Maggots in our composting Toilet

[christianshearer]

We have been having maggots showing up in our composting toilet recently. This bothers me only because it means there will be flies originating in our fecal matter and coming and visiting our food. Not too good.

When I googled it, I found people recommending turning the compost, to turn up the hot layers, as well as adding ash to the top. We have been trying these things, but it doesn't seem to be working too well. (Plus turning a humanure compost bin sucks!)

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to beet the flies/maggots?

One idea that came up was building an adjoining chicken pen with a couple of chickens. Maybe for an hour a day release them into the compost bin to scratch around and have a feast! Some of our community members were repulsed by the idea, but is it that wrong?

Any help would be much appreciated,

Thanks

Christian

[ho-hum]

Shearer,

Sounds like there is something wrong with the toilet design that this is happening. Contact the manufacturer or if it is homemade - get hold of some plans for composting toilets and see what sort of strategies were built in to combat this.

At a wild guess I would think the flue/chimney is not flyproof capped or is too short and flies are crawling down there.

cheers

floot

[gardenlen]

g'day christian,

we had the problem once in our toilet and after contacting the maker it was suggested we lime the contents of the bin to get rid of them, which we did. also are yoiu throwing in some carbon materila over the stool each time you use it, i would also recommend you run a dry system by keeping all but incidental uirne out of it, adn add composting worms.

but then later i realised that they actualy helped the material to compost and break down better, but therafter we never got any more as we got a replacement lid which kept any flies out. which system is it you are using? we had a nature loo so waht was in the bin couldn't impact on users in any way.

are you able to determine what sort of fly it is? ours was some sort of long black fly which was never going to be a house fly so we would have gotten better material by leaving it alone.

the thing you need to do is to keep the unit closed between uses if flies can't get in then you won't get maggots, or don't particularly worry about them too much especially if they aren't a know house fly. we have a friend who uses permaculture as well and he uses maggots to help break his compost down, a bit yuk when you see it but they release a lot of juice that he uses for the garden.

len

[Richard on Maui]

Yeah, as the others have said, you've just got to stop them from getting in there!

My composting toilet is humanure style bucket and pile system, and I cover each deposit with a generous layer of sawdust or grass clippings. So far no maggots have come to the party.

As for letting the chickens in to scratch over the maggots - well, it seems gross, but as long as the chooks stay away from you and your friends afterwards, I can't see that it is too much of a problem. (though maybe like you I am missing something). Reminds me a bit of the pigs in Northern Thailand who follow the villagers around waiting for them to squat on the side of the path...

[ecodharmamark]

G'day cristianshearer :)

Welcome to the PRI Forum!

A few years ago I was involved in the design and development of a home-made composting toilet. We ripped the design straight out of a well known commercial composting toilet company tri-fold, and we used reclaimed materials that had been collected over a period of time to build it. We had heard from a reliable source that flies could be an issue, so we took their advice and fitted a trap. The trap was incorporated into the overall design by making a hole the size of a large, plastic soft-drink bottle in the upper portion of the collection chamber, in a position that was open to the daylight. Into this hole we placed an empty soft-drink bottle (small end first) with a small amount of liquid bait poured inside. I guess the idea was to lure the flies out of the chamber and into the bottle before they got a chance to multiply. I never saw it in action because there did not ever appear to be any flies entering our system. I checked the trap each time I walked past, but never saw any flies. The toilet was working a treat when I left that project, but we did limit urine input (through a visitor education program) and essentially kept it a 'dry' unit. Our vent pipe was quite tall from memory, and being black in colour created plenty of updraft throughout the day to deter the flies entering, I guess.

Good luck with yours. The chook thing sounds cool, just insure you have a good hygeine strategy to avoid cross-contamination and you will not have a problem.

Cheerio, Mark

PS: A link to that well-known company and their tri-fold, complete with working designs :)

http://www.clivusmultrum.com.au/bestchoice.pdf

[christianshearer]

Thanks ya'll I appreciate the responces. Our system is homemade, and definately open to the flies. It is a 2 meter by 2 meter by 2 meter chamber lined with rice straw thick on the sides, and fed with Rice husks to cover the shit. The walls are bamboo, and easily gotten through by flies. We designed it very open, to promote airflow. We have had very little problems with smell (only when the pile doesn't get flattened for a few days), and the whole system seems quite good, except for the maggots.

I am thinking we could screen the whole thing in, and fit a toilet seat to the squat spot, and that would probably stop 90% plus. We'll give it a shot and see what happens.

I'm still interested in the chicken idea (I think the chicken would be pretty happy about this), but I don't thuink I am going to convince my fellow community members!

Keep it up ya'll!
Christian Shearer
somewhere in northern Thailand.

[Richard on Maui]

Oh you are in Northern Thailand?! What, got no pigs?! :lol:
I reckon you cover that pile with screen, stop the cycle and you'll be laughing. :wink:

[ho-hum]

Ran across this comment which may help.

