We recently wrote about a
new water-less toilet called the Dry Flush. Most readers who commented on the article were not impressed. But one reader was, John Farr, who sent us this email:
Our travel is with a Casita travel trailer and has been limited by seasonal conditions. We bought the littlest and the lightest travel trailer we could find so we could camp out of the weather and have inside plumbing. It works wonderfully well in the right season. But high fuel costs hauling sludge around did not make sense and having it freeze up was worse.
So the idea of a functional Dry Flush had great appeal. I have used plastic bags, etc. but they were not easy to handle or dispose of. I read your article about the Dry Flush, then looked at their material and called the company. They made sense and have the financial backing to survive. So we ordered one and it arrived this week.
It looks good, it is solidly built, and one old man can pick it up and move it. So I set it in my bathroom (at our age we each have a bedroom and bathroom) and proceeded to start to use it. I will need to finish an entire cycle of a bag and remove it to tell you the entire story. Here is the first report:
After three days, there is no odor, and it is much easier to clean than a regular toilet. The unit has so many 'flushes" per series of bags so you do not flush it with each use. It is informative (polite discussion) to see just how much passes thru your system in a set period of hours. I am a big guy and have had a small bladder my entire life. So realizing how often I pee and the quantity has been interesting.
The unit is standard toilet high, 14 inches, which is a big improvement over the usual 10 to 12 inches in most RVs. Since the entire bowl inside has a Mylar fabric-type covering it is bigger than most RV toilets and you do not have to clean it! Bingo!
It comes with L brackets to fasten it to an RV. I do not think you would want it rolling around. However you can set it anywhere you wish -- the porch, guest room, etc. It runs off of electricity and has a rechargeable battery that runs off of 110 power or a RV electrical system.
For a cabin or even a second home, this would be tremendous and much easier than have to weatherize, buy into a sewer system or build a leach field.
As I finish this first bag I know what to study and see how Dry Flush really operates. My first impression is that this will be one of the hot new items of 2013 and it is a creative idea and well built unit to handle the job it was designed to do.
