As I had promised in my last article a few days ago, I am going to live-test the new source separation toilet (or NoMix toilet) at home before finally deciding if this is the one I´d be fitting to my new sailing yacht. In this, I chose a weekend with my two boys and a “many” menu of tasty, protein-rich and digestive foods, such as BBQ, a Goulash, huge fruit bowls with joghurt or a freshly baked meringue-covered rhubarb cake. Yep, I went all in for dump-testing the aspirant for our new boat´s toilet.
In the end, it was a surprising outcome, a bag full of sh***t proudly produced by us three guys and a very deep insight into how a NoMix-toilet works, what it does fine and where the limits are. But before you go on reading, let me spoil and warn you, here´s a disclaimer to protect your wellbeing: I will be talking about poo, about urine, about odors and I will do it in honest words. Though I of course haven´t taken pictures of the dookies produces, the stuff I show may be seen as distasteful by some. So, please, don´t scroll any further if this topic may overwhelm you. For all the others, let´s dive the straight in, shall we?!
Testing the Trelino Timber at home
I´ve researched quite some time what a NoMix toilet was and also consulted people who already use them, most – if not all of them – in their motorhomes and caravans. There, 100 percent of the feedback is indeed very positive. If not enthusiastic: “No chemical odors, no fecal odors … it´s perfect!”, said my own brother who employs the source separation system in his VW California for two years now. So, went for the experiment setup in flat as follows:
I placed the Trelino toilet right at the entrance to my WC, but outside the room. Right in the little entrance lobby of my flat. The idea is that my bathroom has an automatic ventilation system that is activated by moisture (when showering) and also when using the toilet. This ventilator is pretty strong. Which is fine, but not for my experiment. The idea was to “provoke” an overfill of the toilet. With the help of my kids and my wonderful pro-digestive weekend homecooked menu I wanted to see if the toilet … works.
Furthermore, filled to the brim with poo, I wanted to see if the litter really works. Does it dry the matter as fast as promised? Does it really prevent the feces from developing the nasty stink? As all the other rooms of my flat have a door to the lobby, I would easily noticed any odors, either from my bedroom, the kid´s room or the living room. My children, as usual, had great aspirations and instantly agreed to provide their digestive system for my experiment, for the sake of this scientific approach and a professional product test. It promised great fun – and as it turned out, it indeed was a fun weekend!
Setting up the NoMix-Toilet for the first time
And so, whilst preparing mountains of tasty food from Friday to Sunday, enjoying feasts and so much laughter with the kids, I prepared the new toilet for its first use. Setting up the Trelino is a no-brainer, you should check out my first article of the unboxing of this NoMix toilet, where I´ve explained the different parts and shown them in detail. Now it was time to make her ready for use. Trelino offers special poo-bags. These are of course biodegradable and may be bought from the company as well. Otherwise, any other bag can be utilized as long as it is watertight.
My brother told me, that depending on how long the bag will remain inside the solid matter-bucket, sometimes the dissolving process of the bag may make her rip apart when taken out. Which would then be a huge mess: No matter if this happens inside the boat (or caravan) or outside, on the way to the next bio trash bin. His hint was to have an ordinary plastic bag in the bucket as a form of safety barrier, just in case. I thought that was a good idea, so I put both in. For the solid matter part, what you need is litter.
This is a granulate that is 100 percent made of natural products. In this case, softwood fibers. It´s very lightweight, kind of harder than expected. It is in no way comparable to catty litter, which often comes with a sharp stiff smell. The litter for NoMIx toilets, at least the one I utilized from Trelino, is smelling very nicely: Like freshly chopped dried wood. Natural, like … if you enter a Sauna or something. Not bad, in fact, it smells pretty nice.
Before taking your first dump, it is advised to take one cup full of litter and put it in the bottom of the basket: As a first layer, welcoming the … filling. Of course, later when sailing, I don´t want to scoop out the litter and put it into the bucket with bare hands. Everyone has this one shameful coffee mug at home, right? The one you got at your last company´s Christmas celebration, the one you mother-in-law gave you for a present or just the one pretty ugly mug you´d never dare to drink your precious morning coffee from, right? Well, now this neglected item finally found a meaningful purpose, I´d say.
