Mj Raichyk

Here in Cinci, there's a group that maintains a database online of 'waste' from businesses and promotes the idea that the waste from one business is the resource for another business....

Good stuff is developing apparently because sawdust is not 'free' much any more... at least not without driving beyond the city region.....

Isn't this happening elsewhere??? I'd have thought it would be part of the move to green-up coal plants (like is being done in Ontario Hydro, as we used to call it) where the brush and landscape waste and such is ground and added to coal... I'd wonder just how much that trend will change availability of some 'carbon stocks' from business waste for free, like here........ ttyl

Just a puzzle... why the anti-plastic idea when plastic can be made sustainably with stuff like hemp and ethanol technologies...?

We started out reading Joe Jenkins (Humanure) and decided to try the waste paper idea.. he didn't have much use for the idea but we have that in abundance so figured it worth experimenting with since Jenkins hadn't gone into any detail on his experimenting results and difficulties........

Shredding junk mail was how we started... dusty business and too much hassle when crushing newspaper seemed more satisfactory for the chemistry...

This 'stuff' is not 'cover' (if you're eating right, there's no smell to stifle).. it's chemistry to mix nitrogen and carbon with a light amount of moisture and enough airflow

so the keys were the moisture integration (office paper doesn't integrate well) and a sense of 'gift-wrapping' layers (abundant coverage and easy shaping over the bucket's contents) and newsprint seemed satisfactory... we had considered the sawdust at one point when abandoning the shredding, located a solar kiln owner and started hauling and heaping it but sawdust just invited tons of bugs... ugh.......

and the woodworkers and sawmills were leery of individuals coming to pickup (insurance worries) and so they favored commercial takers with their big trucks... newsprint was far better and the local county has sunday deliveries from two presses..... free and abundant and just works well at the bucket end...

biobin doesn't get over 115*F (likely since the carbon content is higher than straw and sawdust and I don't stint the gift-wrapping) but that just means the disinfecting takes longer (looked up the charts on time vs temp) but we'd built an extra biobin anyway since we liked the conservative idea of a 2year cycle.. more usage for those trees than just recycling their newsprint after just that one use..... this is year 8..... pleased so far

Why not just get a plastic bedpan and set that on a solid box in your bedroom so it's real handy when you wake up. Just use it for urine and keep one of those little Reliance 'hassocks' for the dry (mostly) solid waste alongside the box (with a supply of newsprint).... We use crushed newspaper for our 'carbon' and everything goes into a 13 gallon kitchen garbage bag (nice and clean and with a nest of crushed paper to start) lining the 4 gallon plastic bucket in the hassock.... When the deposits and extra carbon have reached the 2/3rds level, lift the sides of the garbage bag back up and cinch it to carry it to the biobin (ala Jenkins)... Life could be simple... bedpan gets emptied as expected (except in the garden season, when the goal is abundance of growth)... We even didn't get rid of the formerly installed toilets in the bathroom since we womenfolk ( even Mercola agrees) have found that a nice hot rinse ala bidet is healthy and quite pleasant.......

The only other modification we made to the hassock was to use an ample sheet of newspaper (laid over the bucket opening & held well in place by the seat) to cover the bucket and exclude the fruitflies' intentions...... realities...... the hassock's manufactured lid is a hassle and it cuts off the air circulation too much... no smelly problems if you've kept the carbon/nitrogen/air and moisture as normal (a little urine is necessary if things look dry) and you eat right.... same with the kitties in the litterbox business... kibble eaters' deposits smell totally noxious but not raw meat eaters'............... a good gage on your health status.....

Even with my elderly disability with the proverbial prolapsed pelvic organs that used to complicate the dribble direction, there's no problem with these 'separating' targets in our experience.... of course those travelling amenities mentioned above would certainly look sensible... working on our cat rescue, there's not much travel to worry about... think bedpan and hassock for personal, lightweight manageability!

As I recall, the evidence said that your body recalls 'how-to' for about 2 years after which it's like starting new...... so if you delay much longer, then that benefit is not an issue pressuring action

Secondly, it is likely heresy to advocate 'vitamin C' at divided doses of total 5,000 mg per day to all you organic believers, but the fact is that the doctor's clinic where that C was the practice HAD 300 CONSECUTIVE TROUBLE-FREE BIRTHS while practicing that ritual... including a set of QUADS... every animal except humans and guinea pigs have internal organs that make their own C inside their system so the permie thing would seem to be to mimic the amounts that the rest of the animal world does to get through pregnancy.... Dr Klenner (his clinic) did the 5000mg/day for that reason and progressively upped the amount to about 15,000mg by third trimester.... with extra at delivery (including starting the baby on 100mg/day right away).... the nurses at the hospital always could identify those 'vitamin C babies' as so trouble free and happily alert, the deliveries were much easier........ take it however it suits your purist souls wish...

