Lawren Richards

John C Daley wrote:I hold about 250,000 litres of water over about8 tanks just in case.

In case of what? A single tote (1000L) will last me a year if I'm careful, and I would be concerned about Legionaires if I didn't constantly have turnover.

Joao Winckler wrote:Do the totes need any treatment or do you just let them cycle?

Generally just cycle and drain if there's a bit of sediment, but it's also easy to scrub it with a clean mop.

Suggest the book "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond" by Brad Lancaster.  Much detail about how-- including, btw, tips like don't let it sit there gathering mosquitos; let it travel through the soil.

I gather my roof (metal) runoff into 2 1000L totes in the basement which supplies 100% of my water needs including some garden watering. (I also fill supplementary outdoor tanks for gravity-fed watering.)

I have been on full-system rainwater for ~25 years, in the BC Interior where it can get to -35C  but more often floats +/- 10 degrees around freezing in the winter. We often have droughts in summer.

The system must have the ability to be rerouted, for instance when the air is filled with smoke. I reroute to plants with a hose.

I use a screen and the coarse sediment filter on the gravity-fed side (going into the tank), and a fine sediment filter on the pressurized side. I also filter drinking water through a charcoal filter. Technically it's not potable but would be so if I dropped some Clorox in the tank. (Yuck.)

I raised my 2 children with this setup from 4 mo old until they left for university. The only issue that I know of is that rainwater has no minerals so those need to be supplemented a different way, either food or supplements or adding to the tank.

I also have a composting toilet; flush toilets are ~30% of potable water usage in most N American homes.

We all need to learn to use less water, to store rainwater in the soil, and to stop using resource-expensive potable water for non-potable needs.  I know I'm preaching to the choir in this thread, but this year especially we will be facing more climate disruption than ever before because of El Niño, and this year's extremes will be the norm in 20 years.

I'm in zone 4 in BC, am just learning about hedge laying, and have a few questions. Can any coppice tree be laid like this? What is the min/max trunk diameter for laying? When to coppice vs lay?

Also, how wide (broad) do people make hedges? Because of fire I don't want to use conifers but I want a hedge that's visually opaque in the winter  and am allowing 10' of depth but would appreciate others' thoughts.

Never mind, I found it... it's on the bottom of the thread in the middle, not the top right where I was looking. 🙄

I have the same issue, the url is https://permies.com/f/517/hedges.  No "new topic" button. Thanks'

Short answer is yes. I am still figuring out best practice for barrel composting my indoor 2-story composting toilet, but bsf is one step. Would love to hear others' recommendations but so far here's how mine works: 1) urine diversion 2) barrels rotated every 4 months. 3) barrel 1: active 4) barrel 2 purchase bsf larvae (~$20) and drop in screened barrel. Content depth drops 1/3 in 1 month, slower after that 5) barrel 3 - tentatively think contents slowly get added to vermiculture bin (worms prefer partially composted material slowly added on top. They don't like being dumped into a big pile)

There might be an intermediate step of dumping barrel 3 into an outdoor pallet bin for more composting, haven't decided.

I don't want to drain liquid from barrels (too much risk of contamination) so am finding that the key to odour control is barrel prep. Next barrel will have bentonite kitty litter on bottom if it's a metal barrel (to prevent corrosion; bentonite clay can seal nuclear waste), 1 or 2 flakes of straw, shaken loose and pushed to edges to help oxygen flow, and a very thick layer of dry carbon material-- either chipped weeds or shredded paper, almost 1/3 barrel as it will compact.

Thoughts?

Following, although my well is 800'.