Lawn Mower Is Power Source For Parade's Dancing Portable Toilet
by David Pugh Buckeye Staff Writer

Brothers Mark, left, and Tom Holsopple, are with the Pooper Scooter, or Motorized Portable Toilet, the Brush Creek Sales and Rental entry in this year's Archbold Parade of Lights. The machine is built from a zero-turning-radius mower and part of a portable toilet. It generated a lot of laughs in this year's parade.- photo by David Pugh

This year's Archbold Parade of Lights featured many wonderful and unique entries, but one that has generated a lot of laughs wasn't the biggest, brightest, or most colorful.

In fact, it was an outhouse.

Actually, it's a portable toilet, one of those plastic outhouses that you find at outdoor events.

Brush Creek Sales and Rental entered the portable toilet, which one person in the office named the "Pooper Scooter." As it made its way down the parade route, it darted here and there, stopped and spun, and jumped when it started.

Mark and Tom Holsopple, brothers employed by the business, created the Pooper Scooter.

Mark first spotted a similar machine in a trade magazine, where someone had used a riding lawn mower as the chassis for self-powered outhouse.

But, Mark and Tom went one better. They used a zero-turning radius mower for their running gear, meaning their portable toilet could stop and spin in a circle.

"We had a used one," Tom said. "It was still a good mower, but it had been around here for a year and half, and it didn't want to sell, so we thought we'd make use of it."

After removing the mower deck, he cut 22 inches out of the frame and bolted the front wheels onto what was left.

"I took a chunk right out of the center," he said.

Since the front wheels on a zero-turning-radius mower don't do the steering, there were no complicated linkages to fabricate, making the modification fairly easy.

"And I moved the seat back about a foot, so it sits over the engine. It gives the operator just a little bit of room in there, because there's only 41 inches square on the inside," Tom said.

He relocated the gas tank slightly and installed wheelie bars on the back to keep the short-coupled machine from tipping over.

"The front wheels will only come up about six inches," Tom said.

There actually wasn't much welding to the project.

"I cut off some brackets so I wouldn't have to shorten the door as much, and I reinforced the front axle a little bit, after I cut some of the longer gussets off. That's the only places I welded it," he said.

He also welded up a simple frame of angle iron that bolts the shell of the portable toilet to the mower chassis. Wood blocks were used to get the final dimension between the framework and the portable toilet structure.

"Then I made an adapter that fit onto the exhaust, and the exhaust comes up through the vent, out the top, so it wouldn't asphyxiate the operator."

Lighting

For the Archbold parade, the Pooper Scooter was fitted with a deep-cycle 12-volt battery and an inverter to convert 12-volt direct current to 110-volt alternating current to power the lights.

A headlight was fitted, as was a yellow rotating beacon on the roof.

"That was to indicate it was occupied," Tom laughed.

"Because it was dark, you couldn't see the little dial on the door."

But the battery wasn't the best solution; they started to run short of power toward the end of the parade.

So Tom said they have an alternator from a car that they plan to install. They didn't remove the power take-off clutch that would normally drive the mower deck, so Tom can use that to drive the alternator.

Vandalized

The team didn't have any trouble finding the portable toilet. Brush Creek rents them, and they had one that had been vandalized.

"It was still borderline whether we should let it go out, because it had some issues," Tom said.

He simply removed the tank and seat assembly, leaving him with three walls, the roof, and the door. The structure isn't heavy, but without the strength of the bottom, it tended to collapse, so it took two people to lower it over the mower chassis.

Tom said they could reassemble the parts and actually make the portable toilet a toilet again, except for the holes they cut in the door and walls to allow the operator to see.

"We could cover those up, but those were a pretty vital part," he said.

Mark, who drove the Pooper Scooter in the parade, said he never felt the machine would tip over.

All told, Tom estimated there are 16 to 18 hours wrapped up in the project.

Work started Monday, Nov. 19, and finished about a halfhour before the parade was set to start.

Future

The Pooper Scooter proved to be such a hit, it's become part of Brush Creek's fleet.

In fact, it went to a parade in Napoleon, and someone called to see if they could use the Pooper Scooter for their prom.

And the Brush Creek crew is already planning some improvements.

Tom said he's working on a rumble seat or trailer, so someone can ride on the back and toss candy to the crowd.

Also, they're working on injecting water into the hot exhaust stream, so steam will shoot from the roof vent.

Originally, Brush Creek wasn't planning an entry for the 2007 parade.

"We weren't going to do anything, we were going to take a year off," Mark said.

But both said the whole project was a lot of fun.

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Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle