The lowdown on RV toilets

For many campers and caravanners, it’s an irrelevance; for others it’s a deal breaker and for the caravan industry today, it’s a must.

Taking a toilet on your travels is an issue that divides campers and caravanners, but the lines are not as clearly defined as you might think.

In days past, no caravans had toilets, so we were all forced to go to existing caravan park or council facilities, or go bush. ‘Girls to the left, guys to the right’ was always the accepted rule on the Contiki trips I guided throughout Europe in their mini-bus days, but things have moved on for many since then. Maybe it was the nettle stings that hastened the change!

‘Going bush’ is still generally accepted among guys camping, but the number of double-purpose shower/portable shelters that you now see beside tent-trailers in remote areas leads you to suspect that more women are embracing the Great Outdoors, rather than some universal environmental consciousness after a slab of beer.

Of course, the gender divide isn’t a straight line, if you’ll forgive the pun. I once travelled across the vast Simpson Desert with a 'hetro' guy who had a major issue doing Number 2s in the dunes. His issue wasn’t environmental, but personal. Fair enough.

So, while many camper and caravan buyers will tell the salesman that a toilet isn’t an important part of their kit, their tune will often change when their partner arrives to approve the deal.

Inside, or outside?

Space often decides this issue. If you have a tent-type camper trailer, or even a Jayco-like camper trailer, a portable toilet, which is inexpensive and usually available in 10 and 20 litre sizes from any camping store for well under $200, does the job.

Often, if not housed in a separate tent, these loos are often brought inside at night for convenience when it’s wet, cold, or urgent – or all three – in the early hours.

Then, like you would with a cat, it’s taken outside by day and (unlike said kitty) stored in an exterior compartment of the trailer when you travel.

How well this works for you in the confines of a small camper or family van depends on a range of things. Most children and many spouses never see/hear their parents/partner performing toilet duties. (A reality check here – canvas or plastic walls on an exterior tent-toilet are not exactly sound-proof, so some rules need to be relaxed when camping!).

Combo, or separate?

The new class of micro-hybrid pop-top caravans that manage to cram everything except a bathroom into four or less metres have a particular identity problem here and only Track Trailer with its Topaz and Rhinomax with its Scorpion have found a way to make a portable toilet accessible indoors.

So, if you want an internal toilet and privacy you need to house it in a special room, which the industry calls a combination shower/toilet. These are necessary because of space confines in a small caravan or hybrid, but there are some disadvantages.

The first one is space. I seriously doubt whether some older caravanners could get in and out of some of the tight cubicles I’ve seen.

Without going into detail, there’s a reason why many people squat to go to the toilet and bear children in many countries, as it’s a natural anatomical position. Sitting bolt upright, knees together, is not!

Then there’s the shower. As it shares the same space, some scheduling is necessary and you need to find a way to keep the floor dry for those early am visits and prevent wet feet when back in bed.

Most caravans over 17ft in body length these days have a separate shower and toilet, albeit both cramped. The exception is some off-road caravans that have sharply cut-away rear body profiles and bunk vans, which simply don’t have the space when they’re small.

But shop around. We managed to get Trakmaster to build a relatively roomy separate shower and toilet into the front of a 15ft 6in x 7ft Pilbara Extreme. I scaled the layout using dimensions from one of their 19ft vans; they took the time to decide if it would work dynamically and then when they gave it the green light, they built it and it works a treat.

So many people who saw it liked it that ‘our’ layout is now a standard option on their latest Flinders 15ft 10in x 7ft model and the similarly-sized Pilbara S off-roaders.

Types of toilets

The most common types of toilets used inside many caravans are probably nappy buckets with a tight-fitting lid! (Don’t laugh; they’re cheap and they work as long as you secure the lid and don’t kick it over, as friends of ours did with theirs).

However, the most common type of conventional fixed interior toilets are the cassette-style models made by Dometic and Thetford, in which a portable cassette that collects the waste is removed from an outside hatch for emptying.

