Burton Sparks

Dietrich, now I'm more interested.  Alliums grow wild here.  Do I just find any wild alliums and transplant them near our trees, or should I be looking for certain signs of AMF association?

Dietrich Epp Schmidt wrote:I'm curious what your planting process looks like? Do you buy the trees and plant them directly, or do you ever maintain them in a nursery environment for some time?

We've done both.  This time we're planting bare root trees into air-pots to help improve root structure for a year before planting out.  We have 50 Nanking Cherry's, 25 Caragana, and 25 Western Sand Cherry's.

Dietrich, I haven't done enough foraging to know where to pull stock from, but think it would be cool to have mushrooms growing on our own property like that.  I think it would also be very helpful to use mycorrhizal fungi to improve our animal grazing pasture, improve success in tree plantings, and have more nutritious garden produce.  I've tried a mycorrhizal inoculant in the garden and didn't feel successful.  I've checked for the nodules on alfalfa roots in a field we were buying from and saw nothing.  We plant a lot of trees we buy from the local resource management (a minimum of 25 per variety) and would love to feel successful there.  How much of that would your class cover?

I've never built it, but I've had a local copy of "Construction Notes for the Minimus Composting Toilet," which I've found online here.  See also "Minimus Compost Toilet Plans"here.

1. One of the toilet systems we've used is the Omick Barrel toilet linked below.  We only filled the 55gal (208L) barrels about 2/3 full because the urine diverter hole came out about at that level.  One comfort of using a larger barrel toilet vs a 5gal (19L) toilet is the added space between you and the accumulating material in the toilet, so I wouldn't fill the barrel all the way.

2. Aside from rotating between large bins that may eventually need to be emptied as mentioned, or moving the toilet to new areas where you'd like to deposit covered compost, a flush vermicomposting toilet design with faster degrading media has been successfully used to never require either the compost to be emptied or the toilet moved.  One DIY example can be found at vermicompostingtoilets.net.  The compost biodegrades to the point that it can flow out to the drain line to the field and be consumed by plants.

3 & 5. There are several ways to eliminate/reduce pathogens over time, including temperature, outcompeted and consumed by other soil life, oxygen (e.g. desiccation), etc..  The bin approach helps prevent pathogens from getting into the soil as long as you've killed the pathogens before the bin is emptied onto the soil.  Some reference points:

Humanure Handbook method uses thermophilic composting outdoors without a liner to kill pathogens in days, see Chapter 13, especially the figure on page 204

Omick suggests retaining barrels for a min of 4months with an average temperature above 50F (10C) if aerating at least every 2 weeks and there is the right moisture balance

Depending on the input quality, a single pass (minutes) through a flush vermicomposting bin can kill pathogens sufficient for safe reuse on crops as cited in the Wikipedia article here (but often conservatively used for sub-irrigation), and recirculation can be added to achieve even higher and more reliable level of treatment safe enough for surface discharge

4. We aerated the Omick Barrel toilet using the Lotech compost crank linked below with great success.  We eventually gave up on urine diversion after trying a couple modifications to prevent the drain from clogging and just mixed in extra cover material to soak up any excess urine.  Clivus Multrum type systems may use perforated pipes to help with aeration, and the worms provide the aeration in vermicomposting type systems.

Thank you Annie Miller and D Nikolls for your input!  It has caused me to rethink.  I had been hesitant to use perforated pipe, wondering how could it possibly spread evenly across hundreds of holes along a 100ft run, but perhaps the point is that it is better than no pipe.  I also realized that maybe I was less concerned about using fabric because of how clean I expect the output to be, and perhaps just saying "tertiary" level of cleaning may not have adequately conveyed why.

Here's my attempt to try to quantify the difference between a standard septic tank vs vermicomposting/vermifilters.  Keep in mind that wastewater parameters vary widely around the world and performance of a vermifilter depends on various factors.


This image is an attempt to show a visual comparison between secondary and tertiary treated wastewater from an operating recirculating vermifilter, pulled from a video here.



Given that the recirculating aerobic vermifilters are so effective at removing suspended solids and finishing off any composting (BODs) that would form a biological mat, I really don't expect my output to form a mat.  To try to quantify how much the mat from septic tank output might help with evenly spreading the effluent, I read this past week that it can reduce the soil percolation rate by 100x to 1000x.  To compensate and meet the criteria of even distribution along such a long lateral, it may make sense to try something like Anna Edey's Greenfilters.  She lined the bottom and 2-inches up the side of a level trench with plastic, raised the perforated pipe up on cinder blocks, filled around it with mulch, and planted thirsty plants and bushes right next to it.  She claimed it worked for at least 18years (before she moved).  Here's one of the pictures from her website:

Here are 2 screenshots from a presentation I put together on vermicomposting toilets.  I'm working on discussing the approach for laterals on the Plumbing forum and thought these may help convey the difference in effluent that I'm trying to design for, and wanted to ensure they're included here as well.

