Poll

Do you use an outhouse?

Daily dumper.
4 (16%)
Got one for backup.
4 (16%)
Only when I visit rednecks.
14 (56%)
I'd rather explode than use one.
3 (12%)

Total Members Voted: 25

Author Topic: Outhouses: Do you use one?  (Read 14869 times)

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madlabs

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Outhouses: Do you use one?
« on: December 24, 2011, 01:36:32 PM »
Just curious how many folks still have an outhouse. Me, I'm a daily dumper. ;D

TomW

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #1 on: December 24, 2011, 02:53:12 PM »
Just curious how many folks still have an outhouse. Me, I'm a daily dumper. ;D

Technically they are illegal here. Still a few around "grandfathered in".

Used one for years in my youth. Longer ago than I care to admit. Even had a heated seat for those coooold days.

Tom

madlabs

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #2 on: December 24, 2011, 02:55:44 PM »
Illegal here too, I think. Luckily, I don't have to worry about anyone seeing it. :)

Boss

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #3 on: December 24, 2011, 03:37:22 PM »
We have four here in New Mexico
How about this for an alternative?

merry X-Mas everyone
Brian
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madlabs

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #4 on: December 24, 2011, 03:56:00 PM »
That makes me think of Dave Chappele's spoof music video about R. Kelly:

The only thing
that makes my life complete
is when I turn your face
into a toilet seat...

Or South Park: Santa meets Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo

birdhouse

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #5 on: December 24, 2011, 03:59:29 PM »
i've got two of em up at my ranch.  they're probably illegal as well.  my place is a half hour drive on a dirt roads from a town of 94 people.  there isn't even a gas station there.  don't think anyone will notice my outhouses...

i add lime every so often.  it seems to help balance the PH and make it decompose better.  the thing almost never stinks, but usually just has an earthy smell to it.  

adam

Norm

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #6 on: December 24, 2011, 05:03:01 PM »
60 years ago.
Had one for 15 years , a small room in the corner of the garage.
 A deluxe '2 seater'....taper cut holes so the cut out fit in the hole
without falling thru ...rats never bothered much while the chicken coop
and the compost pile were nearby. .....just kick on the door before entering
gave them plenty of warning they didn't like being surprised. :)
Norm.

wooferhound

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #7 on: December 24, 2011, 05:06:01 PM »
The last outhouse that I used was when I visited Saint Petersburg Russia in 2005. It was behind a restaurant that was miles from anything else.
It was stinking hugely too

madlabs

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #8 on: December 24, 2011, 07:08:09 PM »
i've got two of em up at my ranch.  they're probably illegal as well.  my place is a half hour drive on a dirt roads from a town of 94 people.  there isn't even a gas station there.  don't think anyone will notice my outhouses...

i add lime every so often.  it seems to help balance the PH and make it decompose better.  the thing almost never stinks, but usually just has an earthy smell to it.  

adam

Yup, I use a little lime every time and don't pee in it, and it has very little smell at all.

kenl

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #9 on: December 27, 2011, 11:10:21 AM »
 Had a buddy living out in the country had one. His house was around 300sq/ft with no running water or electric. We'd have keg parties out there about once a month. The girls would use the outhouse and the guys would use the closest tree. As I recall did not smell any worse then one at a park and much better then some of the portalets I've used on job sites. Damn thing would be cold as hell in the winter it was northern MN after all.

kenny
seemed like a good idea at the time

ghurd

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #10 on: December 28, 2011, 12:40:47 AM »
I clicked "Only when I visit rednecks", except there is nobody there where I use one.

Only when fly in fishing in the QC bush.
And those puppies STINK!
Pretty much a hole with a tall wood box over it.  No fancy porta-potty vent pipe or anything.
Not sure if the lime was over or under applied (many operator's errors?).

Mixed company.  Rule was if someone was going that direction, they would anounce it, nobody would look that direction until the person returned.
That way we could leave the door open!

The, uh, "people looking for trees" would upon arrival have a look around for 'shiney bushes' (don't eat berries from bushes with half the foliage shiney).
We'd arrange to know where, uh, "the propane" tanks were.
If someone said "I'm going to check the propane!", we all knew what that meant.
G-
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Madscientist267

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #11 on: December 28, 2011, 01:00:54 AM »
My last visit to one was at a bluegrass festival in NC.

They dug 'em up before each season, then filled 'em back in when it ended.

On to a different set of holes every year.

And they stunk.

Never really tried to figure out if they just hadn't "matured" enough to balance out the funk.

Didn't need to. They had "manured" enough to bring out the funk; it was my understanding that general consensus dictated that there was no distinction between the two.  ;D

Steve
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How much magic smoke it contains does !

freejuice

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #12 on: December 28, 2011, 05:20:27 PM »
As a kid I used a few that were located nearby old abandonded share cropper homes.

LOL when I was building my house in the 1980's...the building codes folks would let you have a temporary power pole for construction, but they not let you hook up power to the side of your house until you either connected to the sewer tap or in my case, installed a septic tank...I asked them why such an unsual rule...they said it was designed to keep people from digging outhouses.

....oddly I have read somewhere  that  it's more sanitary to have an outhouse than is is to have a flushing toliet in your home.
 
 I do not use public facilities.....I keep a roll of "hockey tickets" in each vehicle, I find it more easier to poop in the woods like a bear than to plop down on a public toliet seat no matter how clean or appears to be....

I think the health harzards are far less with copperheads and posion ivy

Sweetgum and popular makes good "tickets" in a pinch....

