SHIT!

[demi]

My husband just went under the house where the main sewage pipe is taking all the waste out of the house and found pond of slurry all over the ground! The pipe is broken and everything is leaking into the foundations! The pipe is really old and god knows how long its been leaking for. We'd never have discovered it if the counsil hadn't of been digging up the road just now outside the house. We need to connect the sewage from the house to the mains sewage on the street and seeing they've already got the road dug up now's the time to do it. It is currently connected to the street water drains which runs into the river (quite rightly named 'the shit river'), not by us, everyone has done that here and we didnt even know there was proper sewage system until now. Even so, the proper sewers go into the river too, but i think they have some kind of settling chamber like a septic tank so theres not bits of toilet paper and poo going into the river. Macedonia has some of the most polluted rivers, they are a long way from cleaning them up! Its such a shame because this is such a beautiful contry, but no one cares about enviromental issues and people dump rubbish at the side of the roads and waste into the rivers. Also there's no regulations for things like pastacide use and they use a lot of dangerous products here which are banned in Europe and the UK. There no such thing as enviromental control or health and safty here!

[boboff]

sounds like you need a new pipe, given the situatuation, should be easy enough to sort out.

Best to get it done now.

[demi]

Yes, OH is down there at the moment getting dirty! Rather him then me! Actually, I'd rather pay somone else to do it than my husband! But he's the kind of guy who rather do it himself than have to pay someone! eeewwwww, yuck!
And he's digging a tunnel through the basement wall towards the street to connect the new pipe. He's having the go down on his hands and knees with a lightbulb on an extention lead and dig into the wall just with some tools, non of them electric. Theres big rocks and stuff in there too than have to come out. Its dirty work, even without the puddle of shit all arround! I'll have to hose him down in the garden before he comes back into the house!

[boboff]

It's ok once you get into it I suppose. We have a Pit, which can get blocked, and it's a job I put off, but once get started it's ok, but the smell does linger, and you don't bite your nails or pick your nose for a week!!!!

He has my utmost respect!

[diggernotdreamer]

Weren't people who took the shit away called gong scourers. We have some shit problems in Ireland, because of EEC regs, every tank in Ireland supposedly has to be registered and checked and if they don't comply you have to put in a new one with scrubbers and all kinds of stuff like electric pumps with an estimated cost of between 10 and 20 thousand euros depending on your soil type, we may start shitting in the woods if that happens, we haven't got 20 euros to spare let alone thousands

[boboff]

Really?

Well, that'll be next here then! Still I have built a composting Toilet already!

[diggernotdreamer]

Hey Boboff, what do you do with the grey water. Not even sure what legislation there is for compost toilets, we know someone that had to put in a tank even though they were using compost toilets. We got a company called Klargester to visit us from Northern Ireland, their system is approved in the eec and the end result water can be put into a ditch as it is so clean but they are not compliant for use here in the Republic, but you can spray tonnes of cow shite onto the fields when they empty out the slurry tanks - it's a mad mad world

[boboff]

Grey Water?
Umm, the yellow water is channelled into the rhubarb bed which has the little polly tunnel on it, and the pooh and sawdust just piles up. We don't use any water for flushing, and it's outside, and looks like a shed!

Once those authorities find you they like to make life hard.

Your shit spreading story reminded me of a friend who when boughht land managed to acquire allot of waste human effluent, and had it spread on his land.... yes I know it's not legal, but thats just the way he is, anyway, the surpirse was the next spring he had hundreds of tomato plants spring up!

[diggernotdreamer]

Just wondered if you had a compost loo, do you have a septic tank as well, what do you do with bath and washing machine water , oh perhaps you have a compost toilet outside for using when you are in the garden. We have people here to pump out tanks and then blow the resultant sludge onto their land, then the cows are allowed to graze on it a few days later, yuk. I heard that they get loads of tomato plants at sewage works.

[trinder]

And to think when I first read the subject title. I wasn't going to read on cos I thought Demi may have just put a pound of weight on..

[boboff]

Yes we have a tank for the house where everything goes, if you don't use bleech you arn't meant to have to empty it, we do use bleech, and have had it emptied twice in 7 years.

The Composting Toilet is outside and seperate.

[demi]

I'v seen desings for out door composting toilets, just in a shed in the garden. We're concidering building one at the orchard. Just now there is a toilet in a shed, but it just falls into a pit below and doesnt get empted. I'm just in debate wither it would be practical for the kids, having to run outside to get to the toilet ( once we've done the wee farmhouse up ) I think it would be better having a proper bathroom with toilet and shower inside the house. But all that composted poo would really benifit the land........

[woodi]

We've had outdoors composting loos for the last year, and when we moved into our present cottage, decided to go for it and build an indoor compost loo with a separator. Gets emptied once a week, no smell other than sawdust,but you do have to carry out a container full of pee, and a compostable bag full of shit. Its not for everyone (my mother in law refuses to use it),but it does work.
Grey water from the sinks and bath just goes into a little reed bed, which seems to do the trick, though its early days...

[123sologne]

Having hunted high and low, I decided to ask my question here about reed beds. We are about to get started on building ours for grey water and I have some doubt about the sizes of the gravels to be used as well as the depts we need to dig as we face possible -20 C in winter, so I wonder if anybody has got one working and what happens if it gets really cold and super frozen?...

[marshlander]

We had a thread on reed beds recently http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/ ... ds#p267163

When frozen they clog/flood so you ned to have alternative arrangements for cold weather
http://www.wte-ltd.co.uk/reed_bed_sewage_treatment.html