Poop
Jan 8th, 2009
For hundreds of years, the human race has been grappling with the question “What do we do with the stuff that comes out of the bottom of the toilet?” but I, personally, never really worried too much about it. Until now.
(While writing this, I looked up the synonyms for feces in the thesaurus: excrement, bodily waste, waste matter, ordure, dung, manure, excreta, stools, droppings, dirt, filth, muck, mess, night soil, poop, pooh, doo-doo, turds, poo, caca, crap, shit. I will use as many as I can.)
The public sanitary sewer will not arrive at the doorstep of the Big Nerd Ranch for five to ten years. So, we must figure out what to do with the excrement-bearing water in the meantime. There are options:
- A septic field: you run the doo-doo water into an underground, perforated pipe. If the bacteria and the soil do their job well, there is no smell and the pipe doesn’t back up.
- A package plant: this is essentially a water-treatment plant in a box: Fecal water goes in, clean water comes out. Occasionally, you haul away the solids.
- Composting toilets: No water — turds go in, soil comes out.
- Dig a connection all the way to the nearest public sewer.
I have decided that we will go with a septic field.
According to my amazing civil engineer Russ Davis, our septic line will be about 3000 feet long (depending on the soil properties). This is what Russ looks like:
(How is he amazing? Russ is consistently creative and tasteful. I understand that this is quite rare in a civil engineer.)
So I need a large field with soil that percolates the caca water. The soil guy came to the site and did a “perc test” on my meadow — bad news: not all of my meadow percs. So, I have to make more meadow. Fortunately, we also own the adjacent lot. If that soil percs, we are going to knock down some trees and make a meadow there.
The new meadow is going to be lovely: lush with wildflowers. If you come to the ranch one day, I’d prefer you not refer to it as “The Poop Field”.
I don’t think you have to worry about people calling your septic fields names. Most suburban house yards are septic fields, and no one thinks a thing about it…
I cannot understand why you could possibly think that taking a big ‘ole crap into your own garden is a good idea.
Maybe it works if only one person does it and maybe it works while you’re not doing it too often.
But other people have to live on this planet after you’re gone so chances are that eventually the situation in your area is going to change and then they will have to deal with the consequences of the decision you are making today.
Why do I care?
I recently found out that the whole area I live in has polluted groundwater because of people who thought the way you do.
Grrrf.
Composting toilets rock _and_ you can use them to achieve food security. Check out what the Japanese are doing in this area some time.
Best regards
– antoine
Good luck on your perc test Aaron. One of the intersting things about (building) development is that the size of your building is constrained by the capacity of your septic system.
So a 4-bedroom house of your dreams can become a 2-bedroom house because your field didn’t perc well enough. I’m sure you’ve been through all that by now, but it came as a surprise to me.
Oh, and Antoine, perfect solutions are never as perfect as they seem. Composting toilets require the right amount of heat. Many units use electical power to provide heat when needed and run fans (yeah, let’s burn up some fossil fuel so we can run our green toilets). Additionally, many areas have regulatons that the “compost” must be disposed of at a special facility, or buried at least 12-inches underground. Oh, or you can pay to have your waste tested for toxins before you dispose of it. Finally, many composting systems require a great deal of maintenance – much more than the average homeowner is used to doing. Slack on that maintenance a bit and what do you have? A very environmentally-unfriendly system.
Despite the problems that can exist in a traditional septic system, they’ve been used successfully now for hundreds (thousands maybe) of years. Waste disposal, no matter how you do it, has the potential for environmental impact.
People who live in areas with municipal sewer systems generally don’t think much about what they flush down the toilet as long as it doesn’t clog up the head and trigger a plunger battle. Lots of things are bad for the bacteria you’ll be depending so it requires a bit of discipline about what can get flushed down the toilet.
Not a problem for a household, but if you’ll be hosting lots of people who don’t normally worry about this stuff, do you extra tolerance designed in for that?