Sanitation: Latrines, Hygiene & Stopping Disease

Faeces Kill More Settlements Than Hunger

By months 6–24 you are not camping. You are living in one place. That is when open defecation, flies, and dirty hands start a cycle that can empty a camp faster than a raid. Cholera, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis A, worms — they travel the same road: faeces to mouth.

If you only remember one sentence: keep faeces in a hole, keep hands clean, keep the hole away from the water.

☣ How Disease Walks Into Camp (the F-diagram)

💩FaecesThe source. Adult, child, animal, and nappy waste are all infectious. Children’s faeces are not “weaker.”

🖐️FingersHands after the latrine, after cleaning a child, after handling waste. The shortest path to the mouth.

🪰FliesOpen pits and uncovered food. Flies walk on faeces, then on plates.

💧FluidsWells, streams, and stored water downhill or downstream of latrines and soakaways.

🌾Fields / FloorsOpen defecation, overflowing pits, greywater in the yard. Bare feet and tools pick it up.

🍲FoodUnwashed hands, unwashed produce, flies on leftovers, dirty cooking water.

✓ FAMILY PIT + SOAP ⚠ SHARED TRENCH ✗ OPEN DEFECATION ☠ FAECES IN WATER

📏 Settlement Distances (print this)

Thing	From drinking water	From where people sleep	Other rule
Pit, trench, soakaway	At least 30 m. More in sand, limestone, or cracked rock	About 6–50 m. Shared toilets no farther than 50 m	Downhill from wells. Pit bottom at least 1.5 m above the highest water table
Bathing / laundry	At least 30 m (about 100 ft)	Close enough people will use it	Drain to a soakaway, never to the well or kitchen
Refuse pit	At least 30 m	Within about 15 m so people actually use it	Cover daily. Keep animals out
Grave	At least 30 m	50 m if you can	1.5–2 m deep. Mark it. Do not bury in the floodplain

If you cannot test soil permeability, use 30 m and 1.5 m as the default. Increase both in coarse sand, gravel, or fissured rock. Fine clay holds contamination closer.

▼ Open the section that matches your problem. Each one is self-contained. ▼

📍

Site the Latrine Before You Dig

SITE ▼

A well-built latrine in the wrong place poisons the well. Walk the ground with a stick and a bucket of water before you swing a spade.

Mark every drinking source. Wells, springs, storage tanks, rain barrels, the stream you boil from. The latrine goes downhill from all of them, never on the same contour that drains into them.

Watch where rain already runs. Do not put a pit in a gully, a ditch, or a seasonal flood path. After a storm the pit becomes a sewage fountain.

Find the water table. Dig a test hole, or look at nearby wells and the stream in the wet season. The bottom of the finished pit must sit at least 1.5 m above the highest water you expect. If you hit water while digging, stop. Switch to a mound or raised vault.

Walk the night path. Shared toilets must be within 50 m of shelters or people will squat beside the house. Lights, a clear path, and a lockable door matter more for women and children than a pretty roof. Separate stalls for women and men if the latrine is shared.

Read the soil. Clay holds a pit but drains slowly. Sand drains fast and can collapse — line it. Rock and high water mean you cannot go deep. A 30-minute test hole tells you more than a guess.

If you cannot keep 30 m from water and 1.5 m above groundwater, do not dig a standard pit. Use a raised, lined, or vault latrine. A leaky pit next to a well is worse than a bucket toilet you empty far away.

📍 Siting Verdicts

✅Good siteDownhill from water, above flood, 6–50 m from sleeping, soil you can dig, room for a second pit later.

⚠️Line the pitLoose sand, collapsing sides, or a pit that will be emptied. Timber, bamboo, brick, or old drums.

🚫Do not dig hereUphill of a well, in a wash, on a spring line, or where you strike water in the first metre.

☠️NeverOver a water pipe, in the vegetable beds you eat raw, or dumping buckets into the stream “because it moves.”