These graphs are an attempt to provide a general comparison of the difference in level of treatment provided by a standard septic tank vs vermicomposting/vermifilters using the same influent (input).  Keep in mind that influent values vary widely around the world, performance of a worm bin can depend on various factors, and these graphs attempt to compare performance as best I can from the research papers I've seen over the years.


This image shows actual photos of secondary and tertiary treated wastewater, pulled from a video included on the Secondary Treatment page at vermifilter.com.

I'm doing a flush vermicomposting toilet system that does tertiary level of cleaning on the effluent.  I'd like sub-grade distribution to be along 100ft laterals.  It would be nice to be all passive with no moving parts, as long as it remains viable long term.  We do have a bit of a slope we can work with if that helps.

My best guesses about how to distribute effluent evenly along the laterals, at low cost, for DIY installation, is either 2-hole perforated piping (commercial holes at 4 and 8 o'clock positions or DIY slits) as level as I can get it, or gravel wrapped in non-woven geotextile fabric with a trench at a slight slope, perhaps with a dry well at the end just in case.

Ideally I would love to plant trees and shrubs along the downhill side of the laterals.  If I used perforated piping I'd probably need to create an air gap (e.g. chamber) around it to air prune the roots.  If wrapped gravel is used, I'd hope that roots would prefer not to penetrate the fabric when there is easy water below it and the gravel can fully drain (a principle learned from the drainage cell industry).  I'm thinking of starting with one lateral, and adding more or tweaking the design if needed.  Thoughts?

Joshua, now I'm more interested in hearing the updates!  Keep us posted.

Joshua, how exciting! I've done a winecap bed, but only oyster in logs.

Joshua States wrote:The oyster bloc got cut in half and buried just below the surface, covered with dirt and wood chips.

You don't spread the oyster spawn like winecap? I couldn't tell from their website.
Is the thought that the beds get moisture from rain, or greenhouse runoff?

William, thanks for the questions!

William Bronson wrote:why put the sumps in the ground, and why use culverts?

The in-ground depth helps moderate our temperature extremes that range from -27F to 110F outside, and the deeper the sump the more volume and lift an airlift pump has (e.g. see for example the Glenn Martinez airlift pump info here).  The culvert makes it easy to get lots of depth for low cost, with the tradeoff of more DIY time digging.

William Bronson wrote:The other thing I was wondering was about the medium.  Does it have to be degradable to work?  Could it be expanded clay balls, biochar, rockwool, sand or some other neutral material? That way, you might avoid ever needing to empty the primary tanks.

It does not have to be degradable to work, and several people advocate for that.  I think the thing that confuses me about using non-degradable media with humanure that is biodegrading down to fine particles is that you end up with the situation you're trying to avoid in French drains... fine particles mixed with gravel (non-biodegrading media) create an impermeable layer, so I hear that you can greatly extend the life of your French drain by wrapping the drainage rock with the pipe in non-woven geotextile fabric.  You can certainly run into clogging using biodegradable media as well, if it isn't selected to remain porous.  The difference between the approach of using non-degrading media and degrading media also appears to be reflected in the terminology of vermifilter vs vermicomposting.

William Bronson wrote:could the filters could work without worms at all?  Might aerobic digestion, aided by forced air, be enough on its own?

Filtration media without worms has been used as a control in at least a couple experiments, but at least in this case it did not perform as well..  I've read that forced aeration can help a lot in septic tanks, reduces solids and BOD.  How does aeration do in terms of pathogen reduction?  I also like that worms improve plant growth, and worms are the only thing besides fungi that create soil macro-aggregates.

Here's a rendering of the vermifilter building.  It'll be attached to the existing barn to minimize plumbing turns since the pipe run is already long.  We decided to decouple it from the greenhouse to make it more stand alone and not need to accomplish so much at one time.

Here is a side view.  The top floor will be a closed shed type structure.  Downstairs the vermifilter setup from left to right is the IBC tote primary bins, primary sump, secondary sumps for recirculation followed by their paired 55gal drum vermifilters up on a little riser.

Here is a top down view.  On the right side, from top to bottom are the 2 square IBC totes, single primary culvert sump, 3 recirculating culvert sumps followed by their paired 55gal drum vermifilters.  The rectangle on the left is the landing for the stairs.  The rectangle to the right is just dirt up to grade, to ensure the new structure doesn't interfere with the foundation of the existing barn.


Hopefully we'll start digging this weekend, since the weather has been so warm!