[Greenbuilding] ventilation and urine-diverting dry toilet

Reuben Deumling 9watts at gmail.com
Tue Jan 9 13:56:22 CST 2018


Quite a few years ago I imported four Ekologen EcoDry toilets from Sweden.
These are porcelain toilets that send the poop and the pee into separate
(installer supplied) vessels. While the idea was extremely inspiring, the
reality has been somewhat less fantastic. The poop falls  through an 8"
pipe into a bucket, and a handful of sawdust is dumped after. That part
works beautifully. Not once has there been any smell.

The urine is sent through a 1-1/4"(?) flexible hose that came supplied with
and is attached to the porcelain unit into a vertical 2" ABS pipe and from
there into a bucket that sits outside in the free air, and is dumped as
needed.
The problem - the only problem - is that the urine smell in the bathroom
can be strong. Visitors, e.g., higher usage, sends the smell index shooting
up, whereas day-to-day usage by one person doesn't cause much discomfort.
And of course folks' sensitivity/sense of smell varies a lot.

The toilet was supplied with a micro-flush button which would have sent a
small amount of water (1/10 of a liter?) through the urine section. I
initially hooked this up, but I discovered a casting flaw in the porcelain
which sent a bit of the water not out the drain but through a crack not
visible from any angle I could devise onto the floor. I talked to the
manufacturer about that but they were not helpful, did not take any useful
responsibility, so we've always used a small cup to splash a bit of water
to chase the urine.

Recently I swapped in a wood toilet seat/lid for the OEM plastic one which
allowed me to attach a gasket between porcelain toilet and seat and between
seat and lid. This made a disappointingly small difference to the ambient
odor.

*So now to my question:* do low-power small fans exist that you could
recommend for installation in the 2" ABS vent? My sense is that these exist
but I am not familiar with any specifics.
My hope for this fan would be that it would create a very slight negative
pressure in the bathroom, drawing any smell out the vent rather than
letting it escape into the room. Ideally it would also be switchable from
inside the bathroom.

Or perhaps some of you have experience with his or similar situations and
can recommend other strategies I've not thought of?

Thanks very much.
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