 Welcome to Rogue Gear Reviews. I'm Tom Morton from Mortons on the Move and today we are taking a look at the Airhead Composting Toilet. We installed this toilet in our RV in June of 2018. We did a full installation video how we installed it over on our Mortons on the Move channel and if you want to see that we'll put a link below. We also did a video on our Mortons on the Move channel about why we chose to install this toilet but today we're going to talk about the features, specs, how it works and what we think about it. So as you can see we're sitting outside and I've got the toilet next to me. The toilet is a very portable unit that can be pretty much installed anywhere. A composting toilet is different than your conventional toilet in that it doesn't use any water. The primary design separates the solids into a tank in the back here and the liquids into a tank up front. This design separating the liquids and the solids basically allows the solids to break down into pretty much a soil. These toilets are very popular in off-grid applications where there isn't a septic system or water available and they're very popular on boats as well where getting pumped out might be very difficult. They're becoming more and more popular in RVs because they allow you to not have to dump your black tank and allow you to stay off-grid for much longer periods of time. The Airhead Toilet is similar to a conventional toilet in that it has a toilet seat, a top lid that seals down to the lower lid. You can lift both of them up but you'll initially notice that it has a seal around the outside of the rim to keep the entire toilet sealed up. The bowl of this toilet looks very different than a conventional toilet because it doesn't use any water. The bowl design is designed to funnel the liquids forward into this section of the toilet where they drip down into a basically we call it the pea catch bucket. For solid waste you reach over to the right hand side and you flip this lever which opens up the flap and allows the solids to fall into the solids tank. The solids tank is filled with a coconut husk or a peat moss about halfway full up to where there is a crank lever on our toilet, the left hand side, but you could order this toilet with the crank on the right or the left hand side of the toilet. The crank is designed to stir the peat moss and mix the solids with the peat moss to assist with the composting and breakdown. Toilet paper with this toilet can go in the solids tank. We choose to put toilet paper used for solids in the solids tank, however toilet paper used for liquids we put in a separate trash can that we keep in our bathroom. When you're done you close the flap back up, you turn the crank a couple times, and that's all there is to using this toilet. The toilet has two vent holes. In our case we have a hose that connects to the right hand side of our toilet but it can also connect to the left. It doesn't matter and this draws air out of the toilet all the time. When you install this toilet you need to install a set of fans that come with the kit to install the toilet and a vent hose and it vents the air from the toilet outside all the time. The purpose of this is to dry out the solids and assist with that composting action. This constant very low air draw, it's not a lot of air but it's enough that you could just barely feel it, keeps the smells out of the toilet as well and keeps the toilet from smelling at all. The toilet is really well built and all of the metal connections on it including screws that hold the handles down, the crank itself, the grab handles on the side and any of the hardware that actually secures the different parts of the toilet together are all made of a very high quality stainless steel and are not going to rust or corrode. The seals on the rim of the lid are a really nice rubber and they just fit perfectly with this lid and they seal the toilet up really well as well. Overall the unit is pretty compact for what it does. The solids tank I'd say is maybe a little smaller than a five gallon bucket. The liquids tank is two gallons and overall it'll fit in probably just about any space that you need to put it in especially if there was a toilet there already. If you're using this toilet of course you're going to have to empty this toilet and the first thing you're going to need to do is empty the liquids tank and with two people using this we have to empty this just about every single day. This toilet design makes it incredibly easy to empty the liquids tank as all you do is loosen two screws on the side here, grab the lower ring on the liquids tank and the handle here and tilt it out and forward and it will just pop out. You can easily lock the tank outside to a dump location. We found that the liquids tank starts to smell actually more than solids in this toilet and we frequently every couple days or so we'll pour some vinegar in it to break up any crystals forming in it or even sometimes a little bit of bleach to actually kill any of that organic smell and get it smelling fresh and clean. You empty the solids tank of the toilet basically when it fills up and that's going to vary greatly depending on your usage. We use this toilet full time to people and we tend to get two to three weeks out of the toilet before we have to empty the solids tank. Emptying the solids tank is a really easy process. We just disconnect the air line from the side of the toilet and loosen the screws that hold it down. We take the entire toilet outside to do this process. We take the top section off of the toilet to expose the solids tank. We then just put a plastic bag over the solids tank and tip it upside down and shake it. Usually it empties out really easily but sometimes if there is a lot of moisture in the solids it'll stick a bit and you might have to get a stick or a shovel to help break that stuff up and get it to come out. It's a process you're going to want to wear gloves for but usually when it's mixed with the peat moss or coconut husk that you've put in there to start up the toilet it's just not that bad. When you're emptying it if it doesn't all fall out that's actually not a bad thing. You leave some of the composting material in it to help start the composting process for the next load. Once you've emptied it out you need to have a bag of peat moss or we choose to use a coconut husk brick that we just add some water to and it expands out into a coconut fiber and you pour that back into the tank and fill it up to about the line where the crank is inside the solids container. You then just put the top and bottom sections back together and reinstall the toilet. The waste can either be double bagged and thrown away