Planning a Bathroom
So you’ve decided you want a bathroom in your camper… Now what? Well here is a handy guide to get you started, containing a brief overview of the toilet options available. I hope you find this article helpful, I plan to add a section about showers shortly.
Considerations
There’s a long standing debate in the campervan world as to whether or not you should sacrifice living space for a bathroom. Some go in for the full on bathroom with a toilet and shower, some just take what’s known as a ‘porta potty’ which is basically a small chemical toilet. This toilet is then usually stored in a cupboard or under the seats and can be used inside the van, with or without a privacy curtain depending on how comfortable you are with the other occupants of the van or is used outside in a small pop up ‘toilet tent’. In some cases I’ve even seen the use of a small bath or jacuzzi inside a van!
With an array of options available to us and a preference formed from previous conversations we sat down to make some plans for Gandalf. We are hoping to remain off-grid as much as possible and so we personally feel that a toilet of some kind would be a basic essential for our ‘vanlife’. Although it’s preferable to make use of rest stop facilities, we do want to have the means should we find a nice remote spot to camp for a few days or even a week. It wouldn’t really be practical or polite to go completely wild and utilize a bush or something, you can just imagine how much fun that would be in the Canadian winter…
* In addition to the above as of 2021 most campervan/motorhome sites are requesting that you have your own facilities onboard as their toilet and shower blocks remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Toilets
Having already decided to install a toilet of some kind it was time to investigate the options available. We initially thought there wouldn’t be many options but it turns out there are quite a few, here are just some of them:
Bucket & Bag
Price Range £0- £30
The cheapest and easiest system on this list without a doubt is the bucket/bag method. This is where you essentially have a bucket lined with a bag or just a bag in which to store the… ‘output’. This bag will then be thrown away at the earliest convenience, examples of homemade and the particularly aptly name ‘Kampa Kharzi’ in grey, can be seen below.
Whilst this is potentially a great option if you only camp on weekends or very shorts trips and could wait until you got home to empty this, I feel its not robust enough or comfortable enough for daily use or for longer trips. I should imagine running out of bags or even worse having in a hole in one of the is probably going to turn a great trip quite sour rather sharply. Other challenges to face would include being able to regularly find suitable bins in which to deposit the bag and last but certainly not least, the most glaringly obvious issue with this method is privacy.
It would be quite the feat and a lot of unnecessary work to build a whole room, big enough for a person just to stick one of these in. Alternatively you could take to carting a toilet tent around with you, that you pop up and put inside your pitch or awning. The downsides of which would be having to bring this in if it was particularly windy outside, no-one really wants a bucket toilet and tent launching itself across the campsite! If you are camping in particularly cold areas you can imagine not being in a hurry to leave the warm toasty van to venture out to the freezing toilet tent. Nor would you be particularly keen on stumbling around in the dark to use your facilities at night. I can also imagine its not particularly attractive to your neighbours and would pose some issues with privacy despite the tent.
If you decide to forgo the tent and just have this inside the van you really only have two options:
1. Becoming comfortable enough with those around you to just pull this out and do your business in front of all and sundry.
2. You could rig up some kind of shower curtain in the van to pull around you,.
But lets face it, both these options have issues with… smells and well… noise.
The Incinerator
Price Range £2300 to buy + cost of bags.
Next up we have the incinerator! Whilst this does sound like some really cool futuristic idea, what it quite simply boils or ‘burns’ down to is you place a bag into the toilet and proceed to do the business before pressing the magic button and boom toasted.. ‘output’. At a later date when full you simply pull out a little pan at the bottom and empty the clean ash remains. This sounds like a great option: clean, odourless, space-saving etc.. However the teeny tiny problem with this is electricity.
The Incinerator uses electricity to heat up elements, which take care of the actual burning. Whilst in a house this may work out to cost a negligible amount electricity, it can be a massive issue in a van. Imagine your habitation battery, the one the runs your cooking facilities, heating, lights and everything else you have in the living area goes flat.. You now cannot flush the toilet. This, in my opinion will leave you no better off than the bag and bucket scenario. For us personally, we do not want to spend our time worrying about have enough juice to flush the loo, managing the electricity use within the van is going to be quite the challenge as it is. I have heard that they are developing a version of this that runs off gas, however you would then have to manage your gas supply across your cooking, heating and now the toilet.
In addition to this you must make sure not to run out of the ‘special’ bags that you use. We did look into this and found the bags expensive and hard to get hold of whilst on the road. Alongside this being the most expensive option on the list outright, we then also don’t want to be paying a premium on top for each use.
The Flushing Toilet
Price Range £200- £1000
There are a few different varieties of flushing toilets, these include: Gravity, Macerator and Vacuum.
- Gravity- works in the same way as domestic toilet, pedal or electric flush variants available. The black holding tank must be directly underneath it.
- Macerator- powered blades turn the waste into a ‘slurry’ before depositing to the tank, the black waste tank can be located anywhere in the vicinity.
- Vacuum- waste is pulled from the bowl via a vacuum before being deposited into the tank. This method uses less water than the gravity option and can be used in conjunction with the macerator method for maximum efficiency.
Whilst this option is popular on boats, and obviously widely used in homes we did not realise it would still be an option in a van. It’s certainly a tidy way to take care of such matters but it does come at a cost… Water and electricity.
Alongside power and fuel, water is another of the most valuable assets you have in a van and so to use some of this precious resource on flushing a toilet is perhaps a little wasteful and ultimately expensive in terms of money and time.
