I don’t know if you can see it or not, but there are a lot of little flies hanging out in this toilet. Maybe you can see it in the video I took. I cannot even describe the disgustingness!

Let me back up in this story, we purchased a Nature’s Head composting toilet at a tiny house convention. The man we purchased it from was very nice, gave us a discount, and every experience we have had with the company was great. So, I am not saying anything against the company or the product…but I am saying that for our situation as an Airbnb rental, this product did not work.

The first year we initially had no problems with bugs, but that was in the cooler weather. As the weather warmed, the bugs started to come. I researched and researched about how to get rid of them. I tried diatomaceous earth, organic bug spray, and switching from peat moss to coconut fiber. I experimented with the moisture content in the compost. Then I got desperate and went with full-blown pesticide. Even that didn’t work. The return of cooler weather brought relief.

The second year the bugs were even worse. The video, in which you can see usage instructions clearly posted on the toilet, shows a little bit of how bad it got. Maybe because the weather stayed warmer longer, maybe because several guests did not read the instructions, but, for whatever reason, we had tons of bugs. The only way that I found to decrease their numbers was to dump the whole thing and start over. So we did a lot of dumping and starting over. Those little bugs were really stressing me out. As a host, I want my guests to have a wonderful, relaxing experience. I don’t want them to have any concerns. I told my husband, “I don’t care what we have to do, we have to have a regular toilet.”

I am happy to report that we had a septic system dug, and we now have a regular toilet! I cannot even express how happy that makes me!

My conclusion about composting toilets… it may be possible to live with a composting toilet when all the people involved in using it understand how to use it, but I can tell you from our situation that it did not work at all. I never thought I would have to clean up all the nasty things that I cleaned up, and I sincerely hope to never have to go through that experience again.