or if you have the property you can actually compost the waste and basically turn it into soil that you can use in a garden with non-edible plants. Occasionally the toilet bowl will need to be cleaned. We use a simple spray bottle filled with a vinegar solution. We spray the bowl down and wipe it clean with some paper towel or even toilet paper. Some features we love particularly about this toilet is how easy it is to dump that liquids tank. It pops out so easily. We also like that on the front of the liquids tank there is a sight glass if you will so that when this tank is getting full once it reaches this sight glass you can easily see the level inside it. We keep a flashlight next to the toilet and will regularly just shine it up against this and you can easily see the level inside the tank. The liquids tank has also been a bit of a drawback for us in trying out a compost in toilet. We didn't realize we had to empty it so often and that can be a bit of a pain if you don't have a place to empty it or if it's full and you really gotta go you might need to take care of it first. I love how all the hardware on the toilet is stainless steel a very high quality stainless steel that isn't going to corrode or rust on you. The toilet also feels really well built any of the screws that hold the sections together and even the lid how it's attached to the toilet all feel really well built and sturdy. I love the gasket around the lid of the toilet as well because it does a great job sealing it up and preventing any smell from getting into the bathroom. Empty this toilet weighs 28 pounds it's about 20 inches tall from the top to bottom 19 inches from front to back including the hinges and almost 19 inches wide if you include the crank and the handle. The toilet can be ordered with the crank handle on either side of the toilet you can also get different fan shrouds depending on your installation needs. Airhead also offers a few different tank styles if you're trying to install this in a tight location. They have a number of other parts and pieces that you can modify as well especially if you're putting this in a lot of boats have very tight spaces and this toilet is designed to fit in most locations. The toilet came with an installation manual that was pretty generic because you can install these anywhere an off-grid cabin a boat an RV but it was enough for me to easily figure out how I needed to install the toilet and it came with all the parts that I needed to install the toilet except for an exterior vent cover. We got the toilet in one box and in one day we were able to swap out our old toilet and have this one up and running. In general it comes with everything needed including the coconut brick to start up the toilet it includes the top bowl and lid the solid section the tank all the hard brick connected to it and the hosing and fan needed to connect the toilet and get it venting properly. It also came with a solids tank lid that can actually be put onto the solids tank so if you should decide to buy a second solids tank you could just swap out that tank put the lid on and let the composting process continue to happen in the tank without actually having to empty it until it's fully composted. Well it is called a composting toilet it's more of a separating toilet when you're using it full time as it can't fully compost while you're using it. One person or less frequent usage maybe using it weekends I bet this thing would compost down so you could probably go a whole season without having to empty the toilet. We find the solids tank gets moisture logged in about a week and then we can only go another week on it before we really need to empty it. Sometimes we can add some really dry peat moss to the tank and extend that time. We've had people come and stay with us and with four people using it full time we found the toilet really can't keep up and in about a week it's ready to be emptied. With that much usage it's really not composting that quick and it just can't keep up but it still works just fine. We have left the RV for an extended period of time before and when we came back there was no smell and actually the tank had significantly dropped in level because it composted away. You know that compost action is happening in there because sometimes you'll feel the bottom and it'll actually be warm because of that bacterial action breaking down the solids. This toilet uses no water so it saves us a ton of water and allows us to go much much longer periods of time between fillups of our fresh tank. One of my favorite features of this toilet is that there is almost no smell. Our previous RV toilet would occasionally smell especially in hot weather there was a good chance that we'd get some smell out of the toilet but this toilet we don't get any smell because it's constantly venting out the side to dry itself out. Since we've installed this toilet we do not use our bathroom fan because the toilet itself basically is a fan that runs all the time. The fan is a very very small air draw. I think it's only about three watts but that's all that's needed. That little tiny air draw is minimal but you are going to need a way to charge up your batteries every so often if you are off grid. A small solar panel will take care of this toilet just fine. If your batteries do die or you lose power to the toilet however you probably will notice smell in your RV because it's not designed to work that way. It needs to be vented outside. Because this toilet has to have air flow all the time there is a little bit of fan noise and our toilet is relatively close to our bed and we can hear that at night. It's very constant not very loud and not really obtrusive at all. Just a little bit of a hum. The toilet is quite simple. There isn't a whole lot going on with it and we haven't had any problems with it since installing it. Overall we've really enjoyed using this toilet and we wouldn't go back to a conventional style RV toilet. It's done exactly what it's supposed to. It prevents us from having to go to dump stations as often. We love that we're just able to compost the waste and turn it into soil and fertilizer. While it did take a bit of getting used to we were already used to dealing with our waste as RVers but this was just one more step and we do think that it has saved us time in having to move the RV. If you're thinking of doing a composting toilet we would definitely recommend the airhead. We upload a video on road gear reviews every week. Thanks for watching. We hope to see you next time. Bye. If you have any questions or comments please leave them below. Also be sure to subscribe to our channel for weekly uploads of our travel product reviews.