After putting in the first layer of litter, I assembled the urine canister. Both put inside the corpus, the separator (made of PVC) on top, finally crowned by the wooden toilet seat. Voilá, the new source separation toilet was ready to go. And it couldn´t have been timed better, because right after our first lunch, a freshly cooked, spicy Hungarian Goulash, the bowels had prepared an XXL-sized inaugural filling.
Just like any normal toilet …
So, how is it like using the NoMix-toilet? First of all, if you take care of the seat height when installing such a toilet, the seating position and process of getting rid of either fluids and matter are completely the same compared to ordinary bowls. Trelino for example offers three sizes of their toilets, S, M and L, with different seat heights for each. The smallest is 33 centimeters high, which is very low in my eyes, M comes with 37, still too low for my taste. The 47.5 centimeters of my L-version are just right!
So, if you opt for a smaller size, make sure you have a base mount or spacer to bridge the height difference. Sitting too crunched down is not good for the system! My kids and I discovered no differences. The were a bit reluctant at the beginning and had some doubts if it was possible to really “hit” the right areas of the toilet, but this turned out to be baseless. The urine just cannot enter the backside entrance for the solid feces, vice versa, it is impossible for a dookie to erroneously slide down the funnel and plummet into the urine canister. Taking a pee whilst standing should already been educated out of every boy in the world (when a proper, clean WC is available), and so peeing should of course be carried out in a seating position.
The entrance “hole” through which the solid matter falls down into the bucket is of a decent diameter. As the manual of Trelino states, it can even take severe diarrhea, which can of course happen to crew members when sailing, the litter can take this as well. So, we just sit down, relax and do our business. When finished, scoop a handful litter with our “mug of shame”, skillfully aim and bury the fresh poo under a soft blanket of wooden granulate. That´s it. The urine will immediately flow down into the urine tank. Here I discovered that it makes sense to wipe the urine-fullel clean with a toilet paper (possibly also with a spritz of the special cleaner (more on that later). If not, residue urine will solidify and make for not so nice yellow stains, dust particles or little fly stick to them – looks not so nice. This cleaning process emulates the flush of an ordinary toilet and should be a matter of course.
Does a NoMix Toilet stink?
I must say, apart from the fact that shitting in my lobby was a very strange feeling to begin with, it is an equally strange feeling to don´t flush. As one of my boys said: “Something is missing …” I catch myself multiple times reaching back for the flush-button out of sheer reflex, my kids do the same. It really feels awkward at first, then funny, not to flush or do anything at all. Other than that, utilizing the separation toilet is no different from any other ordinary WC. So, does it stink? The ultimate question …
I can assure you that after gormandizing a full weekend my “3 guys 1 bag”-idea blossomed. One of us three was on the seat virtually all the time. The flat didn´t smell at all! We went out to have fun in the city, when entering my flat again, we snuffed and tried to catch something … but there wasn´t even the slightest hint of the mountain of shit that was buried in layers underneath the softwood litter. Seriously, no stink at all! It´s a bit different when opening the cover (to take another dump). Then, of course, some of that unwanted odor rose to the nose. But not the full program! Still, the earthy, wooden smell of the timber chips dominated, the poo was a mere “escort” in the background. Which I consider a win: As I implicated at the start of this article, my intention was to provoke an overflow of poo so to see if and when it would stink. Three guys taking their dumps on a daily basis for three days … on my boat, I would have emptied the bucket far earlier and not after three days! So, to finally answer that question: No, it does not stink!
Disposing of the matter, cleaning the separation toilet
That said, let´s look at how to deal with all that stuff. Sunday afternoon, the experiment was over. It was time to check for the contents. And here´s the surprise: I would never have thought of how much there would be! Just wow! Starting with the urine canister. It was full to the brim. I was lucky not having caused a spill! It can take 10 liters of urine, and we almost got it filled up!
By the way, spilling is prohibited by the little blue insert you can see in the picture above. This is put on top of the canister´s opening. The little membrane is made of very soft latex or silicone. It is closed by nature and just opens up when liquid is coming down from above – I´ve taken the picture with using water from the tap. So, imagine this is urine. When no liquid comes through, the membrane closes: It´s a spill prevention and it also prevents urine-odors to get out.
