Tim Mitra

We bought a Multoa 60 at the Cottage Show in Toronto last fall, after years of research and debate on whether to get an incinerating or composting toilet. We were told we would need to by the XL version because we have more than 3 or 4 people at the cottage at a time. (Read this if you are considering buying the Multoa composting toilet.)

So we followed the installation instructions, even buying extra insulated sections for the chimney so that we could properly vent the toilet. It heats and evaporates excess liquid up a fan powered chimney from a second chamber at the bottom of the toilet.

However to our horror after two weeks of full time use the toilet’s tray became full and overflowed into the main chamber. There are two tubes that indicate the level of liquid in the toilet. However the tech support people who sold us the toilet NEVER mentioned that the liquid in the tube on the left indicates that the chamber is full of “liquid”. [I suppose they assumed we had the manual at the cottage.] BTW the “liquid” as quoted by the support guy – “The liquid will look like espresso but not smell like it.”

They only offer to berate us for overusing the toilet and for having poor ventilation in the cottage. It’s a fifty year old cottage – so it is no where near air tight. They claim that the toilet can only support 3 to 4 people even though the staff at the cottage show assured us that we would need the larger toilet – we told them that often there are up to eight people at the cottage.

We cranked the thermostat up to 10 (this one doesn’t go to 11) back in July and left the toilet running constantly – in a vain effort to eliminate the excess liquid. We kept the bathroom window closed to aid in venting… and contacted the the company who sold us the unit (There is only one in Canada – you figure it out) but they NEVER mentioned the liquid in the left tube. I should also mention that we do have an outhouse and that many of our male guests used the trees since we could seem to use the toilet.

I spent the better part of last week babying the toilet and trading notes with the company – via email. After days of back and forth… I finally went and bought a low flow ceramic toilet and reconnected it to our septic system. (I feel sorry for you if cannot use a septic system.) I started to bail out the toilet through the top opening. To my surprise I removed gallons of liquid from the UPPER chamber. I then started to empty the liquid from the silicon tube on the left. That was a comedy of errors as the tube easily comes undone – we had several spills of “expresso”. After hours of draining gallons from this tube, I finally had an inch of fluid in the left tube (I am going to retrofit a drain on this tube – and recommend you do the same.)

I then turned my attention to the right tube – by this time there was little or no liquid in the right tube… maybe it does work… so I opened the front access panel. Immediately a thick chocolate fudge-like liquid began to ooze out. We then lifted the whole toilet into our oversized shower so I could rinse it off. (Are you still reading this?) To my surprise there is a panel cover on the bottom of the toilet held on with double-sided tape. What a joke. If you are installing this toilet do yourself a favor and apply duck tape over the panel (12 x 18 inch best guess) – if your toilet gets wet this panel will come off.

After about eight hours of draining and cleaning up “expresso” I finally had the toilet back to the condition it was back in June. I had last sent the reseller a message stating the we would try the toilet again but if it had this problem again we would be returning it. If you’re looking for a testimonial on this product this is it – I cannot in all consciousness recommend that anyone buy this toilet under any circumstance. This opinion may change – but I doubt it.

BTW I found a page of people complaining about the same problems we experienced. Composting Toilets | Poopreport.com

More here.

here are some highlights:

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We had a Biolet 20 Deluxe (US version of Mulltoa 20). It had 120v electric fan and a heater with a thermostat. We are off-grid and found this piece of sh_t to eat our batteries, as the fan required the inverter to be on constantly, and the heater draws 250W.

Biolet USA did call me, long distance, once to address a customer support email I sent. They claimed it was installed wrong, or the vent was blocked, or the room was too cold, on and on….
Also, it did not evaporate the piss fast enough, so we ended up with it overflowing the tray once, plus the “indicator tube” leaked, so the pee left the tray and was pooling in the bottom of the unit.
We are a couple, using the toilet on weekends and peeing outside and TRYING to wait and poop at work on weekdays- it still doesn’t work. The tray contained soaking, stinking (horrible) wet raw sewage all three times I emptied it in 4 months. This unit was advertised as needing emptied once every 6 months with 3-4 people and full-time use.

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My comments reference a Biolet purchased from Home Depot. Fan, mixing mechanism, heating element, blah, blah, blah. Two months into the experience we’ve had a liquid overflow, sheared pin. Liquid level stays high no matter what temperature setting we use. Tech support is useless. They can’t even send out the shear pins (non standard size so not locally available) on a timely basis. Maybe they should supply a couple extras with the new unit????? DUH! My plan is to haul the whole rotten mess outside, clean it out, replace the pin and start the process over. I’m all for giving it a fair chance, but a little voice keeps telling me I’ve been had. If I can’t get this right after 6 months, I’ll be shopping legal options to have these things outlawed!!!!!!

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yep.. just bought a Multoa60 (Biolet XL in the states I think), Swedish technology, about a month ago for our cottage. Nothing but problems so far. Have already had to replace a faulty thermostat. It is simply incapable of evaporating the urine even at the highest temperature setting and the composting chamber is just a big pile of very soggy poop-mulch which strains the mixing arms. I’m sure the pin on the drive arm will shear soon.

I’m still working with product support to iron out the issues but have lost all confidence at this point. I will re-post an update if/when issues are resolved but am not betting my bottom dollar…since I’m broke after paying an arm and a leg for this boner…

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We paid the “BEST roofers in the GTA” a lot of money to do our entire roof a couple of years ago. And I mean A LOT! However we have been finding evidence of damage to the surrounding building since they have left.

We found a base ball size hole in our soffit – that they could have told us about – but didn’t. We found out about the hole when a bird got into our house and the student painters we hired told us about it.

Two days ago we had a major thunder storm in Toronto and water poured down the front of your house like a water fall. I got a ladder out to see about cleaning out the gutters when to my surprise I discovered a sag in the eaves trough across the front of the house. It seams that the workmen had run the flashing over the top of the eaves and broken some of the hangers. Rather than take the eaves off, do the flashing and then put the eaves back on properly they used the wrong sized hangers and introduced a sag in the eaves trough. So now the water sits in the eaves.

If you hire the BEST roofers in the GTA make sure you visually inspect EVERYTHING surrounding their work. Unfortunately that is true of any contractor you hire – including the BEST in the GTA .