🪜

The Emergency Ladder — Tonight Through Month Six

NOW ▼

Settlement latrines take days to build. Disease does not wait. Use the lowest rung that contains faeces today, then climb.

Rung	When	How	Stop using when
Cat hole	Hours. Marching. One person	Hole 20–30 cm deep, at least 30 m from water. Squat. Cover and pack immediately	You are staying more than a night, or more than a few people are using the same patch
Shallow family hole	First days for one household	About 0.3 × 0.5 m, up to 1 m deep. Footrests. Screen for privacy. Cover each use with soil	Contents 0.3 m from the surface, or you can build a proper pit
Shallow trench	1–3 days, a group	0.2–0.3 m wide, about 1.5 m deep, about 4 m long. Straddle it. Pile the spoil at one end. Scoop soil over each use. Screen it	Contents 0.3 m from the surface. Close, mound, mark
Deep trench	Weeks, a group, while family pits are built	0.8–0.9 m wide, about 6 m long, at least 2 m deep. Floor with drop holes. Six cubicles is a common layout. Lids. Handwash at the exit	You have one household pit per family, or contents 0.3–0.5 m from the slab
Family pit	The settlement target	See the next section. One latrine per household. Handwash fixed to it	When the pit is 0.5 m from full — close it and move the slab to a new pit

Army straddle trench (short halt, 1–3 days)

If you already know the military pattern: dig 30 cm wide, 75 cm deep, 120 cm long per pair of users. Space parallel trenches at least 60 cm apart. Boards on the rims for footing. Earth piled at the end. Cover each deposit. Close when 30 cm from the surface: fill, mound, mark.

Closing any hole

When contents are 0.3–0.5 m from ground or slab, stop using it.
Fill with soil. Pack. Mound so rain sheds off.
Mark it (stones, a sign, a fence). Do not dig there again for years. Do not plant salad crops on it.
Wash the tools. Wash your hands.

🪜 First-Night Rules

🚫No water, no washNever defecate in a stream, irrigation ditch, or the rain gutter. That is how cholera walks into camp.

👶Nappies countChild faeces go in the hole, not in the yard. Wash the child downhill of drinking water.

🧻Wipe materialPaper, leaves, or water — pick one system and keep a covered bin or a pour jug at the stall. Do not scatter used paper.

🧼Handwash at the exitA latrine without soap or ash is half a latrine. Put the station where you cannot leave without passing it.

🕳️

Build a Family Pit That Lasts Years

BUILD ▼

This is the settlement standard: one latrine per household, a lid, a roof, a handwash. Sphere long-term sludge volume is roughly 40–90 litres per person per year in a dry pit (more if people flush with water). Plan the pit for years, not weeks.

Size the pit

People using it	Rough dry-pit volume for ~3 years	Example hole (plus 0.5 m empty at the top)
2–3	~0.4–0.8 m³	0.9 m diameter × 1.5–2 m usable depth
4–6	~0.7–1.6 m³	1.0–1.2 m across × 2 m usable depth
Shared (aim ≤20 people)	Scale up, or dig two pits	Do not guess — write people × 0.06 m³/year × years

Leave 0.5 m of empty space (freeboard) at the top so you can close the pit with soil. Do not chase depth past about 2–3 m: collapse risk, emptying difficulty, and the water table usually win.

Build sequence

Dig. Straight walls if the soil stands; step or slope them if it does not. Keep spoil in a pile you will use for cover and for a mound around the slab.
Line if needed. Sandy or crumbling soil: timber, bamboo, brick, stone, or a drum with the bottom cut out. Line the top metre even if the rest stands — that is where people stand and where rain undercuts.
Slab. Concrete is best. Tight wood or packed earth with a wooden frame works. The slab must be wider than the pit so it sits on undisturbed ground. Drop hole about 25 × 35 cm (or ~20 cm round). Raised footrests so people squat in the right place. Smooth, sloped slightly so wash water runs into the pit, not onto the ground.
Lid. Heavy enough to stay shut. A lid cuts flies and smell more than perfume ever will.
Shelter. Privacy walls, a door or screen that can be secured, a roof so rain does not flood the pit. A vent in the wall if you are not building a full VIP.
Handwash. Tippy-tap or a hanging jerrycan with a tap, soap or ash on a string, a soakaway for the drip. Build this the same day as the slab.

