Your Pee

Did you use a kit or participate in a workshop? What happened? What did you discover? Tell us about your R&D process by emailing us at bray.rebecca [at] gmail [dot] com.

How to Buy a Kit
We are very sorry but our lawyer has advised us not to sell the kits anymore and so we are taking a break from producing them while we think this through. The liability of making these chemicals available to other people is high. This is one of the interesting predicaments that we find ourselves in as bioartists.

How to do the Reaction Yourself

You’ll need: Anhydrous Jack bean urease (U1500- approx. 10 mg urease/100 ml urine), Anhydrous Magnesium Chloride (208337- approx. 14-20 g magnesium chloride/ 100 ml urine), pH Test strips (P4536), a non-reactive stirring implement (preferably glass).You can purchase all of the above from Sigma-aldrich.com. We would love to find some cheaper, more low grade suppliers or figure out how to make these things on our own. If you have ideas, please share them with us.

Wear gloves and a mask at all times. Do not touch chemicals, breathe them in, or get them in your eyes. Pee in a glass jar. Take a pH reading. Use stir rod to scoop in urease. Refrigerate. After an hour and a half, your pH should have gone up to 9 or 10. If it hasn’t, leave it in the fridge longer or add more urease. Once it hits, 9 or 10, take it outside and get ready for an exciting reaction- fizzing, color changes, dramatic temperature increase, and a super bad smell. Stir in the magnesium chloride a little bit at a time. Stir very well. Let the sediment begin to settle out. Test the pH of the liquid on top. Keep adding magnesium chloride a bit at a time until the pH hits 6.0. At that point, most of the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and pharmaceuticals in your urine has probably bonded with the Magnesium chloride and formed the fertilizer, struvite. Finding out exactly how much magnesium chloride to add is the real trick, we are still working on this part. Let us know how it goes for you. You may not get all of the metabolites out, but your pee will still be less harmful that in would have been and you will still have what is probably a pretty decent fertilizer. Pour the liquid and the sediment through an ordinary coffee filter. Let the liquid run off into the toilet. You can feel better about flushing it now. Keep the sludge and let it dry out in the sun. Then you can store it in your glass jar. Add one teaspoon per gallon to the water you use on your houseplants.