A recent post asked about the inconvenience and ick factor of hand dumping 5 gallon
Humanure buckets.
How can you build a more automated (less hands on) system to get greater use of humanure wastes
One thought is using a grinder pump (like
http://eone.com which handles below grade sewerage) and/or a Sludgehammer aerobic digester like
http://sludgehammer.net.
With 70% of the US population living in urban areas and 50% of the worlds population there seems to be a need for systems that make it easier for people to humanure
compost and handle sewerage. I read an analysis on a forum by a sewerage treatment worker where he felt you can break people into 3 distinct groups when it comes to the ability to humanure compost:
1) 90% of people who will never touch a humanure
bucket (even if the SHTF)
2) Group 2 which hears about bucket humanure composting and adopts it without careful study of how to do it safely (or slowly drifts away from best practices) This group puts other people and the environment at risk
3) Group 3 which has a healthy fear and respect of the public health implications and composts humanure carefully and with safety redundancies.
The Sludgehammer uses "proprietary bacteria" and air compressors to aerobically digest sewerage.
Some grinder pumps are so powerful I wonder if the Sludgehammer air compressor can be eliminated and the pump can be used to make an enclosed fountain in a wide pipe to introduce air and agitate the storage tank. Then a system to separate the solids for furthur composting and the liquids for greywater. This can either be done at home or at more centralized stations.
I would appreciate thoughts on making this work.
