Why we bought a second portable toilet
We love off grid, remote camping. Finding amazing places away from the hordes of crowds and bustling cities and towns has always been something that we’ve striven to do, and with that comes a unique set of challenges, like managing your toilet waste in a responsible and environmentally friendly way.
We’ve been using a single Thetford 365 Porta Potti for many years now, and don’t really have anything negative to say about it. However, with a family of 4, we are pushing the friendship to get more than a week out of it before the unit is full, and that’s with us 3 boys peeing in the bush.
Why the second portable toilet?
We often find ourselves no where near a dump point, and that gives you two options; respectfully and intelligently disposing of the waste outside of a dump point, or driving in and finding a dump point.
Extending our off grid abilities
I prefer not to empty our waste anywhere other than a dump point if possible, which leads us to answer the title of this post; the first reason is to extend our off grid capabilities. We should be able to get nearly 2 weeks away from a dump point, which is great as it lines up with our water storage and consumption, and food/power wise we can do a lot longer.
If you want to know more about how long a portable toilet lasts, we’ve got a more in depth post that you can check out.
I wanted a toilet in the car
We’ve gone for the same unit (if it ain’t broke, why fix it), and will keep one in the camper trailer, and one in the 4WD. This means that we now have double the storage of the good stuff, and we have a portable toilet that is always available when we have the 4WD with us.
You wouldn’t believe the number of times we head out for the day and are just kicking back (miles away from our camper or the nearest toilet) and one of the boys announces they need to do a poo.
Now, the kids will get some interesting views while they do their business, but at least we can do it easily, at any time. My intention is to keep the second toilet fairly empty in terms of water to keep the vehicles weight down, and we’ll swap cassettes over as needed.
Having the Ute Canopy makes this possible, as we can keep it in the back of the car without it smelling anything out, and tie it down easily. If we had a 4WD wagon, I’d be finding somewhere on the roof to keep it, as they always smell and if it ever broke I’m not sure I’d deal with it too well!
We were just going to get a spare toilet cassette
Initially, my intention was just to purchase a spare cassette for our toilet, which you can do through the Thetford spare parts. However, looking online at the pricing (I didn’t firmly confirm this) the cost of a cassette wasn’t going to be any less than a completely new toilet, and so we picked up an entire toilet for $150 on sale through BCF.
This gives us the option of having a complete, working toilet in the car, which I’m pretty happy about.
Do you carry two toilet cassettes, or a second toilet? How do you deal with kids who need a toilet when there’s nothing around?