Upgrade: VIP (ventilated improved pit)

A VIP sucks odour up a pipe and traps flies.

Dark interior. Light leaks kill the fly trap.
Vent pipe 110–150 mm, on the sunny side, at least 0.5 m above the roof. Black paint on the pipe helps it heat and draw.
Fly screen on the top of the pipe (aluminium or stainless — plastic rots in sun). Flies follow the smell up the pipe and die against the screen.
Keep the drop hole open (no lid) or accept a weaker draw if you must lid it for children. The pipe only works if air can enter the pit.

Upgrade: two pits (the one you empty)

Dig pit A and pit B. Use A for 12–24 months. Switch to B. Leave A closed at least a year. What is left is much safer to empty than fresh faeces. Never empty a pit that is still in use. Never spread fresh sludge on food crops.

Upgrade: arborloo (move the slab, plant a tree)

Shallow pit (about 1–1.5 m), portable slab and shelter. When nearly full, add soil, move the slab to a new hole, plant a fruit tree in the old pit. Do not plant leafy vegetables you will eat raw in that spot.

🕳️ Daily Pit Care

🧹Keep it dry-ishSweep the slab. Wash with a little water. A flooded pit smells, breeds flies, and can collapse.

🪵Ash or soil after useA handful of ash or dry soil cuts smell and flies. Do not dump rubbish, glass, or chemicals in the pit.

🧴No bleach bathsDrowning a pit in disinfectant does not sterilise it. It can stall breakdown and give a false sense of safety.

⚠️CollapseCracks around the slab, a tilting shelter, or a hollow sound — stop using it. Close it. Dig elsewhere.

🌊

High Water, Rock, Flood — When You Cannot Dig Deep

GROUND ▼

If the test hole hits water, rock, or the site floods, a standard pit becomes a well full of sewage. Change the design. Do not “go a bit shallower and hope.”

Mound latrine

Build a packed-earth mound, then dig the pit into the mound so the extra height gives you the 1.5 m gap above groundwater. Army field pattern for a four-seat box: mound about 2 m wide and 4 m long, high enough that the pit bottom stays above water and rock. Compact in layers. Let it settle if you can before you put weight on it. Line the pit. Put the slab on a wide collar so it does not punch through.

Raised vault / barrel latrine

A watertight container (drums, masonry tank, sealed box) above ground or only slightly below. Users defecate into it. You must empty it — this is not a “forget it” pit.

Seal joints. Rain must not fill it. Groundwater must not leak in.
Access hatch for emptying. Do not climb into a vault of fresh faeces.
Empty downhill, at least 30 m from water, into a dedicated burial trench you then cover, or into a closed pit that is not a well.
People who empty wear boots, gloves if you have them, and wash immediately. Keep children away.

Bucket / pail latrine (temporary only)

A lidded bucket under a seat. Empty at least daily into a proper pit or burial trench far from water. Never empty into storm drains. Wash the bucket downhill of drinking water. This is a bridge, not a settlement system.

Floods

If floodwater enters the pit, treat nearby shallow wells as contaminated. Boil or otherwise treat drinking water. See the Water guide.
Do not use a flooded latrine. Provide a raised bucket or a new mound on higher ground until the water drops and you can inspect the pit.
After the water drops: lime or soil cover on any faeces that escaped, then rebuild. Do not pump pit contents into the street.

🌊 Ground Conditions

🧱Raised + sealedHigh water table or floodplain. Vault you can empty. Handwash still required.

⛰️MoundWater not at the surface but too high for a 2 m pit. Compacted earth, lined pit, wide slab.

🪨RockShallow soil over stone. Do not blast a crack into an aquifer. Use a vault or a very shallow arborloo you will move often.

☠️Pit into the water tableYou have built a sewage well. Close it. Mark it. Do not drink from nearby shallow wells until you have another source.

🧼

Hands, Bodies, Cloth — Hygiene That Actually Stops Disease

HYGIENE ▼

A latrine without handwashing is a decorated fly farm. Soap and water beat almost every other hygiene trick. If soap is gone, use ash or clean sand with water — then rinse. Alcohol gel (≥60%) is a backup when hands are not caked in dirt; it does not replace washing after the latrine if you have water.

When to wash (non-negotiable)

After the latrine, and after cleaning a child or handling nappies
Before preparing food, before eating, before feeding someone else
Before and after tending the sick or a wound
After animals, animal waste, garbage, or floodwater

How to wash

Wet hands with safe water (boiled or treated if your drinking water is treated — do not re-contaminate the drinking store with dirty cups).
Soap (or ash). Lather palms, backs, between fingers, under nails, thumbs.
Scrub at least 20 seconds.
Rinse. Let the water fall into a soakaway, not back into the jug.
Air-dry or a clean cloth. Dirty shared towels put the germs back.

Tippy-tap (no running water)

Hang a plastic bottle or small jerrycan from a frame. Punch a small hole near the cap. A foot string tips it so water runs, then it rights itself. Soap on a string. Gravel under it as a mini soakaway. Put one at every latrine exit and one at the kitchen.

Bathing and laundry

Wash people and clothes at least 30 m from drinking water, downhill.
Do not bathe in the stream you drink from. Do not bathe in floodwater or water with sewage in it.
Greywater from baths goes to a soakaway, not into the kitchen garden you eat raw from.
Sun-dry clothes and bedding. Sun and dryness kill more than a cold dark pile does.

Menstrual hygiene

This is sanitation, not a side note. Blood is not a special pathogen compared with faeces, but discarded cloth in the yard is a fly and dignity problem.

Provide a private wash point with water, soap, and a place to dry cloth in the sun, out of view.
Used disposable pads go in a covered bin, then into the refuse pit or a hot burn if you already burn refuse — not scattered, not in a water source.
Reusable cloth: wash with soap, dry fully in sun. Damp cloth in a bag grows the same mess as damp towels.

🧼 Hygiene Kit (settlement minimum)

1Soap or ashAt latrine and kitchen. Spare bar in a dry tin. Ash in a covered can if soap runs out.

2Water that can be wastedHandwash water does not have to be drinking-grade if it is not swallowed — but it must be as clean as you can make it.

3Nails and woundsShort nails. Cover cuts on hands before latrine or food work. See First Aid for wound care.

4Food handlersAnyone with diarrhoea stays off cooking duty until a full day of normal stool. No exceptions for “I feel fine.”

🪣

Greywater, Garbage, Animals, Dead Things

WASTE ▼

The latrine is only one pipe in the system. Kitchen water, food scraps, and carcasses will make you just as sick if they sit in the yard.

Greywater (wash water, not toilet water)

Grease trap: a pot or box the kitchen drain pours into. Fat floats. Solids sink. Outlet near the middle. Skim often. Bury the grease or burn it in a hot fire — do not dump it in the pit latrine in bulk (it clogs and smells).
Soakaway: a pit about 1 × 1 × 1 m for a small household, filled with stone or broken brick, covered with a board and soil so it is not a mosquito pond. Pipe or a covered channel from the trap to the pit.
Site it like a latrine: ≥30 m from drinking water, downhill, not in the flood path.
If the soakaway smelly-floods, it is too small or the grease trap is not being cleaned. Rest it and dig another.

Solid waste

One covered bin or 100-litre drum per cluster of households, within about 15 m of shelters so people use it.
Organic scraps: bury in a refuse pit or compost well away from the kitchen, or feed animals you actually control — not feral dogs at the door.
Dry burnable waste: burn in a defined pit on a calm day, downwind of camp. Do not stand in the smoke of plastics.
Glass, metal, batteries: separate if you can. Batteries and oils do not go in the latrine or the well-side ditch.
Cover the refuse pit daily with a thin soil layer. That is fly control, not neatness.

