Ever wondered how we came to design and make compost toilet urine separators? Here's our story.
Like all good stories, this one starts as a love story. Suzanne and I were preparing to get married at our home on an off-grid farm in the remote hills of west Wales. There's always lots to organise for a wedding, but our main concern was that we were inviting 100 people to celebrate with us — and we only had one flush toilet, supplied by a very small stream. And it was mid summer.
We needed more facilities and we needed to conserve the stream water for drinking. Yes, even in notoriously wet Wales, the water can run out. Being eco-minded and both working for the Centre for Alternative Technology — Europe's largest eco-centre — compost toilets were the obvious answer.
So we set about planning wedding cakes, choosing dresses and designing compost toilets. We had help from a friend with experience building wheelie bin compost toilets for the Climate Protest Camps in the UK. Together we built a toilet from scrap materials lying around — I'm a furniture maker by trade, so I'm generally surrounded by a lot of wood and sawdust.
The toilet used a wheelie bin at the back of the building and we bought in a Separett urine separator. It worked, but it blocked easily. The big day arrived, we had a beautiful marriage ceremony, and 100 friends and family put the new compost toilet through its paces.
From wedding loo to compost toilet business
Once we were back from honeymoon we posted pictures of our compost loo online and started offering compost toilets for sale. Little did we know what we were embarking on.
A couple of months later we were asked to build two compost toilets for a campsite in Hay-on-Wye. We started designing a more streamlined model that could be flat-packed for transportation. Everything was going well until we tried to source the urine separators. The distributor we'd bought the first one from had disappeared. We scoured the early-2000s internet — nothing.
With only a couple of weeks until the toilets were due for delivery, an engineer friend suggested we vacuum-form our own separator. We started googling vac-forming and set up a basic DIY system at home for producing our own plastic separators. The toilets were delivered on time with our own urine separators inside, and the clients were happy.
From DIY hack to a proper product
Like all good ideas, we thought this one was worth sharing. So we started selling urine separators on the website. We refined the design over the next few years based on customer feedback, then commissioned a properly engineered mould. That's the design we still make today.
Since 2009 we've shipped more than a thousand separators to compost-toilet builders in over 30 countries — from off-grid homesteads in Hawaii to glamping sites in the UK, from tiny houses in Texas to allotment sheds across Europe.
And it all started because we needed more loos for a wedding.
Paul and Suzanne
Want to start your own compost toilet build? Have a look at our original £31 Urine Separator or the £40 Complete Urine Separator with built-in filter. Or read the complete guide to building a composting toilet.