Nyagen Toilet Concrete Pour

 Here are some pictures from our Nyagen toilet project for Michael. A nyagen is a hole in the ground covered with concrete for a squat-type toilet. He will also have a shower in the same dome. The shower water will drain out a pipe for gray water once dome is complete, rather than into the nyagen.  The cost for the nyagen was about $100 for the concrete (25 bags) and $10 for the rebar, and about $10 for the 2X4's, which we can re-use . We already had the reinforcing wire, we picked up for free, and the metal flooring was also a  leftover resource from a storage building that the wind blew apart.

Below you see the hole, covered with two pallets, which will form the floor support. Notice we nailed 2X4's on the ends of the pallets to span the gap and hold the pallets securely. The hole is about 7 feet deep, 4+ feet wide and 9 feet long. We planned to have the hole 4'X4' but the backhoe scooped out a little too much trying to reach our desired depth.

Here you can see a close-up of the hole, and the depth, through the pallet slats. It is close to 7 feet.

The picture below shows Michael putting the finishing touches on the wire reinforcement. Notice the sheet metal screwed to the pallets to create a  solid surface to hold the the concrete and to help strengthen the pallet structure. You will also see the mold for the toilet hole and the vent-pipe coupler. The 2X4's were set dead-level and staked in.

Below is a close up of the reenforcing and molds. Notice that we used two layers of wire cloth, one layer elevated about two inches by tying rocks underneath it.  Top wire cloth and 3/8" rebar were all wired together.

The next day after pour. My concrete finishing skills are a bit rusty after about 30 years, but it came out pretty decent. Notice the water pooling in the upper right corner of the photo.  That is the shower end and we purposely sloped the concrete to that corner for drainage. We will be enclosing the remaining circle with concrete after the dome is constructed, for a complete concrete floor.

Below is a close-up of the toilet hole with the garbage-can lid in place, which was pressed into the concrete during the pour.