New project

My asz is kicked. However, since the flood will not allow me to get over to some of the islands to cut grass, I have decided to make a new portable bathroom. We have a few porta potties which we spread over the forty acres so if we have some people over fishing and they need to go to the bathroom they do not have to walk or drive up to a mile to get to the house on the mainland.

Well, with the flood, we cable our porta potties to trees so they do not float down the river. They tip over however and get filled up with river mud from the flood and any waste material. It takes about two hours to bleach and clean the surfaces after each flood. I wanted to get a handicap porta pottie as I may have to at some time go with a motorized wheel chair as I decline. With delivery from a manufacturer it is going to cost almost 2k for a handicap portable bathroom.

I have decided to design and build a new type of flush porta pottie instead of the traditional holding tank under a toilet seat which the user has to look down at a pile of waste. I have 2k as my budget constraint to come up with a better portable bathroom.

My basic design after two days of resting from playing poker is to expand the typical 60 gallon holding tank to 250 gallons. I had bought some aluminum framed totes a few years ago and I am going to build a moveable skid platform where I can place two totes on the platform where one contains 170 gallons of water and the other waste container has a total capacity of 250 gallons.

I will be posting photos of the project today as we proceed. The new portable bathroom will be moved by the Bobcat and an eight foot fork attachment which I will slip under the bathroom to move it out on the islands as the flood waters recede. The new bathroom will have two 2 x 2 x 6 foot concrete blocks which will not allow it to be tipped over in a flood and I will build a gang way off one of the cause ways to enter it in a wheel chair because the entrance will be five plus feet in the air, and will require coming off a structure which is higher. The photos will show the progress, but here is the first photo of what we have completed.

I love projects... that looks heavy tho. How did your poker games go?

Edit: just saw your poker update.

I think I'd go with 24 gauge metal framing and these foam filled aluminum boards. Strong but light.

https://www.ultraboard.com/ultraaluminum/specs/

We are using 5/8 lag bolts, metal end plates, and steel corner supports to allow this to survive a flood. The power of the water will crush standard 2 x 4 balloon framing, so everything is 2 x 6 with steel reinforcement and bracing.

In the deck hardware area to get a steel 90 degree 6" x 8" brace it was $9, but I went over to the shelving area and found on sale double weld reinforced shelving units painted white and made in China of a heavier duty steel than the hardware in the deck area for only 99 cents a steel brace. Even if we use the concrete blocks to strap down this unit, and even with the braced and reinforced box we are creating, a flood can twist this unit and destroy it if it is not properly secured. I am going to try to cross a causeway and cut some grass, but wanted to show the slow progress on the box. We hope to have the plywood sides and floor in by nine tonight, and I will transport the box to the islands Monday morning showing how my Bobcat with fork attachments can lift 2k pounds.

Where is the window?

Where is the window?

There will be no window for the sewage 250 gallon tote which will sit on the bottom plywood, and the water 250 gallon tote which will sit adjacent to the same. The roof of this structure will be the bathroom floor where we will put one toilet and one sink. We may put in a urinal to save water because the new toilet will use 1.6 gallons with each flush, but some of the new handicap toilets have what is called a dual flush button which on a simple pee it will only use 1.1 gallons, and poop 1.6 so we may be looking at that toilet. We will fill the water tank with enough water for one hundred flushes, or 160 gallons the balance of 90 gallon capacity will be paper product and waste.

The sewage tote will have a 2" outlet 1/2 hp sewage pump which I will set on the bottom of the tote, and take the 15' electrical cord and cut very carefully a two inch hole through the plastic tote and seal the electric cord and 2" pipe so there is no leakage. The totes come with a screw on six inch cap. We will remove the cap, and take a six inch rubber radiator connector with a transition to four inch with two radiator clamps which will seal the cap and allow the waste to drop directly down into the waste tote. There will be a four inch Y connector with a two inch vent and sink connection. Then the four inch pipe will come up through the 3/4 inch plywood floor and join the water closet plastic floor mount. The floor will be finished with a thick adhesive simulated wood floor and then the toilet will be set.

The challenge will be devising a system which allows the toilet to refill after a flush when there is no electricity except two 6 volt golf cart batteries which I will wire to get 12 volts. I am looking now for an inexpensive 12 volt pump which are readily available, but the problem is that after the float in the toilet shuts the water line off, if the pump does not turn off, it will burn out any 12 volt pump which will keep running. I am looking at some solutions for that problem and hope to have it solved by Tuesday, either by putting a switch in the toilet, or putting a square low profile 100 gallon water tank on top of the bathroom ceiling. I do not like this because a 100 gallons represents 800 lbs sitting above somebody using the bathroom. Too many things can go wrong with either method.

