Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

On Mar 10, 2008, at 9:19 AM, VAN DELL JORDAN wrote:

> Gene,
> Are septic systems required where you are?

No. I would fight such a law.
> So far that is the only thing like a zoning/code
> regulation we have. And here it seems that there is no
> one checking on that, so unless it happens to called
> to the attention of county health they would never
> know.

I made the mistake two or three winters ago to having a certain woman  
live at Heartwood as a caretaker. As it became evident that she was  
several beers short of a six-pack I told her we had changed our minds  
and gave her two months notice to find some other place to live. She  
chose to do various hateful things, including filing a complaint with  
the health department that claimed my human waste system was unsafe  
and unhealthful. A nice young man came out, explained that they must  
follow up on all complaints and asked to see my system. He took photos  
of my bucket toilet, outside design and inside contents both. I then  
took him to the garden and showed him where the contents were dumped  
inside a fence circle and covered with dry grass and leaves. He said,  
oh, so you compost the products. Yes, it feeds the apple trees. He  
took more photos. He filled out his report and showed it to me. No  
problem.

>  Since there is no building permit there is no
> process that would notify them.  When I asked the
> answer was "that happens", rather than the "you'd
> better not do that".  Makes me think they are not
> policing it very hard.

I think that all states have building codes. When seeking my ideal  
country home I looked only in poor counties where I rightly found that  
unless the state provides funding for an enforcement officer, such  
codes are not enforced.
> We also have the option of lagoons.  I haven't
> researched the chemistry but I suspect that is better
> than a septic system.

I don't think so, unless the lagoon is more like a wetlands, with  
substantial area and vegetation.
> We also have the option of composting toilets with a
> lagoon for gray water.  And even that of a wetland but
> those take separate permit processes.

There are many designs called composting toilets that do not, in fact,  
compost. Some use electricity to cook the waste. True composting takes  
a quite a bit of space. See Clivus Multrum. A wetland is the most  
natural system to process humanure. It takes up a lot of space and  
there are issues of water level and soil drainage and distance from  
streams and springs.

As sweet Christina has requested, after only twenty-two years, that I  
build for her a flush toilet, I will soon be researching how to build  
an artificial wetland, a long concrete trough containing fish and  
plants that uptake the nutrients. See John Todd and Living Machines.  
Todd's early designs were built in a serpentine pattern to take up  
less space. The biggest challenge I contemplate is how to keep the  
system working through freezing weather. It will probably have to be  
enclosed in a greenhouse.

By the way, Todd is the real deal. He is a biologist who was one of  
the founders of the New Alchemy Institute, which we old hippies know  
as one of the original alternative lifestyle efforts based on science,  
not pie in the sky.