Wednesday, November 26, 2014

November.

It has been a crazy month, Novmeber always is and this year didn't fail to be packed full of work and fun. A picture is worth 1000 words so...
We kicked off Nivemeber with Aislinns 8th birthday, our first birthday while on the boat, we couldn't host a large party like we usually do, so this year we rented out a penthouse suite at the local hotel and and had a girl sleepover, Frozen themed, naturally.








My big girl.




Right after Ash's party the weather turned cold, a polar vortex I believe the weather network called it. And it was freezing. Literally. Mark off to winterized the pipes in the travels trailer. 


Every day dropped below freezing and the nights especially so. The whole marina was locked in with ice, it was so thick the birds were slipping and sliding over it.







A week after Aislinns birthday comes Finns birthday, five years old and we were still trapped in the deep freeze. I crocheted funny hats for all our party guests, seemed appropriate. 


We rented a 15 passenger van and our whole party drove to Arlington, WA to go to a trampoline park.


It was awesome, everyone had a blast, except it was so cold in the building us non bouncers were a bit chilled. 


After bouncing for a few hours we all headed to McDonalds for lunch and presents.



A friend of ours graciously allowed me the use of her kitchen to make the cake.


The day after Finns party, my parents took all three kids back with them to Victoria for the week while I flew out to Hawaii to spend a week with a friend.

It was amazing to spend a week in the sand and sun, the first time I have been away from the kids for more than three days.



Hanapepe.

Jessie, our boat neighbour and my host while in Kauaii, had a week full of fun and adventures, we had a blast. Kayaking...

Hiking...

Swimming in waterfalls...



The most random things that I got the biggest kick out of was the roosters and chickens that overrun the whole island. Apparently during a typhoon one time all the chickens got out of their cages and just spread out, amidst the sounds of waves lapping the  shore and the warm breeze through the palms was the constant crow of the rooster. 

Camping on the beach. 



Our camping accommodations. 

Take the howly to the secret surfing spot.

Red dirt that stains everything.

Feeding the horses tied up along the highway. 

Tiki and souvenir shopping.

The extent of my surfing, I tried paddleboarding and discovered that balancing on the water is not one of my talents. 






After a refreshing week, rejuvenating in the sand and sun we are all back home on Sweets, braving the cold and gearing up for the holidays.

Monday, November 3, 2014

Natures Head

When you consider moving on board a boat or an RV or a tiny house or a yurt or whatever, pretty much anything other than a house, the simplest necessities of life become a lot less simple.
The bare necessities we as people need to live are generally shelter, food, water, clothing, heat and a way to bathe and keep clean. When you buy a house, you don't need to consider the "how". If you need water, you turn on a tap, when you want heat you turn on the furnace, when you buy food you put it in the fridge, need a shower, or wash clothes, it's all there and you don't generally have to think too much about where all these ammenities come from; in a boat or any other kind of alternative living, all these things require thinking about, usually a lot of thinking.

I have already done posts about plumbing, how we get our water and our battle with getting hot water. I've posted about our bathing situation and it's obvious how we wash our clothes (laundromat, just in case it wasn't that obvious) and I have mentioned how we intended to heat our home and our toilet facilities. But now that we are entering into the winter months and have been living on the boat for four months, two things we thought would be the best things about living on board, the shipmate skippy wood stove and our natures head composting toilet have proven to be slightly less than what we had hoped.

This post will be elaborating on our natures head composting toilet.
The link above is the website we bought our head from. We did a lot of research and weighing the pros and cons of having a composting head rather than the regular chemical toilet with black water tanks and so on. We still believe this is the best option and recommend it to everyone, however that recommendation does come with a caveat. The head does and will work as promised, if everything is done properly, no mistakes are made, and all the planets align in the universe; in other words it is very difficult to get it working properly, at least for a family of five. It is suggested as an ideal situation for a two person household and I can see how it would be much easier with less people, but it can work with larger families, it's just going to take a lot more work.