Animal waste

Keep livestock downhill and downwind of houses and wells. Do not let them stand in the drinking stream.
Manure pile: packed, covered, or composted hot. Runoff must not reach the well. See Animal Husbandry when you have it; until then, treat manure like a slow latrine.
Dead animals: drag downhill, 30 m from water. Pit deep enough that dogs cannot reopen it. Cover. Wash hands and tools.

Human dead

Burial is sanitation as well as respect. Grave 1.5–2 m deep, ≥30 m from water, out of the floodplain, marked. Do not wash the body into the drinking stream. People who handle the body wash with soap afterwards. If the person died of cholera or acute watery diarrhoea, treat stools and vomit as highly infectious — see the outbreak section. You do not need a funeral in the well yard.

🪣 Waste Decision

♻️GreywaterTrap grease → soakaway. Never into the well or the salad beds.

🗑️RefuseCovered bin → pit or burn. Soil cover every day.

🐄Manure / carcassDownhill of water. Bury carcasses. Compost manure; do not smear it on food you will eat soon.

🚰Any waste in drinking waterStop using that source. Treat what you must drink. Move the dump or the well — one of them has to move.

🪰

Flies, Rats, Mosquitoes — Close the Other Door

VECTORS ▼

You can build a perfect pit and still get sick if flies shuttle from the hole to the plate. Vectors are a sanitation job.

Pest	What it carries / does	Field control (no mystery chemicals)
Flies	Faecal bacteria and viruses onto food	Lids on drop holes. Cover faeces with soil/ash. Screen kitchen. Cover food. Refuse buried daily. VIP pipe with a metal fly screen
Mosquitoes	Malaria, dengue, and others depending on place	No standing water: empty tins, cover tanks, drain puddles, lid latrines that hold liquid. Sleep under nets if you have them. Do not make a soakaway into an open pond
Rats / mice	Leptospirosis, food loss, fleas	Food in closed containers off the ground. No scraps in the yard. Seal gaps. Traps. Do not leave corpses of rats to rot in the kitchen
Cockroaches	Filth from drains onto food	Dry the kitchen at night. Cover food. Fix greywater leaks

Kitchen rules that cut flies in half

Serve food hot or keep it covered. Leftovers go in a lidded pot, not a plate under a cloth that flies walk through.
Wash dishes immediately. Stagnant dishwater is a fly brewery.
Do not site the kitchen next to the latrine “for convenience.” Upwind of the latrine, away from the refuse pit.

🪰 Vector Checks (walk camp once a week)

🔍Lids shutEvery drop hole, bin, and water tank. A lid that is “usually shut” is open.

🌧️Standing waterAfter rain, walk the ruts, tyre tracks, and tarp folds. Tip them.

🐀Gnaw marksHoles in sacks, droppings on shelves — fix storage that day, not next week.

🍽️Flies on foodMeans a pit, nappy, or carcass is open. Find the source. Do not just wave them off the plate.

🚨

When Diarrhoea Starts — Stop the Outbreak

OUTBREAK ▼

Sanitation exists for this hour. One case of watery diarrhoea can seed a camp. You are not a hospital. You contain faeces, replace water and salt, and keep cooking hands clean. This section does not give drug doses. If you have a clinician or a known local protocol, use it.

Separate the stool. The sick person uses one latrine or one lidded bucket. Nobody else uses it. Empty the bucket into a dedicated pit, not the stream. Cover vomit and stool spills with soil or, if you have bleach, disinfect (table below), then wash.

Hands. Soap and water after every contact with the sick person, their clothes, and their latrine. Food handlers with diarrhoea are off the kitchen until stools are normal for a day.

Water. Treat drinking water for the whole camp, not just the patient. Boil or chlorinate. Protect the source — this is when you re-check that the latrine is still downhill.

