A garden Pissoir

[Gordon Henderson]

Our garden is some 60m from the house down a path, past some other houses and gardens - ours is at the end of the plot..

We're planning some uphevals down there with a complete make-over in the next year - one admittedly minor issue is the lack of toilet facilities - probably not a concern when your garden is next to the house, however ours isn't and I'd really like to spend the best part of a day down there when its nice, cooking on the BBQ, etc. We border a small river which ultimatley I'll pump & filter for fresh water.

So hoping for long summers, and extending the enjoyment time with a planned summer house (er shed), then there might be the need to have a pee...

Googling finds all manner of things - from pissing on a bale of straw, to soil pipes simply buried in the ground with an exposed end...

Ideally a composting hut type of full-on toilet would be nice, but frankly I think they're too big - and I really don't want to entertain the requirements for taking a dump in the garden!

So has anyone built, installed, etc. a sort of half decent way to have a pee in the garden? Lets assume there will be a sort of hidden corner in which to install something, but it won't have a roof, so won't be water proof.. Bucket I can tip on the compost heaps at one end of the scale, to a wall mounted urinal at the other... But what then to do with the waste - other than collect it in a bucket and tip it on the compost heap - Could I dig a pit and fill it with something that would keep the smell down?

How do those waterless ones in some cafe/airport toilets not smell?

Or am I just barking mad and should be made to walk back up to the house...

Cheers,

Gordon

Ps. SWMBO can use a "she wee" or a bucket...

[meow2222]

No need. A compost heap's passable when stuff is often added, but not in winter.

a bucket only adds issues

what's the point?

You sure want to complicate things

NT

[Tim Streater]

Yes, but only because none of the above is necessary. Pee has organic content and will add nitrogen to the soil. Human pee is sterile when it exits the body (unless you have a bladder infection). If you leave it in the loo bowl, it eventually starts to niff because airborne bacteria soon break down the urea (?) into ammonia.

Just pee into the garden; I can't imagine that it contains anything harmful. I'm also told that human pee deters badgers (male pee, at least).

[Bill Wright]

I know someone who makes a point of emptying his urinary catheter bag in the greenhouse.

Bill

[John Miller]

You could try a chemical toilet of the type used in camping & caravans (porta-potti). Aldi have been known to sell them at a reasonable price and these days the toilet fluid is usually organic. They're plastic and therefore should stand up to open-air use. You would need to carry the base back to the house to empty it unless you dig a pit in a corner and empty it there (which is what Caravan Rallies do).

John M

[Brian Gaff]

I was just wondering what designer managed to make a garden so far away from the property its for.

Brian

[Gordon Henderson]

House is ~260 years old. Gardens were old orchards/wool drying greens, piggeries and the whole area has been carved up, joined, re-carved, added to, taken away from, etc. over the past few 100 years. This arrangement is not unusual in this street.

Gordon

[Muddymike]

Pee in a pot and pour it onto the compost heap. It helps the composting process.

Mike

[Peter Crosland]

It seems a lot of work to avoid a short walk to the house. As for obtaining fresh wat from the river it may not be as fresh as you think and in any case you need a licence to abstract from it. Also the discharge close to a watercourse would not be a good idea. The bottom line forget it!

[Tim Lamb]

Long time since I checked but the riparian landowner used to be allowed

20cu.m/day extract and 10cu.m/day discharge without a licence.

I looked with a view to extracting useful heat but the mathematicians in here showed it would be too little to pursue.

[Gordon Henderson]

I am under the impression that I can legally take up to 20 tonnes of water from the river that borders my property per day without any sort of license. At least that's what the EA told me.

I did look into this sometime back - my plan was (still might be) to replace my mains incommer to the house from the river, via pump and suitable filters. That's not rocket science and it's very common where I live - not in the town, but up on the moor where everyone has a borehole.

And yes, it may be a short, 60m walk, (then muddy shoes off, through the house and upstairs to the loo), but we do socialise and want to make better use of the garden not just for ourselves, but for friends visting.

Not at all, and plans are hatching..

Cheers,

Gordon

[Gordon Henderson]

I've looked at all ways of using it too... It's not practical for domestic use - not deep enough to run a turbine (and then there's the issue of distance from the house!), but one of the in-line propellor jobbies might suppliment a solar panel to charge a big 12v lesure battery or 2 though. (And a garden 12v system is part of the plan)

Photo of the "river", looking upstream from my side:

The garden floor is some 2m above the river bed - just as well as it rose up 1.9m during the floods last November...

Gordon

[Geoff Pearson]

Do you own the land between your house and the garden - or is it shared? Would you not need LA planning permission/building control permission to install such pipe work and filters? Does your permission to abstract also allow you to discharge 20 tonnes of water into the river? It is all very interesting. I was hoping to see deigns of a French-style pissoir (which is not what the French call them).

[Adam Funk]

It might be art. Sign it "R Mutt".

[Gordon Henderson]

It's an interesting question - some is owned by neightbours, some is (as far as I can tell) unadopted.

The house deeds (and the neighbours) give me a right of way over it (I'm furthest away, or first in-line depending on which way you look), but whether that right would extend to running pipes, who knows.

I'd need an easement to do it legally, and when a neighbour looked into this for their property to re-route the mains water/gas/elec there was just 2 neighbours who's land was an issue for the easement - mine & one neighbour.

I never got as far as looking into planning permission, etc. just the thought of running 100m of piping up to the house, and electrickery down to the garden to drive the pump put me off.

10 AIUI. I'd no plans to discharge anything. (The plan of yesteryears was to save money on the water bill - but I'd still need to pay for sewerage), that and the cost on the potential installation put me off doing it.

The current garden water plans might not come to anything - I actually have a hosepipe there already - but it runs on the wall of 2 other neighbours gardens, and through the "shed" of one others... I was just thinking of alternatives, as it's a fiddle to turn on & off where the stop-c*ck is, and when I forget to turn it off in the winter, it freezes and bursts the fancy watering thing )-:

It seems theres no easy solution - this mornings chat over coffee has added the possibilities of young people who need to poo too - and we have a couple of young neices who visit, so what's gone from what might just be pissing in a posh bucket to a full-blown composting loo, but I reckon there's got some be something in-between that might fit the bill as it were...

Gordon

[Peter Percival]

Do you have/need/intend to get an extraction licence?

[Peter Percival]

If the OP can be seen doing so, that might be illegal.

[Geoff Pearson]

In the landed gentry it is normal practice for the men to adjourn to the front lawn after dinner for a communal piss. Utterly pissed, of course. I think it is female urine that marks the grass - or is that just dogs?

[mully]

In France, the inheritance laws meant that the small farms often got split up between several children. Also the desire to buy a plot to use as a potager means that many people buy a plot from a local farmer to grow their veg.

[The Natural Philosopher]

install a small klargester and buld a really NICE loo, and put incoming mains and electricity underground where they are safe from frost and small fingers/.