Zealite is an amazing odour absorbing material. Each molecule has a huge surface area and ‘grabs’ gases from the material. Material with odour present is detrimental to the worms.


http://www.organicdownunder.com/wormfarm.htm

Looks like 'zealite' may be mispelled, anyway, useful stuff!!

http://www.zeolitemineral.com/

floot

[healingorganics]

ok the chicken thing sounds fine provided you are not planning on eating them. The thought of eating chickens that have scratched in feocal matter kinda makes me feel sick. Like the chinese use fresh feocal matter to fertilise the crops (in which alot get exported here.) :?

rochelle

[Richard on Maui]

I just don't dig the idea at all. A chicken coop that isn't managed well will attract flies, so like, the chooks eat the flies that are eating your poop, but what's eating the flies that are attracted to their poop?! :? Cover that pile!

[sweetpea]

Why is it you guys are limiting urine in your composting toilets?

[zydeco]

Ok, total newbie, never used a composting toilet, and just wondering what happens when there's an "emergency" and urine gets into a composting toilet? What happens when the bowel movement itself is watery.

With a first post like this, I guess I can only go up.

:toimonster:

[sweetpea]

zydeco, I didn't ask the question about urine because I didn't know the answer. I didn't understand why they would limit urine if their system is working well. I guess no one followed up on it. I have had a composting toilet for about 8 years, and have learned much along the way.

Here's a quick description of how composting toilets work. It's the same principle as a garden compost. You are trying to balance your carbons (dead grass, straw, dead weeds - browns - ) with nitrogen, urine. The solid contributions should be treated like a carbon, so it needs bacteria to eat it and break it down. The browns absorb the nitrogen and make a perfect place for your feces-eating bacteria friends to live. Just like us they don't like to drown, but they like a decent amount of humidity, which is why the contents have to be damp, but not saturated (anaerobic). They need some aeration, which is why there's a pipe heading up and out with a fan or wind turbine on it to create air flow in the tank.

It has to be stirred to help with the aeration and breaking down of the more solid stuff. As it dries out and is eaten by bacteria, we move it, it falls apart a little better, and more Bacteria Friends will work on it.

Runny stool is not a problem, it's already broken down. But just because the end product is broken down, it doesn't mean we can guarantee that the temperatures in that tank got up to 150 degrees everywhere for the hours it takes to kill bacteria or parasites, or whatever it was that caused the runny stuff, we should always remember that the final product may still contain some of that, and always wash your tools, boots, hands thoroughly with soap and water and preferably something antibacterial when emptying the tank.

The end production, even though it is compost and looks unrecognizable, is not the same kind of product that we get in the garden because we are carnivores and we have intestinal tracts with e. coli in them, or else we'd be dead, and various and sundry other things we don't want to get in contact with. The contents of the tank can be there for a year or more before we remove, it has changed in many ways since it started, and we can't know exactly what it now contains without lab results. It actually can take more than a year in hot, dry circumstances to make it safe, which is why we should bury it around perennials so our kids and animals will not get into it, and it won't splash up onto our annual vegetables and be transferred into our fresh food cycle.

And now here come the people here who think that people who are cautious with composted human fecal matter that contains E. coli (that has been in a tank with tons of good and bad bacteria for many months to years) are fecal phobes for being careful with the end product. And I just can't bear to get into that debate again :)

[gardenlen]

we found limiting urine in the toilet made for better management of the system, urine is the one thing that can cause some odour, we also found that we had better uses for the urine itself directly to food gardens and trees, and the big thing if you add liquid then you have more liquid to deal with in the system, and for the main urine simply flows through the solids with no real benefit to the system.

incidental urine and sloppies are no worries we found, in other forums each person who has owned a composting loo all run dry systems that is incidental urine only as the composting process works great, and you aren't losing all that good fluid.

we used a nature-loo and needed no bacterial or enzyme additives to make it work all we used was composting worms. i would see maggots in a system as being more beneficial in helping the final breakdown, but then in any system it should be somewhat difficult for the flies that lay the maggots to get in.

len

[carres87]

I just don't dig the idea at all. A chicken coop that isn't managed well will attract flies, so like, the chooks eat the flies that are eating your poop, but what's eating the flies that are attracted to their poop?! :? Cover that pile!

Hi I am a student working with engineers without borders, we are investigating building a composting toilet using rice straw/husks as our bulking agents. However in our calculations to size the system based off C: N ratio we are finding that our system design becomes very large. I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how they sized the system when designing it?

[Jjef]

check out this link for some info on maggots, i noticed my new toilet today was infested with maggots so i have been researching their safety as chook food on google when this came up, interesting stuff.


http://forums.seedsavers.org/showthread.php?t=612


as for the pigs....
on my many trips to sumatra in indonesia, carrying a big stick with you while you "went to the beach" was necessary unless you wanted a pig to interrupt your peace and quiet.

jjef

[gardenlen]

g'day jjef,

maggots are great recyclers far more efficient than worms i'd suggest, our best effort from our composting toilet was when we had maggots in it (from some black fly with blue flight wings, never came in the house only the loo), anyhow it was the best we ever produced, needed to replace toilet lid which sealed off better so no more maggots after that. and in a compost heap they would do wonders had a friend who used them in his compost tumbler and he has a bucket under to collect the juice they created for his garden. yep as it fell into their domain they processed it no qualms.

len

[barefootrim]

yep, always cover the pile,,, if maggots make an entry a bucket full of sand for coverage always did the trick ,,,,,, after every use a generous handful of straw or sawdust,,,,,,,

urine is always ok if straw and sawdust is being used.

the boys should ( in my mind) be doing pee pees outside on the trees,,,,its always fun,,,,tehe

[PermaGuinea]

We have a locally made commercial system. It relies on good drainage (to a trench) and a ventilation system that runs continuously and aerates the compost. No dry matter is used in this system, although it wouldn't hurt to use it if you so desired.