Typically, these toilets use either liquid or packaged dry chemicals to break down and deodorise the waste and with a capacity of around 19-20 litres, typically will last two people up to four days before needing to be emptied.

Cassettes not only differ in brand, but also type and it’s worth getting one with built in wheels and a retractable handle. Twenty litres of liquid waste is quite heavy and the dump point at some caravan parks is not convenient to walk or drive to, but wheels make the job a lot easier.

Toilet chemicals

You need chemicals to break down the waste, but while regular dump points don’t police this, I have for some years been using a biodegradable product called Walex Bio-Pak Express, which typically costs about $33 a bag of 15 soluble sachets.

This product uses a natural enzyme deodoriser and waste digester that you drop in as sachets to remove odours and clean tanks and importantly is safe for septic toilets.

Its makers also say that it’s completely safe for the environment, which is also important when you’re free camping.

Dumping dilemmas

Filling a toilet cassette is one thing; disposing of the waste is another.

Fortunately, these days just about every major caravan park has what is called a ‘Dump Point’, which is a proper hole in the ground where you can dump the waste from your cassette and use the adjacent hose to rinse it out and refill it with 1-2 litres of water required to dilute whatever fresh chemicals you add.

Many towns along most popular travelling routes also have Dump Points these days, with adjacent fresh water, so you can empty your toilet and refill your van’s fresh water tanks at the same time.

The reason I use a biodegradable chemical is that when you’re free camping, a regulated dump point can be a long way away and, rather than take a long drive, I look for somewhere well away from a water course to dig a hole for the waste.

This happened recently at the Daly Waters hotel in the Northern Territory and even though I was confident that our toilet waste was septic safe, the hotel with its many warning signs, wasn’t.

The same is true of toilets found in many National Parks, which explicitly forbid emptying of cassette toilets, no matter how environmentally correct.

Another solution, if you want to be absolutely correct, is to carry a spare toilet cassette, which typically from Dometic or Thetford, is not a cheap option at $200-$250. It’s probably cheaper to buy a spare portable toilet and a shovel.

Cleaner alternatives

Some forward-thinking caravan manufacturers, notably Australian Off Road and Kimberley, offer alternative solutions in terms of their macerator and water-free toilets, respectively.

AOR’s macerator is a variable flush unit originating from the boating industry that uses a very small quantity of water. Once the wastes are flushed they’re pumped into a 60-110 litre holding tank (depending on model) at the front of the trailer where they can be dumped at a dump point at a later date. There’s no smell involved as the tank is vented to the off side of the van via a carbon filter.

Kimberley offers buyers of its Kruiser three types of toilet systems: a conventional cassette, a water-less composting and a vacuum toilet.

The composting toilet is claimed to last up to 80 uses and requires no water to flush, making it economical and environmentally friendly, while the vacuum toilet, which is similar to those used on aircraft, can also be dumped in virtually any bush location or septic toilet as it uses no chemicals.

The advantage of these toilets is that they allow you to ablute for two-three weeks in remote areas at a time; the disadvantage is they cost a bit more than cassette dunnies.

However, the extra expense could pay off given many National Parks these days will not allow you in unless you ‘leave no trace’. This includes taking your grey and black water with you.

This isn’t a fad, this is a growing trend and if you plan to spend more time in these areas in the future you need to think about your toilet.

Of course, most organised National Park camps have drop toilets and, to their credit, most are remarkably clean once you clear the flies. But the much-loved and very descriptively-named ‘long drop’ isn’t for everyone and if you have an aversion to public facilities you’ll need to make other plans.

The bottom line

OK, let’s cut the crap, figuratively speaking.

The bottom line is that more and more of us are becoming more environmentally aware and more protective of our privacy. Caravan manufacturers are well aware of this and you’ll be had-pressed to find a new one without a toilet – either a combo or stand-alone – fitted these days.

Even if you don’t plan to use it, you should take it, because when it comes to selling your caravan, nine out of 10 potential buyers will insist on one.