So basically a composting toilet is very simple to operate, there is no water, no flushing, just two bins, one for "compost" and one for urine, the two cannot mix. 
The natures head is large, but we have one of the smallest head spaces I have seen on most boats and we made it fit. It has a comfortable moulded seat and is a bit higher off the floor than a normal household toilet but hasn't been a problem, even our three small kiddos hop up and down without any issue.
Inside the bowl is a hatch and two holes up front. When the hatch is closed all the urine will run through the holes and into the urine jug in the front of the head. To make a deposit into the compost bin you open the hatch. Simple.... Sometimes. It is not always easy for every person to segregate their bodily functions, and if any urine gets into the compost bin, all is lost, within a day it will start to stink and the whole process needs to be dumped, washed and started over again.


Sorry for the messy pictures but this is as good as our head gets. 
The composting process is easy, when you started up your system, you use regular peat moss, fill the compost bin halfway and your set to use it. Pictured above is vent hose that is attached to the compost bin, leading up through the deck and into a vent fan; this is necessary to keep the odour under control and help keep the peat moss dry. 
The last thing needed for the composting process is the agitator, inside the bin is a metal rod that mixes the compost after you've used it. Here is the handle on the outside of the bin youtube turn.

So as I have mentioned before, we have had some trouble with keeping the two bins contents separate. Part of this was a learning curve for everyone in the family to re-adjust their thinking and be aware of when to open the compost hatch and to close it. This actually was relatively easy, even for the kids. But another way urine can get into the compost is by letting the urine jug get overfull so that it spills back into the compost bin. 
It took some very frustrating, stinky, disgusting weeks and a phone call to the natures head customer service to realize this was happening. Once again, if we had less people using it full time this would probably not be too big an issue but with our family we need to empty the urine just about everyday.

Once we figured out that the constant stink was from overflow and we sorted it out we figured our smelly days were over, and they were for a while until summer ended and our solar deck fan stopped working because we weren't getting enough sun. That vent fan is very important! When you buy the toilet it comes with a 12 volt computer fan that can be installed on the outlet from the bin into the vent hose so that there is constant air flow, we figured the solar vent would suffice and it did until it stopped working. Without the fan venting the bin, it was not working well and all that odor was hanging around inside the head, yuck. And so super frustrating. Thankfully, another call to natures head customer service (they are awesome by the way) they sent us a new 12 volt fan free of charge, no shipping cost and we had it in days, problem solved... Almost. Now that we had a fan working 24/7 to vent the compost it was working again, but since the fan was pushing the air up the hose instead of the solar vent which sucked it up and out, we were still getting some odor from the bin. The vent hose does not attach with an air tight seal to the deck vent and some of the door was seeping back into the cabin instead of being vented outside. The duct tape around the connection is a temporary solution but you get the idea.


It has been a process for sure to try and get this toilet system to work for our family, when it works properly, it's a dream, when it doesn't it quickly becomes a smelly nightmare. However, the ease with which the nature head is installed, no water, no tanks, no pumpout service required, we believe it is the best, most Eco friendly choice. 

Some other things we have discovered helps us with our head is the type of toilet paper we use. We can't always afford to buy marine or Rv toilet paper which would be the best, compost quickly, but regular, quilted, thick toilet paper is not a good option. It takes forever to breakdown and ends up getting clogged around the agitator and making it near impossible to turn and if you can't turn it and mix the compost it will not work. We use Scott, single ply, septic safe toilet paper; works great. Also we females don't put urine toilet paper into the bin, just to cut down on how much TP goes in there, but with a two/three person family this is not a concern.

Also to keep the toilet clean, we keep a spray bottle of water near by and spray around the  inside of the bowl after each use, the water just runs down into the urine jug. We don't use regular toilet cleaners on the bowl, you don't want any chemicals or too much water to get into the compost bin so we just wipe it down with antiseptic wipes and we're good to go.

So, natures head is a great system; if you are prepared to put up with the learning curve, which is true for any new way of doing things. In the long run we believe the benefits clearly outweigh the inconveniences.
natures head toilet.