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Hi, I've just got myself my first compost bin for Christmas and am eager to get it on the go!! I've read that you can wee on the compost to get it going but a friend told me it's just male urine you can use. Is this true? Anyone know why?

xx

I don't see why, unless you're on a huge dose contraceptive pill. But certainly it's easier for a bloke to pee on it or even into a container in the loo than it is for us gals

I put my own girly pee on mine and it was fine.

Oh, well that's okay. I must admit I was going to use a receptical of some kind though I have had a few giggles over the idea of the landlord catching me squatting over the compost (especially as it's quite tall and I'd have to use some sort of chair or ladder) I shall give it a go and see what happens!!

I'm probably just getting over excited SusieGee, 'i want to do it now' :-) That makes sense though and by spring I should have built up plenty in there to pee on! Thanks for everyone's advice x

AngeB

You might not want to go the 'whole hog' as it were but you could place a little 'wee' compost toilet in a shed or whatever. A simple 'bucket and chuck it' system, with a bucket of sawdust nearby to keep down any 'mellowing' of the wee.

Elementary carpentry builds you a box with a hinged lid. You put the bucket inside and it pokes a short way through the lid, unless you're a very good shot (!) and fit an ordinary (wooden, it's warmer) toilet seat (note you have to re-position the plastic bumpers).

Here's ours (and it's indoors, it's the full monty and there's no smell except from the sawdust):




The next stage is a full humanure heap, once you get a bit braver. Get The Humanure Handbook - every self-sufficientish household should have a copy; it's fascinating and tells you a lot more than you ever knew!

Wee is great for activating compost. As for anything else I have no idea ... Sorry

We only have one bathroom and there's frequently a queue - so I send the boys out to the heap! lol!

I dont know bout human pee, but I know that lady dog pee is more acidic than man dog pee. MDP does not burn grass as much as LDP. (In my experience, although I am sure someone will be alone to correct me!)

In a mild thread hijacking, greenorelse I am interested in your compostish toilet. I am in the throws of obtaining building regs approval for my new house which will have a full twin chamber compost toilet built in. I have opted to install a urine separator (I am a male man and will be mostly in the house on my own) so that the chamber of poo does not become waterlogged and thus not decompose. Does your system cope with adding pee because the composting process takes place outside the house, after the bucket has been emptied? My urine separator will take the pee outside the twin chamber to a soakaway under the top soil.

{Ramble mode on]

We opted to keep things really simple and have everything going into the one bucket. It all goes onto a dedicated heap for a year then we let it rest for two years. We've only been at it a few years so we haven't actually broken down any of the heaps yet. End of this summer, I'll open one up, though I might just transfer it bit by bit to a new garden and kitchen waste heap.

I think the longer the better for humanure maturing, really, up to a point.

Your pee seems to be going to waste in your system! Our view is that nothing should leave your site, meaning don't even give excess food away, compost it. Yours isn't leaving your site but there again, seems to be doing nothing - but there again, I think you might be right about ours the 'coping with the wee'. One thing I've noticed is that the heaps can take prodigious quantities of water.

We tend to also believe that simpler is better. Life is too short - our 'maintenance' includes emptying the bucket and building yearly heaps, that's it. Any other type of plumbing is too complex. That's just the way we think...

[/ramble]

I think you are right about me wasting my pee, but for building regs I think this is the way to go. Most of my pee will go onto my compost heap, but a urine separator to keep BC happy.

That reminds me I've got a full 2 litre milk bottle under the sink in the down stairs loo ...............does it improve with age

I often let the boys pee on the heap, they think its a great joke, I have been told that men's urine is stronger and thus higher percentages of urea, apart from that the wife says it cuts down the mess in the bathroom.

That's a brilliant loo Greenorelse! I don't have the space for that yet but I'm sure I can fit a bucket and sawdust in our current loo. I think the OH is quite pleased that he gets to do his duty for the 'greater good'

Another thought: the pee is mostly soaked up by the sawdust, which initially can be quite dry, depending upon its source. Sawdust from a lumber mill is the best as it's not too dry and, as it's trees they're cutting, won't have any chemicals in it.