I appreciate this topic for a totally different reason, since my daughter has been delaying mate-seeking and family starting til we have our own naturescaped, micro-homestead past the d@#M regulators and crooked courts so I worry about my imagined 'grandkids' and all the turmoil of imagined 'growing' a family since she seems ultra calm....... hmmmmmm.... for the price of those insurance schemes (with hospitals and doctors who malpracticingly failed to vitamin C prep mothers) you could have a HBOT chamber and add that resource as insurance to lengthy delivery-hazards and have that oxygen-tech also denied us in the insane medical drug-monopoly (or just lease one for a year for way less)....... ttyl

MAGNETS.... HAVE YOU GOT A GOOD STRONG MAGNET....

USE YOUR COMPASS TO IDENTIFY THE SIDE THAT *PULLS* THE NORTH POINTER OF THE MAGNET.... MARK THAT SIDE...

WHY BECAUSE THAT'S THE SIDE YOU WANT TO PUT AFJACENT ON THE CRAMOY AREA.....

IT CALMED THE SCREAMING PAIN WHEN I BROKE MY ARM...... I KEEP A SET BY MY BED FOR WHENEVER I'M AWAKENED BY FOOT/LEG CRAMPS...

AND START TAKING C EVERY 6 MINUTES FOR A WHILE (IF THE PAIN EXCEEDS YOUR PUNY MAGNET) TO GET THE HEALING ROLLING LONGER TERM,... WHY? BECAUSE EVEN THE STAGE IV CANCER PATIENTS IN CAMERON AND PAULING'S EARLY STUDY WHO CAME NEEDING MORPHINE WERE ABLE RETURN TO QUALITY OF LIFE AND FUNCTIONING WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS.....

LOTS OF INTERMITTENT C AND A GOOD STRONG NORTH-POLE-MAGNET... KEEP THEM HANDY.....

I suppose you must have already discarded the idea of simply putting in composting toilets and having the septic tanks pumped.. over time the septic system would approach greywater clean and the effort would be minimal on your part..... You've seen Joe Jenkins models, right? No bank breaking needed either.... best as always... ttyl

I agree, that most of your household water (even in winter) is at least room temp and so I'd wonder if it wasn't possible to put some insulation around the grease trap???

We are in Ohio, so winters are fairly cold, and we did a very different idea for our constructed wetlands... about 4' deep Stone and gravel, keeping the water level about a foot or more below the top surface, on the premise that it was friendly microbes that cleaned the water, not plants... So keeping the water and microbes sheltered was our concept...We also ran the greywater pipe from the house through the processing stone (on its way to the infiltrator manifold) so the warmth in the pipe would supply the processing area with warmth and our winter OEPA testing showed that the temperature at the finished end was still in the mid-lower 40s in the winter snow time....

We didn't worry about a grease trap since we were doing thermophillic composting toilets as well as offal and grease cleanups with paper..
Testing (2 yrs in service) showed the output was very well cleaned so microbes are good workers when treated well..... Our sizing was done with the equations developed by Vymazal (Czech), Darcy et al, from the 1988 EPA manual...... ttyl, best as always

To Susan Hessel... actually, the humanure composting is more effective at decomposing pharmaceuticals than what they do with city sewage as far as pharmaceuticals... at least for the few tests that I read about so far....

Granted visitors to your safe haven should be so informed so they realize and remember what a hazard they pose as well as are taking.....

A group called New Ground Sanitation Services did a review of systems and related research and had the references listed if you want more specifics...

Amazingly it was the mesophillic processing that had more effective decomposers.,.. The thermophillics were up there also (almost 90%)..... just so you won't worry so much..... ttyl

To Susan Vita... here in Ohio, a mound of whatever size and variation has the effluent filtering through the sand into the soil and down. That processing area is called the basal area directly below the heap,

Around that processing area's soil, is a 1ft wide buffer of undisturbed soil that is there to isolate the process from the surrounding topsoil, at least as deep as the freeze zone.

Further that buffer zone is surrounded by the curtain drain (freeze zone deep) which is there to clear out any ground water that rises up from the nether regions near the mound... which drain then clears out that ground water and anything else that had gone 1) through the sand then 2) through the soil down to the depth of the curtain drain and then 3) was carried upward into the pipe in the drain by rising clean ground water...

That path should be well more than any cleaning needed... the mound designers engage in so much overkill that it's amazing they don't have financial nightmares, facing the risks of foreclosures and mortgage increases of their clients in their sleep.....

So there's quite a significant gauntlet built in to separate your processing area from the surrounding topsoil contacted by humans..... assuming the installers did everything hoyle.....

All that because the fools put solid waste into a liquid waste system...... oy.....ttyl