Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by madaxe_again 981 days ago
Having done the off-grid thing, shelter and power are easy - sanitation and plumbing is where it all turns into an almighty pain in the ass - and having neither sanitation nor plumbing this isn’t a “complete” solution unless part of your camping plan is “having violent diarrhoea in the bushes”.

You’d actually be amazed at what you can ram into less than a cubic meter. I’m working on a horse box conversion at the moment, and am using a cisternless toilet and a detachable worm tank to have a mobile toilet - drinking water and shower/basin water is trivial with cartridge filters, a pump, and RO. Shower is outdoor, heated, rainfall. Basin is for washing dishes and food, also outdoor. Total cost under €1,000 for a full sanitary suite. Grey water just goes on the ground, or into a tub for further use if desired, black water is stored for discharge - although the volume ends up very low due to the worm tank and waste separation.

Very solvable problems that they seem to have entirely ignored.

1 comments

Sewage is easy. Just go in the middle of nowhere, dig a hole and off you go. Heck in an emergency any place on the ground will do. Where do you think animals in the wild shit?

And yes I've had to do violent diarrhea in the middle of nowhere. TP is all you need.

Sewage is easy when population size is small.

When you have a lot of people in an area, you start running out of places to dig a hole and shit in it pretty quickly. You'll be surprised how often you'll start digging and find someone else's shit, which I can't imagine you'd be excited about.

TP and clean water - both to drink, and wash with.