the throne awaits

I have this new obsession of late: drawing, particularly drawing bathrooms, specifically one bathroom. My bathroom. Well, more of a toilet room than a bathroom, because there's no water involved. M&J have three acres of land and have offered to build S and me living quarters. It will generate some income for them while being cheaper rent for us, which are both good things. But what's really exciting about this venture is that it's going to be very green. They're going to purchase two 20-foot containers, or get one 40-footer and cut it in half. S and I will each have our own container as a bedroom/office, with great big doors opening to the outside on one end, most likely overlooking our vegetable garden and Northeast Austin (the property is on top of a hill). We'll also have a regular door on the inside so we won't keep the big doors open all the time, just for parties or when the weather's really nice.

The two containers will be positioned about 20 feet apart from each other, and the space between will be enclosed; this will be our common space. On the front end, we'll mostly likely have a Modrian-type wall of salvaged metal and colored Plexiglas that J can get from his work as a set builder for movies. I was over at their house yesterday and we took a drive through the bone yard to look at the particular stuff that's soon to be thrown out from a past movie project. I'm also hoping that my beloved penny-covered GMC Suburban hood will be incorporated into the front wall.

The back wall of the common space will possibly be Modrian as well, or if we get lucky, will have a sliced in half Airstream trailer incorporated into it. M&J have a couple of Airstreams on their property; one is brand new, beautiful, owned by J's sister's boyfriend; the other is falling apart, old, left with them by a friend who now lives in the Northeast. They're gonna ask if we can have it. That back wall will have the sink and washing machine (under a liftable countertop), next to the shower room (which is opposite the toilet), as well as the cabinets, stove and refrigerator.

At first, when I was drawing my vision of the space, I got my calculations wrong and thought S and I would each have 10 feet of living space (by 8 feet wide by 9.5 feet tall), and at that point I was thinking it would be really cool to build a cob toilet and shower attached to the back of the living quarters. (Cob is basically mud fortified with straw.) But when I realized that we would each have 20 feet of living space -- which seems like too much to me -- I reconfigured the drawings and incorporated the toilet and shower into the back 5 feet of each of the containers, which leaves a 3x5 storage closet for each of us, as well as 15 feet of living/working space.

All along, we've been talking about using composting toilets. M&J have friends in Panama who have a composting toilet system, and S and I have always been interested in that as well. (I should say that I have been interested in it for a long time, and I think S has been as well; I know that he's into it now.) So, I have been reading a very insightful book called The Humanure Handbook. The more I read, the more I redraw the toilet, not because it gets more complicated but because it gets more simple. The people in Panama have a composting toilet system that they bought from a manufacturer (I think). But the Handbook gives instructions on how to make them out of 5-gallon buckets.

Of course, I don't expect everyone to be excited about this. Last night, I went to dinner with my oldest friend in the world (in fact, my girlfriend from seventh grade); she is in town from Dallas to go to the X concert here tonight; she's been friends with Exene Cervenka and John Doe and all of them for years. Anyway, she asked what I was up to, and I very excitedly told her about my composting toilet plans. She said, "You're kidding." When I told her I definitely was not, she said, "Well, I won't be eating at your house!" Joseph Jenkins, the author of The Humanure Handbook warned me about this reaction, and told me that many people are fecophobes. I imagine I'll get a similar reaction from my mother, but whatever.

In my latest drawing, there is a seat with a storage area next to it. There is a 5-gallon bucket attached to a hole under the seat and an extra 5-gallon bucket under that side. The other half of the room has a storage area that's about 6 inches higher than the sitting side. A 5-gallon bucket full of sawdust (or rice hulls, etc.) fits into a hole -- that's what you cover up the poo with instead of drinking water -- and underneath there is space for an extra bucket of sawdust, an extra empty bucket, extra toilet paper, and even a full bucket (with a lid, of course), in the back. There will hopefully be an outside access door from which the full buckets can be retrieved and carried to the compost pile not far away.

J thinks that it'll only take about three months to get the structure livable. We might have to rough it a little bit in terms of the common space, but I think we're okay with that (it's according to how "rough" it's gonna be!). Eventually, we'll have a deck and garden (possibly hydroponic) on the rooftop, both of which will cut down on heat. We're also looking into wind power and solar. I'll post another blog with the recent drawings of "The Rogge Studios," as they're called (because they're on Rogge Lane), but not of the composting toilet drawings because I'm still working on those.