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Toilet facilities

Toilets seem to be a very sensitive subject for many people. Women in particular seem to be very sensitive to toilet facilities and many will hold on and only go at home. Being male I am quite happy to go anywhere, excepting public toilets unless desperate, and so I do not have an issue with toilet facilities.

After an event toilet facilities will be primitive and nothing like we have now. This will lead to stress for our womenfolk. There isn’t all that much you will be able to do about it after an event either. The facilities will be too resource intensive to run just to make people feel comfortable. Even an economical flush uses 3L of water while larger flushes can take up to 9L. Way too much to just flush down the toilet, excuse the pun.

I’ve tried to stop my kids being so fussy about the toilet and didn’t succeed. Girls seem to have this built in feeling that it needs to be a proper toilet although they can get used to a portable chemical one when they have to on holiday. No other time though.

So what can you do? You can’t replicate the toilet facilities we have now, we will be forced into using trenches eventually, an outside toilet or at best an internal composting toilet or commode. You only really have two main options; in the short term after an event you can set up a chemical toilet or compost toilet to ease your way into using the new toilet facilities or you can get them used to using one now.

So, I already have a chemical toilet in my supplies. It will do for a while until they come around to a new way of living. It will be less stressful than a quick move into a trench or an outside toilet. However, I actually have other plans. I’m looking at putting a composting toilet as soon as I can. I’ll put it in the downstairs toilet to start to allow them to bypass it until they get used to it with the intention of replacing all the toilets with composting toilets. That way the transition will be less of a culture shock and nowhere near as stressful. It will also be good for OPSEC if we need to stay hidden for a while having an internal toilet that they will be happy to use.

7 comments to Toilet facilities

  • grumpy old man

    yoeman’s have a good thunder box for £26.00

  • Skvez

    Women’s objection to public toilets is usually based on sitting on an unclean toilet seat. Many women and even some men I know will attempt to hover over the bowl rather than sit on the seat, this of course much harder if you’re struggling with a skirt and tights than if you’re in trousers.
    Privacy is also more of an issue for women than men, pinhole cameras can invade everywhere these days.
    Also sometimes women need to do ‘additional things’ over and above the two things that men and women both need to do in a toilet.
    All in all it’s not a primitive toilet that women dislike using, it’s a dirty/insufficiently private toilet that women dislike using.
    I bet most men wouldn’t want to pull up tights that got wet (with an unspecified fluid, lets hope it’s just water) from the dirty floor of a public toilet any more than most women.

  • Skean Dhude

    Skvez,

    True enough. It will be worse though when we are all stuck upstairs hiding although we will still be able to set up a semi private area. Some won’t.

  • Stine

    I’ve never understood this aspect of women’s toilet phobia myself (being a female). I sit on the toilet seat in public loos, I have not got any cuts on me which could get infected, I wash my hands afterwards and since I get a shower everyday anything transfered to my skin will be washed away. If the sinks/hand dry system is not available or are dirty then I have anti-bac wipes in my bag for my hands.

    I wasn’t too thrilled when I was confronted with using a just a hole in the ground in a French restaurant as a teenager though! Two ovals indicated where to place one’s feet but nothing to hold onto while crouching!! Ewwww!

  • Stine

    The “Thunder box” from Yeomans, as mentioned by “Grumpy Old Man” above, is the Kampa Khazi and is on offer at world of camping for under £19 at the moment!

  • Skean Dhude

    Stine,

    I think it is more concern for what you cannot see. I get the impression that as soon as you sit in a public loo your body gets eaten by something and you have 15 minutes to clean it off or die.

  • Stine

    Ha ha ha ha yes that’s probably it! Obviously it’s things you cannot see but it’s not like those things are going to crawl up and bite you…or maybe they would. Perhaps the ladies in question think there might be spiders or something – I don’t think I’d feel the same if I was abroad or off the beaten track, eg a forest public loo for eg.