Important: Water should not be used on its own. We recommend a mixture of vinegar concentrate and water (1:7). Diluted citric acid can also be used in the same proportions.
A great cleaner for composting toilets is pure vinegar for the urine diverter, the urine bottle, and seat, and an environmentally safe soap mixed with water for the rest. You can also mix water and baking soda as cleaner alternative that is microbe safe.
If it's an issue of liquids, adding a bit of vinegar to the liquids container (or with a spray bottle onto the diverter) will help reduce the smell of urine. Urine can change its smell depending on hydration status, medication, or other factors.
Add worms to your compost if you want to speed up the composting process. This is referred to as “vermiculture.” Your trash will be eaten by the worms, which will break it down and turn it into fertiliser far more quickly than it would on its own.
In cases like prolonged diarrhea or excessive condensation, add small amount of your composting bulking material (coco fiber OR peat moss). Make sure that the liquids in the solids bin is not from someone directly urinating into the compost solids bin.
Flies can be easily repelled with white vinegar, so much so that even the smell of boiling vinegar can be an easy-to-make DIY fly repellent on its own. Pour some cider vinegar into a pot or jar to start making your fly repellent.
The vinegar's smell will attract the drain flies, and the wrap will trap them inside the bowl. Another option is to mix a few drops of dish soap with a cup of vinegar. The vinegar attracts the flies, and the dish soap makes it impossible for them to stand on the surface, so they drown.
Acetic acid makes vinegar an excellent tool for pest control, repelling some of the most common backyard nuisances and even killing weaker insects. It's most effective against ants, spiders, and mosquitos. You can keep spiders from entering your home by spraying vinegar around your property's perimeter and entryways.
Danger of too much urine in compost
While humans will urinate several times a day, it is not necessary to add it all to the compost heap – too much is not always a good thing. The main issue to consider when putting urine on compost is the ratio of green and brown materials that you have in the heap.
Use Nature Flush Enzymes for all your composting toilet's cleaning needs, as not only does this naturally derived detergent clean your toilet, but helps with the composting process, too! Simply spray Nature Flush Enzymes on, and wash off with a bit of water or wipe away with paper towels.
Preventing urine scale means preventing that your composting toilet smells. If you want to avoid that your composting toilet smells, never use pure water to rinse and flush your urine canister. Instead, use diluted acetic acid (1:1 or stronger) or diluted citric acid (max. 3 tablespoons to 1 liter of water).
Regardless of your toilet's material, the vinegar is not strong enough to damage the toilet or the toilet's plumbing. So, you can leave the vinegar in your toilets overnight without worry.
Vinegars like balsamic or apple cider work as bait to attract them, but you have to add something like alcohol or soap to the bait solution in order to kill them. This homemade fruit fly trap and bait mixture is the perfect solution to a common problem.
Vinegar attracts, not repels flies; however, a container with vinegar and dish soap will function as an attractant trap as the vinegar lures flies to enter the trap and the dish soap will cause the flies to sink and die.
Does honey actually help you catch flies? Well, it's definitely going to help you more than vinegar generally will, at least (though apple cider vinegar can be used to attract them too). Flies may be attracted to the sweetness of honey. Of course, that sweetness can be a fly's downfall, since it's also quite sticky.
Two big reasons that flies hate to be around lavender are the natural oils it produces called linalool and geraniol. A 2008 study showed that linalool and geraniol are more effective at repelling flies than citronella oil.
Choose from either chemical sprays, household cleaners, or hairspray. Chemical sprays kill flies instantly upon contact, though they contain harsh chemicals. You can also spray the flies with household cleaners, like Windex or Formula 409, or with an aerosol like hairspray. All of these sprays will help you kill a fly.
Liquids and solids are collected separately in the composting toilet. Typically, the solid matter in a bucket in the back (lined with a plastic bag) and the urine, in a canister, in the front. Those two can then also be individually be emptied.