Hello Emmanuel,
thanks a lot for that info!
Actually this week thusday I will be in Nyons with a study tour and the municipality will also show us some dry toilets. Your system I guess.
All the best, Florian

Hello,

to answer to Chris questions, the type of pipe is use for waste water so is not realy adapted to urine. Even if the hole is important, struvite can also block the flow at the first hole. If the pipe is nearly flat, urine stop to flow in the pipe and stay before the first hole and produce a lot of struvite and I is not good. If the pipe is inclined, urine can flow enven if the first hole of the pipe is not working and flow to other holes. Also what is important is the quantity of gravel below the pipe. If only the first hole is used the whole quantity of free space in the gravel can be used for urine treatment. And what about the rain that can come by the soil and mix with urine to treat it ? I did not do any work on that subject and it could be a good subject for research. I just know what it is working now for more than 10 years in public UDDT.

For Florian, there is no legal text in France for urine infiltration. In France There is just since 9 sept 2009 that dry toilets are reconised and apear in a legal text.
12 lines in 16 pages just to say that the compost has to be done in an area without contact with the soil and protected from the rain. You have to use the products from the dry toilets only in your garden without disturbing your neighbours.
In general in france legal texts ignore dry toilets.
It is why we mainly use legal texts on waste water coming out of houses. The text explaining how you have to do the infiltration of waste water of your house is the text named DTU 64.1 I join here (sorry for the ones who do not anderstand frensh).

I hope that it can help you

Thanks a lot! (it was just me then, who was ignorant about this system so far...)

I'll probably visit one of those systems next week.

Florian and Christian asked for photos of the Ecodomeo urine diversion composting toilet. We have got photos in our flickr collection here:
www.flickr.com/photos/gtzecosan/sets/72157625874807184/

For example:

Urine separation mecanism / mécanisme de séparation des urines by Sustainable sanitation , on Flickr

And:

Zone A et B /areas A and B by Sustainable sanitation , on Flickr

(I have used Jürgens how-to description with grabbing the BBC-code from flickr)

I have been saying to Emmanuel that he needs to put a little video up on his website so that it is easier to understand how the toilet works...

Regards,
Elisabeth

P.S. By the way, you can edit the subject line of your response, you do not heave to keep it to the default topic text. When the subject deviates too far away from the topic, then it could be useful to start a new topic (I think we are slowly getting to that point, although the discussion is still in the area of urine infiltration so it still fits).

Thanks a lot Emmanuel, very interesting!!

That seems to be a totally different way of urine separating toilets, compared to the ones I (and probably most readers here) know so far: www.ecodomeo.com/operation/
Both urine and feces go in the same hole, feces fall on the conveyer band and are transported to the back, while urine flows down and is evacuated to the drainage pipes. Did I get the concept properly? Is that the system typically used in France?

That system is probably not very good if you want to reusue the urine, because of fecal contamination of urine. But if you don't want to use urine anyway, as it seems to be the case in France, it's not an issue.

Now a question: what are the legal constraints of urine infiltration in France? Where this can be done and where it can't?

I've yet to look through all the links and attached documents you provided, but if you have more info on this concept, this would be most welcome (no problem if only in French).

Great to have your contribution here!
Florian

Dear all,

For the draw of the drain, I did it myself but in the original document (DTU 64.1), I found the right pitures (see attach file). If someone wants the whole frensh document, tell me but it is in frensh.
In France, we can not use urine for agriculture fertilisation and in the case of publics toilets, the aim is to put toilets in places where toilets are needed.

For the public UDDT, you can find details on web site of Ecosphère Technologies. Ecodomeo is also manufacturing the same type of system but more adapted to houses or buldings. In Some cases they are also used ouside in wood small buldings with urine infiltration.
www.saniverte.com
www.ecodomeo.com/english

is it what you were expected ?

Dear Emmanuel,
You were talking about dry toilets in France that are successfully operational over the last 10 years and use infiltration of urine. Could you share this example with some pictures or short explaination?

Regards,
Christian

Elisabeth, regarding your question the following answer:
Each soil type has a certain storage volume for nutrients (depending also on the chemical form the nutrients have). If it's full, it's full and only if it's emptied by e.g. plant roots, new nutrients can be taken up. Hence, it depends very much on the soil and crop type what's possible.