When I emptied the almost 10 liters of urine (sorry, I´ve warned you about the pictures …) into my water toilet, I realized how fast we had filled it up. Three days. So, in normal use this canister should be emptied every two days or on a daily basis best. This will also prevent the formation of nasty ammonia gas, which really stinks, and hamper the formation of urine scale. Cleaning should be done with a 1:7 dilution of vinegar and water, which I tried out and it worked nicely. Water alone must not be used, by the way.
Otherwise, Trelino offers a natural based cleansing agent which I tried out as well. It smells really good and dissolved the chemicals the urine by enzymes, 100 percent naturally. After emptying the canister I thoroughly cleaned and rinsed it, also the membrane and lids, had those dried and now it looks and smells like brand new. Whilst the spill membrane is a wear part and should be replaced twice a season (every 3 monts), the canister and also the bucket can be used much, much longer.
“Bag´s away!”
The almost filled up canister blew my mind. I mean, when going to toilet and flushing it all down we never really get a sense of just how much feces and urine we produce. Every day! Taking out the bag full of poo was an equally sobering act: Three guys shitting for three days, here we are, a respectably sized volume, wouldn´t you agree? It still didn´t smelled at all and also my fear of a partially disintegrating biodegradable bag turned out to be a bit exaggerated. My kids so badly wanted to weigh that bag, but I refused to put our poo on the kitchen scale, I´d have never enjoyed any cake baked with its measurements again.
Although I know that this intense three day hardcore test of the new NoMix toilet cannot make up for a real sailing environment, I consider my setup and the outcome as a success. Apart from the big fun and so much laughter I´ve had with my kids during this highly scientific experiment set up in my little lobby, this product really holds up to the marketing promises. Easy, convenient and non-smelly. Perfect. And so my decision is final: I will have the Trelino NoMix source separation toilet installed in my new sailing yacht!
NoMix toilets for sailboats?
But is this an alternative for your boat as well? If your sail program is comprised of predominantly daysailing and weekend-trips, it can indeed make life (and maintenance) so much easier for you. No more seacocks and valves, no more smelly black water tanks, no more leaking pumping toilets and stinky, grimy pipes. You just take out the poo-bag like any other trash bag and empty the canister into washrooms of the marinas. Or, alternatively, when underway, have it dumped into the open waters (where it would have landed anyway). The only question is: Even if the poo bag is dissolving after a while, can it be dumped into the sea and sink? Because, leaving a trail of floating shit-bags in your wake is an absolute no-go!
Aboard a yacht where you and your family are spending multi-week long trips, boats larger than 40 feet with enough electric power, I´d rather say that the electric toilet is a better choice. Even more so if you receive frequent guests. This was always a downside in pumping WCs as well: People not familiar with boats were often appalled by the code of conduct of an ordinary toilet. Modern electric toilets offer carefree covenience and work just spotlessly. So, in my view, a NoMix toilet is more suited for “real” sailors, sportive skippers and racers as well as smaller boats and owners who seek a simple, completely maintenance-free system. Whilst my Omega 42 is clearly a yacht that would embrace the luxury of an electric toilet, my use-case for the boat as well as my character as a more “caravan”-like sailor makes me tend towards the latter. And be honest, this looks just amazing, doesn´t it?
For now, I deliver the Trelino Timber NoMix toilet to my shipyard. The guys there applaud my decision: Actually, they tell me, they have two boats in refit right now, ripping out the pumping toilets, tanks and pipes, installing composting toilets as well. The “revolution” that has changed caravaning a few years ago seems to slowly get a grab in the sailing business, and I like it. For now, the dress rehearsal in my boat´s head looks fantastic – the guys will now check how to securely fix it and come up with an idea for the ventilation. I for my part take measurements for a nice wooden base mount and a Teak grating, which will perfectly match the wooden details of this beautiful toilet.
You might also like to read these related articles:
Should I go for a Trelino NoMix-Toilet for my new sailboat?
Gloves on! Repairing a pumping WC
Taking a dump – on sailboat heads