Review: Nature’s Head Dry Composting Toilet
Morgan Rogue 03.25.22
I can’t believe I’m about to write a review about a compost toilet. But honestly, I think they’re truly underrated, whether for everyday living, RV vacations, or for emergencies; compost toilets are the way to go.
When we were thinking of going off-grid and living full time in an RV, my husband brought up a compost toilet. I had only ever used a compost toilet once before at our friends cabin. I thought it was cool, but I also didn’t have to empty it or take care of it anyway.
So when my husband brought up having a compost toilet, I had mixed feelings. It sounds utterly disgusting to have to deal with your own urine and feces on a regular basis.
But let me tell you, I was sold on the whole thing after just the first couple of uses.
Compost toilets don’t take any water. Ok, well, they take a tiny bit. But they aren’t connected to any water.
Let me explain.
The compost toilet we ended up getting was Nature’s Head. Urine goes into one area and feces goes into another. In the part where the feces went into, we had to use some kind of substrate, like coco noir or moss or pine chip bedding or something along those lines. We also had to make sure it was moistened, not sloshing with water, but wet enough to help compost down. It has a hand crank agitator on the side that is used every time you go #2.
We had to empty the urine out every night, that was two adults and one child using it all day, every day.
We emptied the poo side every 3-4 weeks, depending on how often we were all going. When we emptied it, we made sure to give it a good wipe down on the inside, then we replaced it with fresh substrate.
Worried about smell? Worry not! It has a tube that connects to a fan which exhausts the smell. It does take a tiny bit of power for the fan, but it was always such an insignificant amount of power and could easily be powered with a battery bank.
We had to make sure the lid was always closed because even though there was a little lever that opened a hole for the poo to go down into, the lid still had to be closed for extra good measure that no bugs would get in that way. It was never a worry that bugs could in through the exhaust fan because there was a little netting on the inside that prevented them from getting to the poo.
One thing that’s a bit different about this particular compost toilet is the height. It’s taller than your average toilet. We needed a stepstool to enable us to sit on it and place our feet on it while we sat.
We chose Nature’s Head because after some research we liked the way it disassembled to get to the poo. The entire thing lifted up and we could take it off and dump it out. Some others only had the lids lift up or something else that didn’t seem as easy as this one.
It’s super quick to install with just four bolts that bolt down into the floor. We had it in the RV, but we were able to easily uninstall then reinstall it in our cabin when we got rid of the RV. Again, it takes just four bolts into the floor.
MSRP is $1,249. I know it seems like a lot for a toilet but the Nature’s Head Dry Composting Toilet traveled with us everywhere for three years and it’s still going strong. It’s absolutely amazing and totally worth every penny.