Then, as urine is a liquid and the liquid part will trickle down for sure (along certain pathes as you can't expect that the urine distributes and trickles down completely evenly such as worm holes, cracks in the soil...), it will also lead the nutrients further down. If they leach into the groundwater and when depends on many aspects such as depths of water level, soil type, plant uptake, amount of liquid applied, season and soil activity.

There is also a big difference between tropical and cold climates (to talk about the extrems). In a cold climate plants only take up nutrients for a certain period in the year (during the growth period). Nutrients in urine are readily plant available. If they are not taken up immediately, the majority leaches through and ends up directly in (Germany in the Northern and Baltic) the sea.

You have e.g. a certain storage capacity and slow release of nutrients applied in organic fertiliser. Maybe you remember this?

General conclusion: Yes, soil might work as storage itself but this has to be clarified case by case. I would not recommend to consider this as a general fact.

Hello all!

Emmanuel,
thanks a lot for this information. I was looking exactly as this type of experience from similar attempts in Europe...
I would be very interested to learn a bit more on the projects you refer to. Is there any more information easiyl available, e.g. website or documents?
In this project, did you mainly aim at infiltration of urine, or did you also attempt to have some fertilization effect happening?

Canady,
no new experiences in Moldova yet. We are currently revising our designs for uddt-school toilets, but we're not yet sure whether to test this infiltration/irrigation or not.

Best regards,
Florian

Thanks for this. A little question back to Martina: I have unfortunately no agricultural or hydrogeological background but I remember being told that urine can also be stored in the ground/soil itself and that it does NOT necessarily trickle down to the groundwater. Rather I thought that you can basically "store" it in the ground during the non-growing season and that it can be taken up again during the growing season. Is this maybe possible in very arid regions where no rainwater is there to flush the urine down to the groundwater?
(if I remember right, it was Hakan Jönsson who mentioned this thing about storing urine in the ground, but I could be wrong; didn't we also put it in our urine diversion technology review? www.susana.org/lang-en/library?view=ccbktypeitem&type=2&id=875 --> actually I just checked and we didn't mention it there).
Note that I am not talking about a lined storage tank or alike, but just in the ground itself.
Maybe it can only work with very specific hydrogeological conditions?

Dear all,

I just wanted to add one comments regarding depths of holes and fertilisation of plants.

If you want to fertilise plants with the urine, you have to be aware that you only have a fertilising effect in the growth period. Any fertiliser (that accounts for ALL fertilisers) is useless applied in a period of no growth (from end of october till end of february in Western Europe). Hence, especially the N applied then directly trickles down into the groundwater (if the groundwater table is not really deep).

If you want to fertilise crops like tomatoes, cereals, corn a pipe which lays 1 m below the surface is way to far down. The roots will never reach the fertiliser. Also, O&M of the system is nearly impossible.
Usually, liquid fertiliser application via hoses happens at surface level or max. 10cm below surface that the system is easily reachable and reparable.

Yours, Martina.

Dear Emmanuel and Florian,

Excuse me if I give a more detailed translation of the French drawing.
Terre Vegetal-- Organic Soil
Geotextile-- Geotextile (= heavy-duty cloth)
Épandrain-- 10-cm Perforated drain pipe (e.g., www.bricodepot.fr/petite-foret/node/467775)
Gravier lavé-- WASHED gravel

(By the way, the circle around the drawing is just a border and is not part of the technical drawing).

I am glad to know that these are working, but would like to know if all of the small flow of urine is possibly leaving the pipe via the first couple of perforations (thus the rest of the 8-12 m of pipe may be doing nothing). With the thinner (half-inch, 12 mm) hoses that I use here in the Amazon, I think there is a better chance of achieving a wider distribution of urine in the soil. (5-degree slope also seems a bit steep.)

It may be interesting to replicate in Europe the arrangement I apply here to see if it plugs, after how much time, how far down the hose, and after how much time does the natural decomposition unclog the hose (during which time one could use alternate hoses).

Florian, have you already started applying this at your work site?

Best wishes,
Chris