What Is An Incinerating Toilett?

How do you handle sewage when water is in short supply, or you don’t have a sewer or septic system, like a below grade basement renovation or a cottage? As the name implies, an incinerating toilet burns human waste. The most common are standalone units.

Incinerating toilets can handle liquid and solid waste. They exhaust odorous gases through a vent pipe which, in the best models, is fitted with a catalytic converter to “scrub” the gases and make them harmless. When used properly, incinerating toilets don’t require much cleaning, with the only maintenance periodically emptying the ash reservoir.

An incinerating toilet is shaped like a regular one. A trap door at the bottom of the cone-shaped bowl opens to a waste reservoir that houses the incinerator. Some models make you first insert a cone-shaped paper liner into the bowl; others feature a small water reservoir for cleaning the bowl.

When you flush, the contents (and the liner, if there is one) fall into the reservoir or are delivered there by a screw gear. Then they’re reduced to ashes when the burn cycle begins.

A single-use produces about a teaspoon of ash, which amounts to about a cup of ash per person per week. The ash collects in a reservoir at the base of the toilet under the incineration chamber that needs to be emptied periodically, usually by simply removing a drawer. The ash is free of bacteria and pathogens and rich enough in potassium and phosphorous to double as fertilizer in the garden.

The burn cycle typically stops when someone lifts the lid. It’s reactivated by pushing the button (equivalent to flushing), making it possible for two or more people to use the toilet in succession. An electric incinerating toilet energizes a radiant heat element in the incinerating chamber. Each burn cycle consumes 1-1/2- to two kilowatt-hours of electricity, which at the national rate of around $0.15 per kWh amounts to $0.22 to $0.30 per flush.

They are not inexpensive, with the starting range at about $5,000 Canadian, but when you gotta go, the price could be much better than the alternative of using an out house at the cottage or ripping up the concrete floor in your basement.