Prepare the latrine for winter
Now is the right time to make sure your dry toilet is ready for winter. Due to freezing temperatures, emptying the toilet is more difficult in winter than in summer. For this reason, it's worth making sure in the autumn for toilets that are used all year round that the waste generated during the winter can fit into the toilet tank. Summer toilets that are not used in winter can be left empty in autumn.
A memory head for winter:
Make sure the dry toilet tank is emptied enough to hold all the waste generated over the winter..
Empty the urine tank so that it does not break when it freezes.
Use more puff/spray in winter than in summer.
If the toilet is not used in winter, turn off the fresh air valve on the toilet.
Where to put the toilet waste after emptying?
Discharged compost from heat-treated digesters (Biolan ECO, POPULETT and Kekkilä EKO) can be used directly on ornamental plants to improve the soil. If you want to use it on vegetable beds or other edible plants, the fermentation compost must be composted for at least a year.
If the digester does not compost itself, the emptied waste must always be composted. The composting bin should have both a lid and a bottom to prevent rainwater from washing nutrients out of the compost.
In spring, compost can be spread around the plants in a 2-5 cm layer of mulch. The risk of spreading in autumn is that valuable nutrients are washed away during the winter. Spring application is therefore preferable. Solid waste emptied in autumn should be kept in a compost bin with a lid or otherwise protected from rainwater until spring.
Toilet liquids suitable as compost accelerators
Liquids collected from the drying pits are suitable as fertiliser or compost accelerators. In autumn, it is no longer worth fertilising plants with nitrogen-rich digestate, but the liquids should be stored until spring. It is, however, worth watering autumn leaf compost with them. Fermentation liquids accelerate the decomposition of compost and their nutrients are bound in the resulting compost sludge.
