permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:

> Kathy Evans wrote:

> that it would be easy to clean. Have lots of water hyacinth but didn't know I could overwinter it inside, I guess in a 
> bucket somewhere! Thanks, Kathy, St. Louis
>  >>>>
> -
> They overwinter fine in buckets indoors. If you have an unused freezer chest 
> you can plug the drain with silicone,
> fill it up with water and overwinter the hyacinth in it outdoors. During days above freezing you can open the list for 
> light and heat then close it at night for insulation. Also, cover the open top of the chest with a sheet of thick 
> plastic or glass for additional heat during cold days then cover it with rigid foam at night or remove it and close the 
> lid of the chest when freezing temperatures happen.

In fact you could use a number of interconnected freezer chests to process your grey water during winter. They would be 
like mini greenhouses covering sewage lagoons. If you could chain 5 or 6 inline, and proper water levels maintained in 
each, you could grow cattails in the first, duckweed in the next and water hyacinths in several more as a final 
filtration step. It might be cheaper to purchase large translucent water storage tanks, bury them underground with their 
tops exposed to light and connect them using gravity feed in a chain. These have large filler openings so you can 
maintain your aquatic plant collection through them using poles, nets and hooks. Keep something like an insulated 
swimming pool cover around to cover the tops to keep tempratures in the water from dropping too much. Or just bury all 
the tanks in line on a slope then cover the lot of them with a small greenhouse, hoophouse or high tunnel. You could 
collect rainfall or snowmelt to add to the tanks. If the greenhouse was big enough you could grow food crops in it
and irrigate out of the final filtration tanks. It also might be possible to grow catfish in the preliminary stages for 
additional filtration with their droppings being absorbed by the aquatic plants in stages following. This would be a 
passive system but with 12VDC pumps powered by a small solar panel &/or windmill you could have them all on the same 
level. In warm weather the power generation could run whisper fans to cool the greenhouse. Advantages of having all but 
the tops of the tanks underground is that you would benefit from ground heat in the winter and ground cooling in the 
summer. The water temperature would be moderated within fairly close limits yearround. This would result in robust 
growth in the tanks and quick processing of the greywater. Scaled up this system could serve a community and with 
modifications and proper scaling be able to handle blackwater. Personally, I feel that aerobic composting of humanure is 
a much better way to go and uses no potable water. I suppose you could flush with the output of the greywater system.

LL