I should have better photos in the morning once you see how the mechanical room we are building for the bathroom finishes out. I am having so much fun with the challenges, but I am continuing to be very tired after cutting the grass and just want to push the envelope. Hopefully, a photo before 8 tonight as I will try to put the totes in place will give you a better idea, but Monday afternoon should be clear. We have ordered the billboard vinyl and expect it Friday. We have a chain of stores called farm and fleet, and I can get on sale a 1000 gallon one compartment plastic septic tank to sit in my truck which we will buy before the sale ends next week. I can lift the tank into my dump truck and will put our generator in the truck bed, and when I have to empty the flush porta potty, all I need to do is plug in the sewage pump cord into an extension cord from the generator, and the waste will transfer to the 1000 gallon tank. I can dump at a local town from the tank, and our new fangled flush porta potty design is good to go.

Oh!

The mechanical room frame is complete. We will use the vinyl billboard material which we should get Friday and put the ad facing toward the interior, and a new heavy duty white tent coverage over the exterior. We will get three loads of gravel in the morning, and I will cut out an area which is still very soft from the floods and create a level gravel pad next to our third causeway. I will need to order three yards of concrete and build a transition zone which will allow a person in a wheel chair to enter the bathroom which is going to be approximately six feet in the air. I will show a photo of the finished mechanical room, and the beginning of the plumbing on the sewage tote. More to come Monday afternoon.

Bad luck has as usual kicked our asz. I was pushing flood logs off the roads and back into the river with the bobcat when the entire left side of the bobcat collapsed into animal tunnels next to the river. I buried the left tread, but fortunately the right tread did not collapse in the tunnels. We got concrete blocks and put eight of them into the tunnels and using the bucket I was able to compact the block and move forward and up. We then took broken concrete and formed a ramp which allowed the bobcat to back out of the animal tunnels. We are going to have to walk the three miles of shoreline and fill the holes because the John Deere commercial mower could flip over into the river killing the operator as the bank loses stability with the holes which evidently happened over the winter. Usually when holes are this big they are coyote, but coyote usually do not dig right next to the river. We are thinking muskrat, groundhogs, or racoon. They had left the islands a few years ago because of all the floods and built their homes on either side of the mainland, but we have had two years without floods and some brave souls tried to live out on the islands but the flooding compromised their tunnels and if it had been the mower somebody could have been hurt.

We finished staining the bathroom mechanical room, and I was leveling the ground off the causeway when the bobcat overheated. My guess is that it is a belt, but it could be more serious. Will fill the tank with antifreeze, and check the belts, but we have lost a full day.

You are unbelievable!

Mrs. Seaoat has done 80% of the physical work of screwing, bracing, and staining. We will be a partnership of 41 years on June 5, 2017, and not too many women would have tolerated me for that long.

We have decided now that the bobcat is having mechanical issues that we want to put the first of these flush porta potties closer to the house in case the bobcat dies on us and we need to use the lull to pick it up and get it off the islands. The Lull is 30k lbs and requires deep gravel roads to hold it up. The upside to the relocation is that I have a 200 amp service less than a hundred feet from where we will locate the same. I now can solve the problem of water pressure and a pump burning out. I will simply get a small shallow well pump and small tank for less than $200, and plumb the toilet. When the small well pressure tank empties, it will pump the water from the other tote which will have 200 gallons of water. I was only going to have 160 gallons, but the tanks can hold 300 gallons, and this will give us 125 1.6 gallon flushes. We just do not have that many people, and if I use two inch vents most of the water will simply evaporate in a couple weeks. I figure once every three weeks we will lift the 1000 gallon holding tank up onto the truck, and I will dump at the local city's sewer plant. It is expensive to dump by the gallon, but that is where evaporation helps.

We are using three year old billboard material for the mechanical room because the flood waters will probably rip the vinyl off, and are saving our good vinyl billboard material for the exterior and interior of the bathroom. We will have a floor drain, and will simply get a steam unit, and believe it or not a spray unit for pesticides which is portable and will mix a bleach solution, and bleach and spray the vinyl and floor and then use the steam unit. The door will be a storm door where the screen portion will be open at the top of the door, and the glass will be covered with an adhesive glass glaze for privacy. The plan is coming together with some significant changes because of some bad luck, but actually it has made the project less expensive and easier. Here is a progress photo.

What a team!

How is the poop business?

The grandkids visit is over. What utter joy. I walked with them because I did not want to drive the golf cart over to one of our small islands where water is still running over the causeway. I walked over and the girls got their shoes wet. "papa got our shoes wet". Well I had put some new gravel down, and my granddaughter who found the freshwater pearl, found a damn sponge fossil. I used to fossil hunt and it was the best damn sponge fossil I had seen. I was all excited about the clean definition of the fossil, and took the granddaughters to look at sponge fossils on the internet, and sponges growing on the ocean floor.

