An outhouse is one of the simplest tools for answering nature’s call. But keeping an efficient and environmentally friendly outhouse requires some maintenance and a touch of thoughtful planning.

According to Max Burns in his book “Cottage Water Systems,” the two most common types of outhouses are the vault privy, which houses waste in a holding tank below the outhouse, and the pit privy, which is simply a little house built over a hole in the ground. Vault privies, because they keep waste from leaching into the ground, are a lighter load on the land environmentally and less of a danger to the groundwater. Vault privies need to be pumped out when the holding tanks fill.

Since your outhouse has seen the passage of so many moons, it seems you have found yourselves the proud owners of an old-fashioned pit privy.

Limiting what goes into the hole is the first directive in good outhouse-keeping. Human waste and toilet paper are the only things that should be sent down to the pit. This means no vegetable cuttings, no diapers, no baby wipes and no gray water from kitchen sinks and washbasins.

For controlling odors, Burns suggests running a 3- or 4-inch plastic pipe from just under the bench of the outhouse to about two feet above the roof to let out the pit gases. Next to that, install a 11/2- to 2-inch pipe to let in fresh air. Both pipes should be screened at the top to keep insects out.

A type of lime called calcium hydroxide, available at feed stores, can be dropped down the hole to reduce odor. But lime might halt decomposition. Ash from a wood-burning stove is better for decomposition, but less effective on odors. In either case, a surgical mask or bandana can protect you from the dust cloud that is sure to come back at you.

Bacteria, evaporation and seepage all combine to reduce the amount of waste in the hole, but not necessarily as fast as the pile of waste accumulates. When the pit is full, it’s time to dig a new hole – and move the outhouse. A backhoe would come in handy.

The outhouse, as we know it, originated in Europe more than 500 years ago, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The finer inns began offering "his" and "hers" outhouses. But, because most people were illiterate, symbols were used on the outhouses to show which was "his" and which was "hers". Pictures of the sun and moon were the obvious choice. From ancient times, the "sun" had been a symbol of all that was masculine and the "moon" of all that was feminine. 

As time went by, innkeepers reasoned that maintaining a men's outhouse was unnecessary, because they could always go out in the woods--- and those who couldn't or wouldn't, could use the women's outhouse. Men's outhouses disappeared, leaving only women's outhouses, marked with the crescent moon.

Outhouses With Two Holes:
No, these old vintage structures weren't usually doing double duty.  Rather, most contained two holes of different sizes - one for adults and one for children.  Don't think those kids wanted to sit on the bigger hole and risk the consequences.  However, that being said, some large families would have multiple holes for use at the same time.  In Montana, there was once a hotel that had an outhouse with 12 seats. 

Crescent Moon:  The crescent moon cutout and the star cutout on the door of many outhouses goes back to Colonial times. In a time when few people could read, the crescent moon was the symbol for women while the star cutout was for men.  It is thought that the men, in general, let their outhouses fall into such bad shape that it was the women's outhouses that survived the test of time.  The cutout also let light into the outhouse as there were usually no windows.

Outhouse Builders:  During Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration - the WPA - there were teams of outhouse builders who built most of the outhouses in rural areas. 

Toilet Paper:  Considered a luxury by most rural families, newspaper or pages from old catalogs was more often used. 

Average Outhouse:  Usually they were 3 to 4 feet square by 7 feet high with no window, heat, or  electric light.  Due to the odor, most  were built between 50 and 150 feet from the main house, often facing away from the house.  So that didn't have to smell the unpleasant odor, many people left the door open  while they were using it.  Old-timers will admit that they had trouble breaking this habit with the invention of indoor bathrooms. 

Two Story Outhouses:  How in the heck did that work?  Well, the upstairs facilities were situated a little further back so that the "materials" released from the second floor would fall behind the wall of the first floor. There are a few of these old relics still around.  The one below was built next to a large store in Gays, Illinois.  The store has long since been torn down, but thanks to those fine citizens of Gays, the "skys-crapper" was preserved. Thomas Crapper:  It is a myth that

Thomas Crapper invented the toilet.  Though the man held several patents for plumbing related products, he did not invent the water closet.

Outhouse Facts & Trivia With permission from Legends of America

The Outhouse: an Icon of the American West
By Elizabeth McCall

They say it was the outhouse that held the key to Billy the Kid's great escape.  Hidden inside one, legend says, was a revolver waiting for The Kid to retrieve it on an early evening visit to the loo outside New Mexico's Lincoln County Courthouse, where he was jailed.  

In truth, Billy knew that if he could get loose from the floor, where he was shackled and chained, he could slip his remarkably small hands through his handcuffs. After asking the guard if he could use the outhouse, he slipped his cuffs and hit the guard over the head when he returned to the courthouse. In the ensuing scuffle, Billy got the guard's gun and shot him.

"Today, The Kid's famous jailbreak — and the role the outhouse played — is memorialized in New Mexico's historic Lincoln County, in a play at the Lincoln State Memorial," says B. Byron Price, director of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the University of Oklahoma. And that's no small role: It's been reprised annually (except for two years during World War II) since 1939, making it the longest-running folk play in the United States.  

