Jim Siefert

Zach Dwiel wrote:I'm building a house within the city limits of Bloomington, Indiana and so have to follow all of their codes, which outlaw the simple bucket composting toilet methods and require a sewer/septic hookup to every house.  I'm working on getting around this requirement by trying to convince them of the 'approved' composting toilets like the ones made by Sun-Mar.  They are much more expensive and fancy than we need or want, but if it means they'll let us avoid the cost of sewer/septic, it actually works out as a gain ... oh the frustration of building in a city.

Anyway, does anyone have experience with these and their venting systems?  It appears that there is a fan running 24/7 sucking air through the toilet outside, which would be a huge waste of heat in the winter (we're trying to get as close to 100% passive solar as possible).  Is this true?  If so, is there a way to avoid all of that heat loss?  Perhaps there are other 'official' composting toilets that don't have this 24/7 fan requirement?

I always wonder how things went when I see old posts like this.
I'm considering the Centrex 2000 for a small seasonal lake house. overkill, perhaps, but I'd rather have too big than too small. I'll post back in 13 years and let everyone know how it went.

#smij #zapd #grownostr

i'm in. pledge increased.

Yes, please create a link for me as well.
Thanks!
Jim

Blake Lenoir wrote: Y'all know about a law in Louisiana that ban growing or harvesting wine cap for food? Seen it on Wikipidia.

Well bless your heart for warning us.

If it's powdery mildew...
I've had luck with sour milk and water mixture for powdery mildew on my comfrey. I have not tried it on plants for any other fungi.

Not too careful with the ratio, but I usually mix 60:40 or so, water to milk. I've used stronger 40:60 or 50:50 and weaker, 70:30 and stronger does work better. But, like I said, not too careful with measurements,  just pour both in a pump sprayer and I make sure to spray up on the underneath as well as the tops, of course, of the leaves and I make sure to spray the mulch around the plants as well. A good soak of the crowns too.

It seems to work well for me and usually do it when I see it, not as a preventive.
A few applications over a few days seems to knock it back enough to last the season.
I'm in Central New York. Zone 5a

I have stopped making compost piles and now "compost in place" in my yard/garden. Everything is heavily mulched and I just pull it back, lay down my organic residues and cover back up with the mulch... or, often I treat most as "chop & drop" and literally just throw it down around the plants and let nature do its thing. The whole making a pile and turning (or not) and waiting and then forking into wheelbarrows and/or containers to move around... it's steps that can be eliminated. Even "conventional" farmers spread the manure from their cows out on the fields, they're not making piles and waiting, etc.

I did the compost pile thing for years, but I heard this "in place" way and never looked back. For the small system like ours, I think the compost pile isn't practical. If you had a larger system that's producing a lot of bio-mass, then a pile might not just be an choice, but a necessity. Like so much of this stuff... it depends on your situation.  

Regarding the fungus being spread, I would take your tomato plants and put them around other plants that aren't susceptible to that fungus. Use other things around your healthy tomatoes. But, understand, these fungi live in the soil and can't be avoided. I think the best we can do is to help build the diversity in the soil and plant a couple extra tomatoes to help mitigate losses to whatever "pest" may hurt production.

But, hey, that all said, I ain't no expert. I'm just a guy that's been doing this stuff for the past few years and  I listen to a big guy in overalls on the interwebs they call a "Duke."  Go figure.

Anne Miller wrote:Mildew is easily remedied with something as simple as baking soda aka bicarbonate of soda.

Here is a thread to help with several recipes including the one I use:

https://permies.com/t/93537/non toxic-Fungicide

I have read that composting will kill mildew.

I've taken the liberty to fix you're link above. Here's the corrected link: https://permies.com/t/93537/nontoxic-Fungicide

Glenn Underhill wrote:
So has anyone already tackled this freezing problem? If it helps, I will build the livestock winter shelters Sepp Holzer style, so maybe I could use the thermal mass of the earth somehow?

So, what did you end up doing? Solutions tried?

I recall seeing somewhere an example of a deep hole under a stock tank so the cold could sink and the heat would rise, keeping the water in the tank from freezing. Didn't Paul Wheaton talk about this in the passive greenhouse build stuff?

Interesting passive heat transfer solution I thought could be implemented in a wofati...

We had a bug zapper and it zapped all kinds of bugs, but I dont think it got any mosquitoes. We'd watch as big beetles would walk on the zapper as they were getting shocked until they were fried crispy. I know a guy that hung one over his pond and it fed the fish.
The fish got so accustomed to food hitting the water there, that it was easy to catch fish there. They'd hit anything that fell in the water there.