Homemade portapotty

[Bluebinky]

Hi everyone. It's been a while, but as usual, I have a really off the wall question...

I'm about to apply for permits to build a new beach house for the family (Seattle area). The lot is somewhat isolated in that there is no driveway or adjacent road. From the parking area, it's about a 300 foot walk on a narrow foot path to the site. If I rent a porta-potty, it could not be serviced easily. It would take an act of congress to get permission from the owner of the nearby parking lot to place one there for months (years?) on end.

There is a community porta-potty about a 10 minute walk away (haven't timed it), so I might be able to convince the city that I'm OSHA compliant, but I really don't want to walk that far myself...

Since it will be mostly just me, with occasional subs, on-site, I had the brilliant idea of building a small temporary "shack" and putting one of those cassette toilets/washbasin combos (made for camping) inside. I live just a couple of miles away, so it wouldn't see much "hard" use...

Has anyone here ever done such a thing?

 

[Terry]

Where is that? I've been thinking about some sort of vacation property and have started to give it some serious thought.
How much land is there? I mean, they do allow septics for homes given enough land. I'm assuming you have running water there?
When I was building homes in the 80's I made sure I had a porta potty, but that wasn't a forever thing there.

The family outhouse on Lake Quesnel, old picture of my brother from the 70's. We no longer have that anymore, Sad.
A bit to the right of the cabin there closer to the woods in back where the bears could watch.

That's me hanging on the front of the kayak.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Bluebinky]

Hi Terry. Cool pics, they make me really miss those days...

Occasionally, nice properties go up for sale on Maury/Vashon Islands. The only one I see currently to my possible liking is MLS 1553562 -- probably a tear down and it seems kinda over priced. I guess it depends on what you want -- if I had my way, I'd be hundreds of miles from the nearest big city, but the boss won't allow it.

Our site is in Des Moines. Not exactly vacation living, but it's one of the dwindling number of empty on the beach lots between Seattle and Tacoma. All utilities are within a few feet of the property, including sewer. The lot is small, but it's a close-knit neighborhood and we get along with all the neighbors. A few of them have lived there since the 60s & 70s. They used our lot for a community garden and party area where they had bonfires and ??? -- somehow the shack on our lot burned down at some point and no one will fess up. Kind of hard to describe, so here's an aerial image (our "main" house is a bit inland a couple of miles in the direction the camera is pointing):

The views to the west are fantastic. This will be the evening view sitting on the bed in the master bedroom in the summer. Aside from some airplane noise from SeaTac, it doesn't feel like being in the city at all (looking west-northwest at Maury Island, Vashon Island, and the Olympics):

Anyway, we've been planning for a year and everything is being done by the book. I'm a couple of weeks from my first attempt at getting a shoreline variance. My main question is if anyone has experience good or bad with having mickey-mouse sanitation facilities during a permitted owner-build. Is the city going to laugh at me and then shut me down?

I'm thinking I might be able to get away with stashing a real porta potty in the parking lot for just a month while the foundation crew is doing their thing. If all goes well, the only other subs will be small crews and they will only be there for a day or two at most.

Happy New Year, Terry...

 

[Terry]

That's pretty interesting Blueblinky, That would be an interesting project and the views are awesome there. It's an encouragement that there's stuff out there.
I don't see why there would be a complaint to have a porta potty during construction, though that's my thought and maybe not theirs.
It does need to be where it gets serviced weekly. And it sure beats doing it in the woods.