminate unpleasant odors .… These mixtures reduce the level of precipitation that forms. The main thing is to use only high-quality drugs. Cheap samples of unknown manufacturers can cause irreparable harm to a street toilet. In some biological additives, substances have been found that, when contacted with sewage, activated several chemical reactions.

Each process negatively affected both metal and plastic containers, corroding them from the inside. Applying to a corroded surface is not the solution. We'll have to change the insides of the toilet structure.

Some summer residents completely abandon the use of biological preparations; they call in the sewers to get rid of the accumulated sewage.