The ventilation system can be rigged up with a DC source and a 5-inch computer fan. When the fan stops, you get a really bad smell in the house; while the fan is running no smell whatsoever. Well worth retrofitting to any system. (We are on off-the grid solar power and the fan draws very little power.)

If the drainage gets blocked up, the reactions in the toilet change from composting to anaerobic decomposition (as in a septic system) - bad news. The one time that happened the maggots were crawling out of the toilet to escape. If that happens, you need to clean out the chamber, unblock the holes, and restart the compost cycle.

Flies are also a problem, but mostly an annoyance rather than a health problem if the system is properly enclosed.

The large long-bodied flies are called soldier flies and are harmless. We get them in the worm farm as well, where their large flat maggots break down larger harder items like fruit skins, etc. They aren't particularly active and don't come near the food in the house.

There are smaller black flies called scuttle flies (there is also a brown version called a vinegar fly that hangs around fruit) that are really annoying because they are prolific, especially in hot weather. Our main solution for scuttle flies has been to screen the toilet off from the main house. I recently saw the traps mentioned above in action at Crystal Waters and will be installing one soon (got the parts, just need a jig saw to make the hole.) At the moment the flies head for the only light source which is the crack between the seat and the lid.

We seldom get house flies or blow flies near the toilet at all, especially since the outside part is sealed (I tape up all gaps between the various parts with duct tape/gaffer tape).

As len said, the larvae of the soldier flies do good work breaking down the compost. I sometimes transfer soldier fly larvae from the worm farm to the compost toilet because of this, and the adults aren't a problem.

[gardenlen]

can i ask what system it was you had pemaguinea?

our nature-loo used wind to ventilate the drums, never had any smell.

len

[PermaGuinea]

can i ask what system it was you had pemaguinea?
len

Ours is a natureloo, too. We get the smell as soon as the fan goes off, and when the chambers are being changed over (because the fan pipe gets disconnected to do that). The smell is mostly ammonia and I think it comes mainly from the encrustation on the walls of the pipe down to the chamber. After changing the chambers it takes a few hours for the fan to suck the rest of the old smell away from the room again.

We thought of getting the whirly-bird wind pump but were wondering what happens on a still day. While the fan is running there is never any smell - and ours is powered 100% by the sun.

[gardenlen]

ok i see,

we ran our drums as a dry system so all but incidental urine went into the toilet, the seperate collection of urine was used in gardens etc.,. they run well as dry sytems. do you use the enzime provided by n/l? so we also used no power and no elect fan that wears out and needs replacing, they did supply one but i either sold it or gave it away. we kept our out of service full bin connected to the vent can't say it was ever needed. now to make the vent work better with just air they say painting the top meter and spinner black this will cause air to flow. also we never had any flow in the council compulsory outflow to soakage pit (would have seen that as a waste of resource).

we also switched from the somewhat expesnive enzime (tried an after market one as well can't say if it worked? all cost), we opted for composting worms, missed the fly maggots as n/l replaced our toilet seat with a new model that sealed off so the black flies could no longer get in, but they definately did the best job. worms work well, always stared new bin with some material from recent full bin now empty, this helps with bacteria and worms, and add more more worms in later, they all live in our garden and easy to harvest. would have been good had i ripped the seat seal off and replaced with those plastic stops, let the flies back in. our toilet had a lot of window space and no fly screens. picture of it in our eco' home feature on our site, great views.

our bins where ready for use about 6-7 months. any juice in the bottom was worm wee and some water i would sprinkle in to keep crust moist.

would we use one again? in a heart beat, we like n/l it is a simple system that works, though next time (soon maybe) we might use one of the smaller floor units for inside the house.

len

[christopher]

Christian, the flies may be black soldier flies, which have no mouth during the fliying part of their life. We hve a compost toilet which they have been in, (not anymore), but raise them intentionally in our compost bins for chicken food. Black soldier flies are great decomposers, breaking down food, and they love tea leaves, coffee grounds, onion skins, banana peels, etc. Once they climb up out of the yuck, the compost or shit, they are self cleaning and then become flies, and go forth, without a mouth to eat, to mate. Giving them a ramp to climb up onto, and a jar to drop into, you can easily harvest them to feed to chickens. While I understand peoples concerns, they metabolize and pass things very quickly, and will not have shit in them anymore by the time you feed them to your chickens. They are very high in protein and high in fat content.