Dig and site a latrine

When a latrine is the right answer

For a household staying put, the twin-bucket composting toilet is better on almost every count, and it works indoors in a British winter, which is decisive.

A latrine is the right choice when:

• You are away from home, camping, or moving.
• There is no container, no cover material and no way to get either.
• The household is large enough, or the stay short enough, that a heap makes no sense.
• You need something immediately with nothing but a spade.

The playbook's figures are the ones this page uses, and they check out against standard guidance. They are floors, not starting points to negotiate down.

Siting

Sixty metres is further than it feels. Pace it out once, on your own ground, so you know what it looks like. Most people underestimate it badly and site a latrine at what feels like a decent distance and is nowhere near enough.

Why shallow beats deep

This is the single most counterintuitive fact on the page, because the instinct is that deeper means safer, and for this purpose it means the opposite.

15 to 20 cm is deep enough to keep it covered, keep flies off, and keep animals from digging it up, while staying in the layer that actually does the work.

The cathole

For one person, one use. The standard method.

1. Choose a spot meeting the siting rules, ideally somewhere with sun and leaf litter.
2. Dig a hole 15 to 20 cm deep, and about 15 cm across, with a trowel or the heel of a boot.
3. Keep the turf or the leaf litter to one side, intact.
4. Use it.
5. Fill it in with the soil you removed, and tread it down lightly.
6. Replace the turf or litter on top.
7. Wash hands.

Paper: bury it with the waste if it is ordinary toilet paper, or better, burn it or carry it out. Wet wipes and anything synthetic must never be buried, since they do not break down.

Do not use the same spot twice, and space catholes well apart.

The trench latrine

For a household or a group over several days.

1. Same siting rules.
2. Dig a trench 15 to 20 cm deep, 10 to 15 cm wide, and as long as the group and the stay require.
3. Pile the excavated soil along one side, with a trowel or scoop kept there.
4. Use one end first, working along.
5. Cover each use immediately with soil from the pile, completely.
6. Fill in the whole trench when it is done, mound it slightly to allow for settling, and mark it.

Cover material makes a large difference here too. A scoop of soil plus a handful of leaf litter, ash or sawdust seals better than soil alone, controls smell, and keeps flies off. The same principle as the composting toilet, and flies are the same disease vector.

Screen it. A tarpaulin, a hedge or a few pallets. A latrine that feels exposed is a latrine that gets avoided, and people who avoid it will go somewhere worse and less controlled.

Site a handwashing point right next to it. A container of water with a tap or a tipping bottle, and soap. This is not a refinement; it is the point at which the disease chain is actually broken, and it is the thing that lapses first.

Ground that will not work

• Waterlogged ground or a high water table. The hole fills, and you are effectively depositing straight into groundwater. Common across lowland Britain in winter.
• Pure sand, which does not hold and lets liquid straight through.
• Thin soil over rock, where you cannot get depth.
• Frozen ground, in which case use buckets instead.
• Heavily rooted ground, which you cannot dig and where roots channel liquid.
• Peat, which is acidic, waterlogged, biologically slow, and frequently sits directly above water. Large areas of British upland are peat.
• Anywhere you might later grow food.

Running it

• Cover every use, completely, immediately.
• Keep a scoop and cover material at the latrine, not somewhere you have to fetch them from.
• Handwashing at the latrine, enforced.
• Mark and record where filled latrines are, so nobody digs there and nothing gets planted there.
• Leave a filled latrine at least a year before disturbing the ground, and longer before growing anything on it. The same reasoning as the composting toilet's curing year: parasite eggs are durable and time is the mechanism.
• Keep children away, and keep animals off. Dogs will dig.
• Move to a fresh site rather than deepening or extending an old one.