Posted on by dean

Dunny-Dos and Dunny-Don'ts

One of the most discussed and most disliked, but also least understood aspects of van living is the dreaded dunny-duty; managing the van’s internal toilet. There are a bucket load1 of blog posts and YouTube videos out there on this matter; sadly most of them are skewed, usually by either a manufacturer affiliation2 or by the usage pattern of the poster3.

While this is not necessarily bad, it does seem to lead to incomplete and often misleading information.

As we live in our van full-time and are now coming up towards 2 years experience, we have learnt/developed a slightly different viewpoint.

I should also note that we use a Dometic cassette toilet—essentially similar to other brands I’m told—although we’re watching developments in the composting toilet space with great interest.

Therefore, without further ado, here’s a short list of dos and don’ts for using/managing your internal van toilet.

Dunny-Dos4

  • DO read the manufacturer’s doco – despite any previous comment it’s a great place to start if you’re new to this and will help you avoid the most common mistakes.
  • DO procure a second cassette – while expensive it will seem totally worthwhile the first time that it saves you a traipse across town in the rain (or even 40+ degree heat) to a dump point.
  • DO spend some time working out the correct balance (for your specific case) between cost and cleanliness/smell of chemicals to use in your toilet. Our observation is that vendors all err on the side of safety, i.e. over treatment, while some online posters err5 the other way.
  • DO remember, without being silly about it (see below), that every thing you “do” somewhere else is something you won’t need to empty!

Dunny-Don’ts6

  • DON’T limit your use of your toilet – we see so many comments about “#1s only, no #2’s” etc; to my mind this is insanely ridiculous – why impose crazy limitations on yourself/family for the sake of (maybe) one extra usage day between empties?
  • DON’T ever ignore the warning lights on your toilet – ours has two: a yellow that indicates notionally 3/4 full and a red that denotes “full”. “Full” is really, really full, any anything else in is too much7.
  • DON’T travel with your cassette full if you can possibly avoid it; while they do seal fairly well, our wonderful Aussie roads will tend to unseal it after a little while. If you have a second cassette, two partly-full cassettes will likely travel better than one very full one (don’t forget to secure the second one from sliding/bouncing around!).

Footnotes:

  1. you could, if you were partial to a particular turn of phrase, say a “crap load”
  2. not that this is necessarily bad in and of itself, but generally seems to lead to a very “idealist” point-of-view
  3. typically a one or two holidays a year pattern
  4. a beaut little town about an hour east of Dubbo
  5. in my opinion
  6. nowhere near Dubbo :)
  7. you really don’t want to know how I know this!