Liquid Gold Fertility Bank

Hi Permies,

I have a couple of questions for y'all, which have emerged from my latest project.
I've set up a urine collection and distribution system in a community, where 40 residents "deposit" their urine jars into a common barrel, and "collect" urine for their personal gardens when needed. When the 55 gallon barrel is 1/8 full, it is filled with water to dilute the urine and it's used for fertilizing the community crops. The link below shows pictures of the system and an example of irrigation.

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B035qXGF1O4qxe

My questions are these:

1) Come winter, there are not enough crops to irrigate for the large volume of urine produced, so I'm thinking of setting up a dedicated compost heap. The site produces sawmill dust from the forestry, and has access to cheap straw. What ratio of straw or sawdust to urine would be idea, and what tips might you have to set up the urine compost heap? One thing I'm particularly concerned about is leaching into the soil. How can I contain any leaching?

2) A gravity-powered method for irrigating is proving slow and laborious. What might be an electric or manual pump system that could be implemented simply and inexpensively?

Thank you

Simple sometimes depends on the person involved. I repair water pumps as part of my living so getting a working electric house pump for me normally involves a bit of time with a cast off. If someone in your group or circle has the right skill set and multiple donor pumps are available that would probably be a cheap simple route. A bit of observation and tweaking of amounts should take care of any potential leachate problems.

I'm afraid I don't know what a donor pump is, and my circle of friends doesn't either; this probably gives you a scale of my knowledge, which might be reason enough to go manual?

Perhaps a Rotary Barrel Pump? Any advice on picking the right one? Perhaps the one below, for water-based substances?

http://www.amazon.com/TERAPUMP-TRRP90P-solutions-petroleum-products/dp/B006984YEU/ref=pd_sim_263_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=1AWKREQN81HKAYDZ88KR

Too bad you aren't close to me Robert. A donor pump is a parts pump, one that has some usable parts on it. Take a donor with a bad motor, another that was frozen and put them together to make one usable pump. The barrel pump looks fine for transferring but I suspect it wouldn't be suitable for irrigation.

A basic sump pump on a switch should work . A condensate pump might even work. I would haunt ReStore ( habitat for humanity) stores for a used one.