Well I am all excited and Mrs. Seaoat walks in and brings this monster sponge fossil she found two weeks ago. She drives the truck to the quarry, and we get brown limestone which is where these fossils were found. She mentioned that they are now mining just below the brown layer into gray limestone. So apparently we are at that point where in geological years there was a period of change where sediment covered the sponges. So she gave her sponge to the other granddaughter. Not much more advancement on the flush porta pottie, but we have got the walls lined with billboard vinyl and have three of the walls up. We will frame the roof, and frame the storm door coming into the bathroom Sunday. I go to get my grinder sewage pump Sunday morning from an incredible hardware big box chain called menards, and will also get some two inch pipe and a handicap toilet. We have decided to run 300 feet of hose to fill up the water tank, and we are considering rather than spending 300 dollars on a well pump, to just use the water pressure from the house to plumb the toilet so we just keep the hose on when people are over fishing usually on a weekend. Here is the status:

Impressive

I have been pretty tired out with walking with the grandkids and putting these walls up on the bathroom, but I have been giggling as every 15 minutes to a half hour I have to rest and prod the sock to make a bigger fool of himself on the DC statute thread, but being that I hurt so much from lifting those walls the laughter at what a dumb asz has kept my mind off the pain. Here is the roughed framed walls and door opening for the bathroom. We will be reinforcing grab bar locations, putting down a floor material, putting vinyl on the interior, hanging the storm door, finishing the roof and vinyl, cutting the waste hole, setting the toilet and finishing the setting of the sewage pump in the tote, and misc plumbing and electrical connections. We will get five loads of gravel on monday, and we will transport the bathroom to the second island sometime Tuesday.

We will have all the grandkids, our children, and some of their friends out camping and fishing on the islands for memorial day weekend.   It will be a good test, as I showed the granddaughter where they will be pooping when they come out in two weeks.  Smart kids....."papa...how do we get up there?"  Secret....you will have to levitate to use the bathroom......the looks on their face....priceless.  Of course these two know I am full of chit as just two years ago I had them trap a baby coyote and wait on the bed as I brought in the baby coyote from the old stick and rope box falling on the baby coyote.  They watched my wife pull the coyote out of the box and put it in a white garbage bag, and then I said oh oh.....I forgot to give you gloves in case the baby coyote bites your hands.  I then hand them each one glove, and tell them to put one hand behind their back and sit on the bed so the coyote cannot escape.....the looks on their face as Mrs. Seaoat handed me the garbage bag with a coyote tail sticking out of the bag was priceless, and when I dumped the stuffed coyote toy on the bed, I thought the youngest was going to have a heart attack.  The funny thing is my grandsons who are younger, just laughed at me when we did the same routine a week later.  No, I am the luckiest man on the earth to be dying and having this much fun.

I love it... and I know the grandchildren do too.

Long hard day as trying to cut 40 some acres when flood waters cut off access to some islands for three weeks. Broke a belt on the John Deere commercial mower as we are fighting the high grass.

Did start doing gravel work to move the bathroom to its final resting spot. Rain tonight and probably more gravel work Tuesday. We bought the toilet and sewage pump, but I am now three days behind. No big deal. I will have it ready for Memorial Day Weekend.

Sounds great. Glad you enjoyed the grandkids. The newbies, party of one, played on the forum all weekend by themselves.

Joanimaroni wrote:Sounds great. Glad you enjoyed the grandkids. The newbies, party of one, played on the forum all weekend by themselves.

Telstar wrote:

Joanimaroni wrote:Sounds great. Glad you enjoyed the grandkids. The newbies, party of one, played on the forum all weekend by themselves.

I know, right, Tel? It would be hilarious if it weren't so downright pitiful.

New belt on the John Deere Commercial mower. Mrs. Seaoat did 100%. I got chewed out for not cleaning the mower deck which was packed with high grass, but it has just gotten too difficult to bend over. We had a willow blocking a grass pathway that I needed to mow, and last week I used the bobcat to push the tree off the pathway, but it was covered with branches and sticks. I stopped the mower and got off and picked up the limbs, and was exhausted. I knew I should have cleaned the deck. Not too many women who can replace a belt on a commercial mower, and our neighbor who is 70 and runs his fathers auto repair shop just comes over to watch Mrs. Seaoat, the retired school teacher who is a bit like McGiver. He gives her helpful suggestions, and we will be doing something, and she does this really sophisticated thing, and she says "john taught me that trick". We are too working fools, but I will take some photos Tuesday morning as I spread some gravel, but there are few things more beautiful than the Islands in mid May.

Can't wait to see the pictures.

RealLindaL wrote:

Telstar wrote:

Joanimaroni wrote:Sounds great. Glad you enjoyed the grandkids. The newbies, party of one, played on the forum all weekend by themselves.

I know, right, Tel?  It would be hilarious if it weren't so downright pitiful.