Dear Arttu,

Indeed, it would be interesting to know up to which kind of climate zone such a freezing toilet would be possibly economical. I can easily imagine the Scandinavian (cold) countries, and also my country (Germany), but perhaps Italy is already too hot for it? Mind you, people also have deep freezers in Italy so perhaps there is no real correlation with ambient temperature?
In any case, one would need to have a stable power supply.
I don't think anyone would promote them for really hot countries or regions with frequent power cuts...

Just the other day I received this e-mail from a Finish owner of a freezing toilet:

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Hello,

I saw your question from May this year at the Susana-forum. Did not want to register, so my answer is here:

Freezing toilets are great and useful, and my family has one (second one) at our cottage near Helsinki. To lawfully dispose of the waste you really have to understand composting.

It is very handy and odourless and nice. It is easy for me to empty. I always cover it in the compost with garden material.

I bought the first one in the 1990's, from Sweden, and also the second one. The reason why I found your question is I googled to find where I could find new buckets to it but seems the Swedish manufacturer (Rumla-something) is no more.

These toilets are coming more and more popular, now made in Finland, and the prices have come down.

Greetings from Finland


M.

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Would be nice to hear from more people who own such a toilet?

Regards,
Elisabeth

P.S. The e-mail by M. shows once again that people use Google to find information and that they sometimes land on our forum as a result of it which is nice.

This is an interesting concept, but using freezing in warmer climate countries seems to be the definition "fighting against the windmills"

Hi,
To answer Elisabeth's question - "is freezing killing pathogens as well?". I don't think anybody has reseached the helminths or the pathogens in the freezing toilet after the freezing, at least I don't know such a research. Would be quite intresting though! But I would think that some of the pathogens may be killed (those ones who can't tolerate the freezing) but some of them may still exist and be in a dormant stage, especially when people usually empty it quite often and the freezing time is not that long. That's why it is so important to compost the "icecube" properly. We really don't have these worm infections and such that much that people would actually be so hysterical about them. And also most of the people use this compost for flowers, berry bushies and such, not exactly grow food with it.
BR,
Sari


Sari Huuhtanen
Projektipäällikkö/Project Manager
Käymäläseura Huussi ry/Global Dry Toilet Association of Finland
Näsilinnankatu 21 A 20
33210 TAMPERE
Finland
www.huussi.net & www.drytoilet.org

Dear all,

Many thanks for your question Elisabeth, I will try to answer it best I can. This question about freezing toilest is very interesting and we do come across them all the time here in Finland. I do not know how it is in Sweden at the moment, but here in Finland indeed they are used quite a lot and people do like them.

In the case of indoor dry toilets, ventilation is of course a very important thing to plan and carry out properly to avoid odours and for the indoor models to work as they have planned. This often means that you have to make holes through the roof/walls/structures which is not something people want to do, especially in the old houses Freezing toilet is one of the few models you can use indoor *without installing any ventilation or other pipes*. So you only need electricity, blug it in and it's ready to go. So this makes it very attractive to many. This is one of the models for indoors that we get asked about very often and they do sell quite well in Finland.

It can only be used in warm places and people use them quite often in their cottages either as the principal toilet or as a backup toilet if for example they only have an outdoor dry toilet and they do not want to use it during night/rain/cold weather (we have about 500 000 cottages in Finland and the majority has an outdoor dry toilet). It is also used in permanent residences as a second toilet or in places where installing ventilation is very difficult. I've also seen it used in construction sites as it is a very simple and easy to use/transport kind of model.

It functions in a very simple way, it is basically a freezer for excrement. Liquids and solids go to the same bucket (about 30l) and it needs to be emptied quite often as the container is not very big. It freezes all the time and only needs a biodegradable bag in the bucket which you take out when the container is max 2/3 full. You put the bag with the frozen excrement in a compost and usually add dry matter/bulking material as the toilet waste is quite moist when its starts to melt. After-composting is very important to do properly as the excrement is raw when it melts and need to be composted well (In Finnish condition min. one year). Compost needs to be closed to make sure there is no run-offs to the environment.

There are Finnish manufacturers that have their own freezing models and the price are around 1200-1400?. It does not consume a lot of electricity (compared to incenirating models for example).

See example models here: www.biolan.fi/english/default4.asp?active_page_id=1071 www.pikkuvihrea.fi/en/kuivakaymalat/16-p...kastava-kaymala.html

You can see these models and many more in the exhibition of the Dry Toilet Conference in August! More information: www.huussi.net/en/activities/dt-2015/

With best regards,

Karoliina Tuukkanen (Ms.) Project Coordinator Global Dry Toilet Association of Finland Näsilinnankatu 21 A 20 33210 TAMPERE Finland phone: + 358 45 875 3576 e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. www.huussi.net & www.drytoilet.org

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Join us in the next International Dry Toilet Conference on 19th - 22nd of August 2015 www.drytoilet.org/dt2015

Came across an example produced by Privetti in the past. Now hoping that Ecotoiletman (Richard Saillet) will chime in.

I had never heard about "freezing toilets" before until yesterday. I came across this term because someone added the link to a newly created Wikipedia article on freezing toilets onto a page that I have on my watchlist (the page about dry toilets: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_toilet)

Here is the link to this new page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freezing_toilet

The article is short (just a "stub" in fact) and parts were translated from Finnish, it seems:

A freezing toilet is a kind of dry toilet based on electricity.[1]

Freezing toilets were developed in Sweden in the 1970s, but now production is in Finland.[2][3]

Freezing toilets work by electricity, as they are plugged into the wall. It doesn’t need water, pipes or sanitation, ventilation or chemicals to work. The function of freezing toilets is based on freezing. The contents freeze in a short time stopping bacteria from growing and keeping it odourless. Consequently, it doesn’t need mixtures or other chemicals.[4]

Freezing toilets can be moved, as they only need a plug to work. The machine consumes about 40 Watts.

Therefore my question to any Finnish readers (or perhaps others from Scandinavian countries?). Do you concur with the information given here? Are these toilets an interesting development or just something that sounded good at the time but didn't really take off?

Kind regards,
Elisabeth