Sid Smith

Our greywater from our shower and sink runs straight out the back of the house, down a tube, and down a long dirt slope (20ft ish) into a garden. We have never quite got the hang of how to do this properly and have issues with smell, flies, and just plain yuckiness. Anyone have advice, or links to plans that I could use to redesign our drainage? I am becoming pretty skilled at swatting flies, but it is a skill I would be happy to relinquish

Marcus Billings wrote:

William Lee wrote:" I'm not really sure why septic systems are frowned on by ecologically-minded folks." COST.

Hi William,

Although I do agree that there is some connection in  certain situations between ecology and cost, in my experience, energy return on investment is a much more important factor than cost by itself.  Just plain "cost" doesn't determine if something is ecologically sound or not.  Cheap doesn't always equate to "green", "sustainable", or "permaculture" for that matter.  If I pay a higher than average price for a specific cultivar of persimmon tree, I do it knowing that the traits I desire come with the plant and will benefit me in the future.

Yes, initially a complete septic system installed by someone other than yourself can be more money than you spend on a new chicken coop or farm implement, or a lot of things, but time IS money, and by that measure, if you value your time at all, a composting toilet over the long term will consume a lot of yours and will probably be an economic dead-heat if not loser.  I say this knowing that some people fertilize with the compost and that you would realize productivity from the produce that this fertilizer was used on, but in the two experiences I've had with composting toilets, the owners were on the move regularly and the compost was not used for this purpose very often if at all.  Just saying.  (This is without considering old septics that can be renovated.)  In my opinion, the benefits of a septic system more than outweigh the money that I have to save initially to have one installed. Personally, I'd rather get up, flush and get back to planting berry bushes that my septic will be feeding than practice the alchemy required for composting toilets, but hey, that's just me.

The water that goes into the toilet after the installation is a slightly different story and there are a lot of variables in water use that determine overall costs for a project.  I don't pay for water, so I am at an advantage in that regard.

Your posts have made me feel much, much better!! I am pretty sure we have the shallow finger-type of septic tank you described. We've had a toilet back in for about a week now and woooohooo I am so happy about it. It is wonderful!!

Justyn Mavis wrote:

GSAP Micro-Flush Toilet. Designed for 3rd world countries. Easy, and cheap to build, and ZERO smell, and free compost when your done. This is a time lapse of the build I was involved in.

pplication of GSAP Microflush toilets:  a sustainable developm ent approach to rural  and peri-urban sanitation

How cool! I had not heard of these. Looks awesome. Am I understanding this correctly, it seems kind of like a mini self contained septic?

Tobias Ber wrote:what about using urine diversion to reduce the amount of needed carbon?

i made a toilet for the garden hut from an old chair, a bucket gut in half for the diverter (it has some holes in the low end and a small plastic-funnel glued below the holes. i used strips of plastic and a soldering iron to fuse the funnel to the bucket), a 5l canister and a bucket with lid. the bucket has some big holes near the top, covered with fly-mesh/screen. i use some shredded newspapers as cover but that s more for optics,

Cool, sounds like a good system. We try to go pee outside most of the time when we are out there but never put together any sort of legit potty system outside. Might try that!

Judith Browning wrote:

Sid Smith wrote:

Judith Browning wrote:
For some reason the mills here have pretty clean sawdust...all piled separately from the bark and mostly oak and pine.  Our son has a bandsaw mill but cuts a lot of walnut and cedar so we didn't use his sawdust even though it was so nice and fine.....

What makes the walnut and cedar less good to use?

Walnut because of it's allelopathic properties. We weren't using the finished compost on the garden but didn't want to affect the area in the woods where we left the composted material.  Cedar we thought just wouldn't compost well because of the longevity of the wood itself (that's true of walnut also) I think I read some things as well but couldn't tell you where at the moment.  I live with a woodworker so we might overthink somethings.  

Ah yeah, that all makes sense. Thanks for explaining!

Judith Browning wrote:
For some reason the mills here have pretty clean sawdust...all piled separately from the bark and mostly oak and pine.  Our son has a bandsaw mill but cuts a lot of walnut and cedar so we didn't use his sawdust even though it was so nice and fine.....

What makes the walnut and cedar less good to use?

Judith Browning wrote: I wonder if your wood shavings didn't block the odor as well as sawdust would?  Somewhere here there is a discussion about sawdust and how bandsaw sawdust is even better than regular mill sawdust, it's a bit finer....also being just slightly damp, not perfectly dry, can form a better barrier to smell

Yeah that makes sense. We did try sawdust briefly but it was very dirty with a lot of big chunks of wood in it, so it didnt work too well. We live in CA where all of the pine trees are dying so there is some free stuff around from where they are being cut up, but mostly big chunky stuff. I probably would have to drive pretty far to find the nice stuff you are talking about but yeah, it makes sense why that would work a lot better than the shavings.

Thyri Gullinvargr wrote:

Sid Smith wrote:It doesn't make sense anymore to purchase wood shavings when we now have a functioning well.

This actually brings up a question I've had reading about composting toilets. Where do people get their high carbon material from? I see a lot about sawdust, but if you aren't building much I can't see generating enough on your own land. Now I'm a city girl, so maybe I'm underestimating the amount of wood cutting...

We purchase triple-screen shavings like what you would get for a chicken coop or rabbit cage or something like that. It is like $6 for a 7.5 cubic foot bag, I think that they can be delivered by truckload as well. At first we tried just using dirt, but it was too heavy and created too much dust. Then we tried free sawdust from a logging place, but it was too splintery and dirty and still too much dust. Even the triple screened stuff creates a ton of dust. The shavings don't seem to be dense or heavy enough to snuff-out the smell completely, too, and I think that is why we still have flies.

Judith Browning wrote:We gave ours up but not willingly...we moved to an old house in a little rural town with a flush toilet and haven't figured out how to discretely set up a sawdust bucket again...maybe in one of the outbuilding

I stayed at an airbnb cob house in LA last year that had a sawdust bucket and compost bin right in their yard, not 3 feet from the neighbors. They didnt have any smell or anything and I dont think the neighbors knew about it at all! Makes me wonder what we are doing wrong here.

Maybe something like what the guy did in the video I linked above would work for you too, if you have room in your yard for a bunch of 50 gallon barrels.

wayne fajkus wrote:incinerating toilet

Sounds awesome, I hope it works out and continues to be clean and efficient! With only a tbs of ash it sounds like it will be years before you even need to dispose of the waste. Does it cost a lot of money in electricity to power the incinerator?