Firstly this kind of toilet will require installation of a black tank, this is not the kind of waste you can just dump anywhere. Obviously it’s not ideal to dump grey water, which comes from from washing up and washing hands but if it were an emergency and you were using eco-friendly soaps it would not be the worst thing to happen. Contents of a black tank however, are a whole other ball game. This waste must be disposed of at designated ‘dumping stations’, these stations offer facilities where you can safely pump the tanks out directly into the sewer system so the waste can go off to be treated. These dump stations are also where you would fill up your water tanks with all the clean drinking water you need for living and of course flushing the toilet. These dump stations range from free, pay as you go or members only. The last time I looked into this the pay as you go ones were charging anything from $5-15 a time to empty and fill up.
Depending on how many people are in the van, how much the toilets is used and how big the tanks are you may find yourself needing to stop off once or twice a week. I doubt it would be a quick process to pump both the black and grey waste tank and fill up with water. I can imagine quite long queue and you may have to drive far off your course to locate a station, so it may not be an ideal solution for a somewhat ‘untethered’ life.
The Chemical Toilet
Price Range: £25- £350
The most popular choice for a camper conversion is the chemical toilet, also commonly known as a Cassette Toilet because of its size and modest cost. The built in version of this toilet (below, bottom left and right) is the most expensive of the two and will require electricity for the flush. It also requires a large hole to be cut into the side of the van and a lockable door attached, allowing for the removal of the black tank for emptying. The portable version (below, top left and right) on the other hand, requires no electricity and saves on space. The portable version can be packed away under seating or in a cupboard, it also gives you more space in the bathroom for showering as you can simply move it in and out as required.
Essentially, the idea of these toilets is that instead of using water for flushing, you use a mix of chemicals. There are two tanks within the chemical toilet one in which you pour the chemical used to flush with and the other ‘black’ tank which holds the waste and additional chemicals. These additional chemicals help to turn the waste into a partial ‘slurry’, because of this there are restrictions on where you can empty this toilet. Again this type of toilet leads to trips to the dump station and because of the smaller size of the black tank, the visits will be more often.
Emptying this toilet is perhaps the worst of the bunch, unlike flushing toilets which gather in a large tank under the van and you use the supplied hose to pump this out. The chemical toilet requires that you detach the tank and carry it over to a long drain at the station pour it away. You’ll obviously be praying at this point that you do not splash yourself in the process and that the small outlet of which the contents pour out doesn’t get blocked. I have heard it is particularly unpleasant if there are many people emptying into the drains at the same time. I’m sure I’ve already put you off your lunch at this point but just add to things the chemicals are bright green or blue in colour which in turn dyes the ‘slurry’.
Another downside if the above was not enough, is that this is also the least eco friendly option of them all. Dumping the contents of this toilet in a field or beauty spot would be a big no no, is the equivalent of having a sewage treatment plant leaking everywhere. You need to remain mindful that the chemicals could pose serious harm to wildlife in the vicinity. The chemicals you need to purchase are not particularly expensive and are widely available at camping stores and the likes, even Walmart if you’re in the US. Running out of said chemicals would render the toilet unusable.
The Composting Toilet
Price Range: £100 – £1k
A rather new entrant to the campervan toilet market but one growing in popularity is the compost toilet. It is becoming a leading option for campervans because it doesn’t require water, the top of the line versions do require a small amount of electric to run a 12v extractor fan. It is possible, however to use a small solar fan which will supply enough electric for the fan. This also happens to be the most environmentally friendly option of the lot. The whole premise of this toilet is to separate the urine from the other deposits, which eliminates smells and will eventually turn the contents of the main compartment into usable compost.
As far as the dreaded emptying goes the urine which has been diverted into a pot (complete with a lid) is emptied daily, and can be disposed of either at a rest/gas stop toilet or dispersed over a wide area of grass. Urine itself does not damage grass unless it is consistently emptied onto the same spot. Urine has been scientifically proven to help trees grow, due to the nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium within it and when watered down can be a very safe and effective fertilizer for cabbage, beets, cucumbers, and tomatoes.
The main bucket containing the solids can be used for around six months (daily full time use for two people) before it would need emptying. To dispose of this waste, you can either empty at the dump stations, campsite that have composting toilets, rubbish bins or by burying it. Another option for this is to use the now fertilizer for non edible plant life, though this would depend on which medium you mixed with it. As far as mediums go it is best to mix with peat moss or coconut coir, however wood chips, bark chips, sawdust, shredded dry leaves and ash can also be used. Sawdust and peat are easily obtainable from most stores and as you should at least be getting a few months if not six out of the toilet at a time you should not need to purchase this to often.
There are a few options with regards to the actual units themselves, which affect the price and portability. You could build something yourself only paying out for the materials, this is a common way to go as you can easily purchase a divider insert, the cost of which varies but is usually less than £100. You could make this into a static feature and have a bench where you can remove the pot and bucket or you can have a smaller self contained portable unit which, could be moved out of the bathroom to give more space whilst showering. You could also save time and pick up one of the smaller self contained units that have been pre made, these are usually made of wood and in some cases a moulded plastic option, these can come custom painted and are often brightly coloured.
Lastly and the most expensive is to buy either the natures head (above, top left) or the airhead (above, right), both options come in around the £900 mark. The benefits of these two despite the expense are the extra features, these toilets come with a hose and an small 12v extractor fan. Although this will use some electricity, the setup greatly helps with the composting process by keeping the toilet dry and maintaining hygiene. The airhead and the natures head also come with a spindle which is used rotate the compostable section ensuring even aerobic conditions. You can of course move these toilets out of the bathroom to empty and clean them, but the vent hose will remain attached to the wall.
We’ve decided to go with the composting toilet option, and have purchased the Airhead Marine. We will be utilising a solar fan to take take care of the electricity requirements of the toilet, and are stocked up on coconut coir.