Drink. Most deaths are dehydration, not “the germ.” Sip homemade oral rehydration if commercial ORS packets are gone. Continue breastfeeding infants. Offer food as soon as they will take it.

Get skilled help fast for: blood in the stool, fever with diarrhoea in an infant, inability to drink, no urine, sunken eyes, limp child, or rice-water stool that soaks a person in hours (cholera pattern). Field hygiene buys time. It is not a drip.

Homemade oral rehydration (WHO field recipe)

In 1 litre of clean drinking water dissolve 6 level teaspoons of sugar and ½ level teaspoon of salt. Taste should be like tears — not seawater. Too much salt is dangerous, especially for children. Mix fresh, keep covered, throw away after 24 hours. Sip often. This replaces what diarrhoea removes. It is not an antibiotic.

If you have 5% unscented household bleach (chlorine disinfection, not medicine)

Mix in plastic, not metal. Mix fresh daily. Keep out of eyes. Never mix bleach with other cleaners or with urine in a closed jug (gas). These are surface and spill mixes from outbreak field manuals:

Strength	How (from 5% bleach)	Use
~0.05%	10 ml (about 1 tablespoon) bleach in 1 litre water	Hands when soap is gone, dishes, wiped surfaces
~0.2%	40 ml bleach in 1 litre water	Latrine slabs, floors, beds, clothes of the sick after washing with soap
~2%	400 ml bleach in 1 litre water	Fresh stool and vomit spills, not for skin

Soap and water first when you have them. Bleach is a backup and a spill tool. Do not pour drums of bleach into the pit hoping to “kill cholera in the ground.”

What you do not do

Do not invent antibiotic courses from memory. Wrong drug, wrong dose, and you breed resistance while the person still dehydrates.
Do not stop fluids “to slow the diarrhoea.” The leak is the danger.
Do not hide cases so the group “doesn’t panic.” Hidden stool is how the kitchen gets it.
Do not wash soiled clothes in the drinking stream.

🚨 Outbreak Priorities

1FluidsORS or the sugar-salt litre. Shade. Keep sipping. Infants: breast milk plus ORS as advised by a clinician if one exists.

2Contain stoolDedicated latrine or bucket. Cover spills. Hands.

3Water + kitchenTreat water. Sick people off food duty. Cover food from flies.

4Tell the groupWhere the sick latrine is, where to wash, who is cooking. Quiet facts, not rumours.

Quick-Reference: Which Latrine Today?

Are you moving on tomorrow?
Cat hole 20–30 cm deep, 30 m from water, cover and pack.

Staying days, many people, no time to build?
Shallow trenches with screens, soil scoops, handwash at the exit. 1 stall per 50 people at first, drive toward 1 per 20.

Staying months, you can dig, water table is deep?
Family pit, lid, roof, handwash. Size for years. Plan a second pit.

Water table, flood, or rock?
Mound, raised vault, or lidded buckets you empty far from water. Do not puncture the aquifer.

Flies or smell taking over?
Lids, ash, VIP pipe with a metal screen, refuse covered, kitchen moved upwind.

Watery diarrhoea in camp?
Dedicated sick latrine, soap, treated water, ORS. Do not wait for a perfect building.

Mistakes That Seed Disease

Open defecation “just until we build something” — that is the something that kills you
Siting the pit uphill of the well because the ground was softer
A beautiful latrine 200 m away that women will not walk to at night
No handwash, or a dry soap dish with no water
Leaving the lid open “for the smell to leave” — you just invited flies
Dumping buckets in the river because it looks clean downstream
Child faeces treated as harmless
Food handlers working through diarrhoea
A soakaway that is an open mosquito pond
Closing a full pit without marking it, then digging a well there two years later

The Point

A settlement without sanitation is a garden around a sewer. Dig the hole first. Put soap next to it. Keep faeces out of the water. Do that before you finish the pretty roof.

Print this guide. Keep one copy at the latrine site and one with the water kit.