Once abundant throughout the country, the iconic structure typically depicted with a crescent-shaped moon on the door was truly privy to the intimate details of life in the American West. For some, it provided a rendezvous point for late-night clandestine encounters. For others, it was a constant magnet for pranks, especially at Halloween, when many outhouses were moved (so the user stepped in the hole), tipped over, or even torched.  

Maybe you remember digging the holes, or filling them in when the outhouse had to be moved. The outhouse was, after all, a mainstay of life in the country until not that long ago. "You'd find outhouses far into the 20th century. There are still some out there," Price says. Indeed, about 50 million American families still had outhouses as late as 1950, down to 0.6 percent of the population in a recent reckoning.  

It was Thomas Jefferson who got rid of the wooden privy on the White House lawn and then opted for two indoor water closets, which pumped waste into a septic field beyond the White House. But Jefferson was no stranger to innovation: The privies at his Monticello home were air-cooled by underground tunnels.  

And even pop stars are part of the outhouse culture. Singer-songwriter Jim Croce found his outhouse in Lyndell, Pennsylvania, a relaxing place to meditate. The arched window from the architecturally unique structure can be seen on the cover of his first album, Don't Mess Around with Jim.  

With such a colorful and ubiquitous history, outhouses have often figured into Hollywood Westerns. Price, who previously served as executive director of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, points out that in The Missouri Breaks (1976), starring Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, an outhouse set the scene for the shooting of a man at his most vulnerable — with his pants down. Another outhouse shooting took place in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992). And in 2008's Appaloosa, Jeremy Irons' ruthless Randall Bragg character was taken by surprise and arrested while coming out the door from his early morning outhouse visit. Traditionally, the average outhouse (for single use) was 3 to 4 feet square, 7 feet high, and had no heat, window, or electric light. Many outhouses had two holes of different sizes — one for adults and a smaller one for children. Large families sometimes had multiple holes for concurrent use. A supersize privy at one Montana hotel offered a dozen holes to patrons. There were even deluxe two-story models. Although most outhouses had lids to cover the holes, some included actual toilet seats.  

Other practical matters: Many outhouses were painted white so they could been seen in the dark of night, and before toilet paper, mail-order catalogs were favored because the pages were soft; corn cobs (usually kept in a box) also served a similar function.  

Curiously, the crescent moon equated today with outhouse doors wasn't always a universal symbol. Nor was the actual intent simply for ventilation and light. In colonial times, an era when few people could read, the crescent moon associated with Luna was a gender identification symbol for women. Likewise, the men's outhouse was then designated with a sun or star cutout on the door. However, by the mid-1800s, the original meanings were lost on the general population. Some Northern areas had no cutouts at all on the doors because of severe weather. Doug Harman, chairman of the Lakes Trail Region for the Texas Historical Commission, which includes most of North Texas, shares a historical insight: "At the time of the Civil War, there were no regulations about where to put latrines [in relation] to where to get the drinking water. Two-thirds of the deaths in the Civil War were from disease, not battle. One of the major causes was from defecation. Toward of the end of the war, people became aware of the problem of human and animal wastes getting mixed [into drinking water]. They became very careful about where they put the outhouse." Which tended to be 50 to 150 feet from a dwelling, away from water, and surrounded by sweet-smelling bushes.  

According to The Vanishing American Outhouse by Ronald S. Barlow (Viking Studio), at least 4 million outhouses were still in use across the country when the book was published in 1992. Featuring many period outhouse photos and a humorous collection of "privy postcards," the book includes copies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 1922 and 1928 era Farmers' Bulletin on Sewage and Sewerage of Farm Homes, with schematics and directions for building sanitary, dry-earth, and vault privies.  

Barlow also cites the fact that among the many accomplishments of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) was the actual building of 2,309,239 "Sanitary Privies" by federally trained and funded specialists. Crews rebuilt outhouses across the country and erected new ones if existing standards weren't met.  

In just a couple of generations, that number has dwindled to almost nothing. WalletPop recently listed the outhouse among the Top 25 Things Disappearing from America. So much so that a Canadian museum — in Liverpool, Nova Scotia — is seeking to preserve them. And, now that Richard Papousek, the founder and curator of the Outhouse Museum in Gregory, South Dakota, has moved, so has his museum (which includes a two-story model) — next door behind The Oscar Micheax Center on Main Street.  

Still, there's something of a renaissance of surviving structures as quaint collectible folk art among landscape architects, who use them for high-end backyard garden projects. Meanwhile, other former outhouses have been reborn as tool sheds, phone booths, and even school bus stops. And you have only to witness an outhouse race to realize what a beloved anachronism the outhouse truly is. There are dozens of such races in the West from Texas to Alaska to Kansas. Picture "riders" sitting over the hole, wearing helmets, while racing over snow on runners or along the street on foot with outhouse in tow, and ask yourself: What would Billy the Kid say?