Redneck graduate- summa cum laude  


Simen

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #13 on: December 29, 2011, 03:03:37 AM »
We have a cottage on our property which we rent out to tourists during summer, and it have an outhouse that are quite pleasant. We often use it ourselves in the summer, just because it's nearer when we are out in the garden... ;)

We sprinkle a handfull of bark over the deeds in the hole after each use, and that keeps the smell at bay, and helps the decomposing. It doesn't get used in the wintertime, so when spring comes we dig out the goodies, which are by then almost finished decomposed, and move it to a heap where it turns to prima fertilizer during the summer. :)
I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. - (R. A. Heinlein)

birdhouse

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #14 on: December 29, 2011, 03:10:22 AM »
Quote
we dig out the goodies

holy sh*t, why on earth would you ever purposefully shovel your own poo?  not to mention random strangers poo that rent your place!!!!

i'd rather build/dig a new one any day of the week!

uuuuggghhhh!

adam

edit: i've got 2 outhouses at my place, so know how it is, but would never even think about removing the contents!

edit again:  i almost puke on the rare occasion i need to "mush down the pyramid" to evenly fill the hole better.

done with edits
« Last Edit: December 29, 2011, 03:16:07 AM by birdhouse »

Simen

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #15 on: December 29, 2011, 04:11:38 AM »
When it's shoveltime, there isn't any poo left in its initial state; just near-dirt, like the soil one find beneath a very rotten log...

On a side note;
we do not use the human 'poo-soil' with any edible greenery, only on flowers and bushes, because human waste contains lots of stuff from the commercial food-processing that we don't want recycled into homegrown vegetables... ;) (Pesticides, heavy metals, conservatives etc...)
« Last Edit: December 29, 2011, 06:04:26 AM by Simen »
I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. - (R. A. Heinlein)

klsmurf

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #16 on: December 29, 2011, 07:41:05 AM »
When it's shoveltime, there isn't any poo left in its initial state; just near-dirt, like the soil one find beneath a very rotten log...

On a side note;
we do not use the human 'poo-soil' with any edible greenery, only on flowers and bushes, because human waste contains lots of stuff from the commercial food-processing that we don't want recycled into homegrown vegetables... ;) (Pesticides, heavy metals, conservatives etc...)

I couldn't help but get a chuckle out of this. I read it as you interchanging the word  "preservatives for conservatives"

I don't know how much conservatives there are in poo.....but
there seems to be a large amount of poo in some conservatives!  ;D ;D

Sorry, I couldn't help myself
" A man's got to know his limitations " ------ Harry Callahan

Simen

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #17 on: December 29, 2011, 08:15:47 AM »
;D

You're right; i should probably have omitted conservatives from that list... :)
(Edit: I'm no expert on fertilizers; i've just heard that human poo shouldn't be used to fertilize something you want to eat later on, due to all the sh*t we eat... :P )

Actually; a little bit of digging, (on the net) shows that compost are a very good way to get rid of pollutions...
http://www.composterconnection.com/site/remediation.html

(Just a randomly picked site. ;) )
« Last Edit: December 29, 2011, 08:24:18 AM by Simen »
I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. - (R. A. Heinlein)

madlabs

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #18 on: December 29, 2011, 12:03:45 PM »
At my last place I had a primitive composting outhouse, built back in the '70s. The entire outhouse was built above ground level and had a cement floor on the bottom. On one side it had a piece of corrogated plastic sheeting, like used in a greenhouse. It had two sections, one for current buisness and one for aging old buisness. About once a year I would shovel the old stuff out and the shovel the new buisness into the aging section. Step two was nasty (wear a mask) but dealing with the aged stuff was no problem. I used the compost on ornamentals only, downhill from my food garden. I'm not worried about chemicals in my poo, I eat well, but e. coli is a concern. When I build my new place I am going to have a legal composting toilet rather than a septic system.


whythehecknot

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #19 on: December 29, 2011, 01:25:07 PM »
It all depends on how you define an outhouse, as I do own an outhouse in the fact that it is outside and away from the house but this one has a flushing toilette, not just a hole. But I also own a composting toilette, which by the way works really good and has no offensive odor whatsoever. I haul the waiste out to the composte heap twice a month and mix it with everything else Im composting. There it sits for a year before being used. Im always very carefull about my compost heaps. I like to mix them just right with just the right amount of heat to start them a smoken. And from there the temp rises to a very hot mix that will stay like that for about a month, then like I said I age it for the remainder of the year. My trees love it and as far as Im aware there are some pathonagens one must be aware of, but nothing good composting doesnt fix. Anyway it always get placed onto my trees. I still would not want my lettuce patch fertilized with it. There is a book out there called humanure, that Ive been meaning to read.
  I know that in different parts of the world humanure is the only readily source of nitrogen for their gardens.

Madscientist267

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #20 on: December 29, 2011, 02:32:27 PM »
Have you considered using the heat for something? DHW? Living space?

Dunno.. just seems like you have the mix right (if it's hot enough to smoke)... There's some energy to be harvested there.

Wanting to do something like this myself, but my situation isn't quite practical to implement it with...  :(

Steve
The size of the project matters not.
How much magic smoke it contains does !

boB

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #21 on: December 29, 2011, 02:54:00 PM »


We just rent out the basement of our outhouse to our special friends when they come to town.

boB

ChrisOlson

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #22 on: December 29, 2011, 11:50:44 PM »
When I was in high school me and a friend of mine backed his pickup up to one that we found at an old abandon country church, tipped it off the hole into the bed of his truck, hauled it into town and set it in the front yard of this one teacher we didn't like.

Ooops!  Now they're going to know who did that.    ???

But that was 35 years ago so maybe the Statute of Limitations ran out on that deal by now.   :-\
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whythehecknot

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Re: Outhouses: Do you use one?
« Reply #23 on: January 04, 2012, 08:26:49 PM »
@ MAD,   No I havnt as a matter of fact, but seems like it should be something that should get looked into.