SB: Regarding Sun Mar.

["Keith Rowe" <keithrowe@ezpost.com>]

Kim and I bought and used their largest model for a few years when living in
our trailer and building the house. Our thought was that we would have a
composting toilet and then a separate, simple system for grey water. We
would then save money and, of course, be that much more environmentally
friendly...or so we thought.

Since your question was regarding these specific toilets, I should say that
it seemed to work reasonably well, as long as there weren't more than three
or four people using it constantly, and we had a bucket of peat nearby to
dump in with each solid use. The toilet did what it was meant to do, or so
it seemed, which was to turn out lumps of odorless dirt. I never had these
babies analyzed at a lab so I don't know if they were toxic or conformed to
"International Composted Poop Standards", but the goal seemed to be
achieved. Another thing is that the flushing system, when held down for any
length of time would dump too much water into the tank and get things too
gooey. 

The real problem was actually not organic, but administrative. Where I live,
the governing bodies "Do not differentiate between grey water and 'black
water'", which means they wanted us to put in a fully blown septic system
whether we used a composting toilet or not. We caved, conformed, and we're
now on a septic like all the other folks out here in the country.

For what it's worth, I'm told, by someone in the biz, that size truly
matters in the composting toilet game, and that there are only one or two
units on the market that really do the job effectively, however, in looking
into them...well, as Kermit the Frog would say: "It's not easy being green."
The one we looked at was $5000 Canadian, about $3K U.S., plus installation,.
etc. Pretty tough to justify on our end. Not to mention the fact that most
of these bigger units have a hole big enough to accept a towel, pair of
pants, or even a cat thrown down by tiny hands, if you know what I mean. We
also determined it not necessarily appropriate for us to have people come to
our bed and breakfast, throw open the lid and exclaim. "Holy cats Martha. We
just dropped 85 bucks to use an outhouse!" 

Good luck, that's my two cents. 

Keith Rowe
(The thing about ubiquity is that it's everywhere)  


>Does anyone have any experience with the Sun Mar Composting Toilet.

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