Mobile Restroom with UM Students

Verde Farm Rural Sanitary Facilities

This project completed in the Spring of 2013 was for a mobile restroom and shower facility for a not-for-profit organization called Earth Learning. The organization fosters an awareness of global interdependence, ecological integrity though biological diversity, and the natural processes that sustain life. Earth Learning has a farm on the edge of the Everglades for growing organic fruits and vegetables and its owner wanted a composting toilet and rainwater fed shower facility. Students design a long louvered structure to house both programs that utilizes the roof to harvest, heat, and store rainwater. The composting toilet sits at the opposite end and is made of off the shelf materials to store the waste to turn it into soil for reuse on the farm. The whole structure rests on thick fir skids that have a 3/54” steel place at one end to allow the structure to be towed behind a tractor to follow workers in the field as needed. The perimeter of the structure is bench height and also provides shade and a place to escape the sun and rain while out in the field.

Faculty: Professor Rocco Ceo, Billy E. Miller Design/Build Critic: Jim Adamson.
Students: Drew Dent, Miles Glover, Ma Zheng, Jie Zhu, Robbie Allison, Nestor Arguello, Sinead Camillo, Francisco Jimenez, Kristen Meyer, Ariana Ragusa, Amanda Rosenfeld, Monica Socoro.