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Transform Waste into a Resource with Safe, Efficient Composting Toilets
Part of the Sustainable Building Essentials series, Essential Composting Toilets is the practical guide to designing, installing, and operating water-saving, environmentally friendly toilet systems. Learn how to turn human waste into compost while improving hygiene, reducing water use, and increasing resilience in homes or small buildings.
What You'll Learn
- Water Conservation and Cost Savings: Minimize water use and reduce reliance on septic systems or municipal sewage.
- Resource Recovery: Safely compost waste into usable soil amendments while maintaining health and safety standards.
- System Selection Made Simple: Compare composting toilet types, ventilation strategies, urine separation, and new build versus retrofit applications.
- Design, Installation, and Operation: Step-by-step guidance, drawings, and photos make planning and building your system clear and achievable.
- Professional Yet Accessible: Ideal for DIYers, homeowners, designers, consultants, and water conservation advocates.
Written by Gord and Ann Baird, award-winning permaculture designers and sustainable building experts, this guide blends research, regulation compliance, and hands-on experience to make composting toilets a viable option for any home, whether urban or rural.
Explore the full Sustainable Building Essentials series for illustrated, step-by-step guidance on natural and sustainable building systems, high-performance homes, and environmentally responsible construction.
"For over a hundred years our society has been treating water and waste as necessary evils rather than resources to be celebrated. A Victorian paradigm that is incredibly wasteful and damaging continues to underlie how we handle our most precious resources in nearly every city and community on the planet. There is a better way. In this important book the Baird's shed critical insights on the power and rightfulness of composting our waste and closing the loop between nutrient and fertility. Their depth of knowledge, practical experience and collected examples provide a way forward that is responsible and regenerative."
— Jason F. McLennan, CEO, McLennan Design, and founder, the Living Building Challenge
"Get your shit together the right way, on the first try. This book is one of the best researched and presented books on the topic of composting toilets that I have ever read and is a must-have for anyone wanting to create resilient closed-loop systems on their home, acreage, or farm."
— Rob Avis, P. Eng, co-author, Essential Rainwater Harvesting, www.vergepermaculture.ca
"As a builder and manager of several humanure composting systems I can enthusiastically recommend this essential guide! Gord and Ann Baird begin this book with a simple statement: Thermophilic composting at the right temperature for the right amount of time transforms humanure into safe and nutrient rich compost. From this essential point they present the full range of options for reconnecting the missing link in our nutrient cycle. From the home scale to the urban office building, solutions are thoroughly examined and clearly explained."
— Darrell Frey, Three Sisters Farm, author, Bioshelter Market Garden and co-author, The Food Forest Handbook
"True to form, Ann and Gord Baird once again lead on the innovation front with their informative and timely guide "Essential Composting Toilets". Their research, pragmatism and practical experience, has resulted in a significant contribution to the advancement of water conservation practice in BC."
— Eric Bonham P.Eng, Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia (PWSBC)
"Gord and Ann Baird have written a totally practical, inspiring guide that shows how we can work in partnership with the bacteria and worms to build healthy, safe residential composting toilets. Their dedication to detail is astounding. All praise to the psychrophilic and mesophilic bacteria — and to the Bairds."
— Guy Dauncey, author, Journey to the Future
"Gord and Ann take on this potentially shitty subject and present it with a wonderful balance of science and humor. As we embark upon an owner-builder off-grid home project, this book could not have come at a better time. The guidance provided for working with building officials is invaluable. It helped us ask the right questions, and gave us additional confidence that we were making the right choices."
— Jeff Walton, Cowichan Valley.
Gord Baird, BA, ARCSA AP and Ann Baird, BSc are the co-creators, designers, and builders of the award winning Eco-Sense home in Victoria, BC, Canada, the first internationally recognized Living Building Challenge petal residential project. They implemented greywater systems, rainwater harvesting, and composting toilets into North America's first legal two-story seismically engineered load-bearing cob home. Gord is Water Commissioner for the Capital Regional District's regional Water Supply Commission and Juan de Fuca Water Distribution Commission, and was a technical editor for the BC Ministry of Health's Manual of Composting Toilets and Greywater Standard Practices (2016). Ann works on regional climate action initiatives involving water, food, and energy resiliency in climate adaptation and risk management. They currently give tours of their Eco-sense permaculture homestead in Victoria, BC. www.eco-sense.ca.
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Safe Composting
Chapter 3: System Components and Processes
Chapter 4: Design Considerations
Chapter 5: Commode Batch Systems
Chapter 6: Chambered/Moldering Batch Systems
Chapter 7: Continuous Systems
Chapter 8: Fluid Management
Chapter 9: Best Practices
Chapter 10: The Last Flush
Appendix A: Percolation Test Procedure
Appendix B: Manufacturers
Glossary
References
Index
About the Author
A Note About the Publisher