Planning Sanitation for Lakeside Events in Muskoka

Muskoka is so picturesque and makes for a beautiful spot to host events and gather with your friends and family. From weddings, family reunions, retirements and birthdays, there’s a beautiful venue around every corner spread across the district. After you’ve secured your catering and drinks, secured the venue and planned your guest list, you’ll need to start thinking about where all your loved ones are going to use the bathroom.

1. Start With the Basics: Guest Count

Say you’re hosting a family reunion for all six of your siblings and their children, your children, your parents, all their siblings and all their children and their children’s children. Not to mention everyone married into the family and rogue family friends and their children. Suddenly, you have close to 100 people coming to your rural Muskoka property.

The septic system on your property won’t be able to keep up with that kind of influx. Typical family homes have a septic capacity of between 800-1200 gallons. As a quick math exercise, if everyone flushes the toilet twice at about 1.5 gallons a flush, you’re looking at about 300 gallons of water being sent into your septic tank. This doesn’t include people washing their hands, people dumping extra of their drinks down the drain, all the dishes you’ll need to do after the party (sorry to be the one that reminds you), anyone that’s staying over and needs to have a shower that night or the next day. Just to name a few possible culprits of water use.

The easiest way to avoid that is ordering a portable toilet for the day of your event. You can get about 250 uses out of our most basic toilet, and our luxury trailers feel way more like a real washroom than a portable one.

The general rule of thumb is that you need one toilet for every 50 people, so at an event with 100 people, you’d be smart to have two units there. Whether that’s two basic units or a trailer washroom with two stalls/toilets in it, this ensures no one is waiting in line for long and there’s no issues with guest comfort.

2. Consider the Terrain

Lakeside properties often have very sloped terrain that leads down to the water and can sometimes be tricky to find a plot of land suitable for placing the portable toilet down. The ground can also be very soft due to a high water table, this combo could lead to portable toilets falling over on their side or worst case, tumbling down towards the water.

To avoid that from happening, try to pinpoint a spot on your property that has flat, hard ground like a pathway or driveway where the unit can be placed. It’s ideal to place it in a spot that creates some distance between where the food is served and the unit on your property, and close enough to the driveway or road that our technicians can service them.

If you aren’t sure where to have the unit placed, you can ask us and take some photos and send them to us to get our professional opinion on where to have it placed.

3. Think About Accessibility

When planning an official event like a grand opening for a new hardware store, you’ll need to make sure you have at least one ADA-compliant unit. It’s also important to make sure that this unit be easy to access without steep climbs or long walks to get to, this can make or break the comfortability of your guests at the event. And being compliant with ADA is a great way to earn a lot of respect and gratitude from people in your community!

4. Keep Units Away from Food and Water

The other thing to think about is your wind direction, if you’re close to a large lake then the wind coming off the lake will carry all scents from the shore up towards the cottage and the rest of the party. For all these reasons, placing your portable toilet near the driveway or roadway is likely your best move.

5. Add Handwashing Stations

You may have been to a large event like an arts and crafts show, a music festival or Ribfest and seen handwashing stations around the portable restroom units. This is a great option for if you have a larger event and will be serving food and have a large amount of people attending, especially for families.

The sinks are filled with soap dispensers and water and make such a big difference for keeping your guests comfortable. It also makes it so much easier for parents washing their children’s hands before eating a meal and better for people who have poor vision to have an easier time seeing what they’re doing when the sink is set up in natural lighting.

6. Consider a Restroom Trailer for Upscale Events

You may think the only options for portable washrooms for your wedding or upscale event that you’re hosting, but there are much fancier options with more deluxe finishes.

A restroom trailer offers running water inside the unit, meaning a real flush and a sink for handwashing inside each section. It also is hooked up to electrical so that you can have lights and climate control inside the trailer for your guests comfort.

Overall, the trailer restrooms offer a much more elevated and luxurious experience and make for the perfect solution for people who appreciate comfort at their events.

Final Thoughts

If you’re hosting a lakeside event in Muskoka, there’s a lot to consider and plan around without having to think about your sanitation set up.

At Call of The Wild, we make it easy to meet you in the middle of comfort, budget and quality, all depending on your event’s unique needs. If you have any questions, we are able to help you decide what might fit with your needs. Just give us a call!