More on the Why and How of creating comfortable and hygienic bathrooom units

Why
Comfort and hygiene with a sanitation and bathroom facility, at affordable cost to be constructed for every family in a given village within a few weeks through a communal village project. Easy adjustment to new hygienic habits. Safe handling and reuse of human waste. Sanitation for all will result in immediate reduction of child mortality from intestinal infection.

How
A family unit for bathing and sanitary use, comfortable and nice looking. The toilet is of the double vault dry composting type, separating urine, rinsed by bath water. Properties of the BathroomToilet-unit

1. A comfortable space for bathing, also to be used for sanitation, nice looking, decorated, easy to clean,
2. Sufficient space for a parent to bath a small child and to teach it the proper use of a toilet.
3. Waste water from bathing rinses urine away, minimizing stink and use of flush water.
4. The bathroom/toilet unit can be configured as a composting toilet or to dry-fill a dug out.
5. The cost of the bathroom/toiltet unit is only the cost of one bag of cement. The work can be done by the adults and children of each family with guidance from an instructor.
6. Most important, the method of construction is adjusted to a communal project. With some guidance of sanitation helpers (like WaterAid) the local carpenter makes a true scale model in wood of the toilet slab, gutter and other parts. Everybody can imagine what it will be like when later copied in concrete. With a special but simple trick an accurate impression or mold of the slab can be made into the dirt. Then concrete with some reinforcement is cast into the mold. Two such slabs and a gutter make one toilet. Personal decoration of the slabs is done by putting colored stones or bits of tiles in the mold before the concrete is poured over it.
7. With the one wooden model of the slab all the cast forms for all the families around can be made within a few weeks.Thus ALL the families then own a private bathroom sanitation unit of high quality.
   When ALL the families in a neighbourhood use their own toilet this results in a far less illness, specially with children. If only a small part of the total number of families would be left out, this life-saving health improvement could not be attained.
8. How to instruct the user of the bathroom with toilet?
   It is not clear how users should best be instructed of how to use the toilet. The following options are concidered:
   - Children are instructed at school (preferably the local school takes the lead with improving sanitation).
   - At home it is the task of the mother to instruct and guide the children and female visitors.
   - It is the task of the man at home to instruct male visitors. He should supervise the proper hygienic condition of the toilet. When the feces is to be composted, he should take care in time of changing from the use of the one container to the other.
   - If feces is not reused, he should plan in time to dig a new pit and plan the move of the bathroom-toilet unit to this new site.
   The Bathroom-Toilet can be used in the way as inspired by the Nonolet of the "Twaalf Ambachten". The BathroomToilet-unit was used like this for many years at Demotech's own workshop.