Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

thats a real good idea regarding the skimming, Ama!

Thanks, and if anyone gets to do it, i'd like to see it working.
And with the skimming you still have to find a way of stocking and getting rid of the skimmed stuff. I suppose that you could find a way of getting it recycled by the tip/landfill (forgot the proper word), having it it to go through with the old mechanic oils. At least you would be independant, ecofriendly and take profit from the local taxes you pay for.

seriously, couldn't you just tip it down the drain?

i mean if you're skimming the soaps, body oils, etc from your shower water then they would have gone down the drain anyway.

I thought of that at first but then i found that you could maybe find a better use for those pipes...

Worm farm for your poop.. Interesting! I was looking at going with a composting toilet when I add on the the house, perhaps worm would be good too. Dang, more to read about and buy

For toilet systems you can use a composting system, and then put the product into a worm farm.

separation tanks are easy to make. It's a simple underflow/overflow filter. The only problem is you need a decently body of water to do this with, which in this country or at least state is illegal, as you are not allowed to store grey water.... (and of course I don't )

Dan, as I've stated before, I'm cheap. I go into display stores and find a sales man that can show me everything about a product. I make brief mental notes of how it works and come home to design my own. I look at it this way... If I made it then at least I know how to fix it when it breaks.
So reasearch for sure but this worm farm is just a modified septic tank. You could easily modify a septic tank all you need really is a basket of some sort to catch the waste and slowly allow moisture to drip through. I'd make the waste catcher big enough to handle those saturday mornings after a hard night at the pub though.

The current laws on grey water are retarded to put it mildly,
as it stands, it's banned by almost ALL local councils.
you'll get a fine for using sprinklers, and another fine if you tell them it's from grey water.
i'd love to build a grey water system made of 3 stepped gravel filled pits. water goes into deepest pit first and gradually over flows into the upper pits till it surfaces and over flows into my watering system.
cheap, safe and illegal.

ahhhhhh, but i recon you'd have a test case if you prvided a sample of your grey water after it had been foam factionated, bio-converted and aged, and the test came back with a very healthy sample more akin to river water.......

but safe cheap and illegal is still the easiest

the only time i'd fight a local council is if i knew i could get current affair to pay them a visit.
council runs like rats do with a spot light on them when a camera heads towards them.

Two greywater systems are installed and have been working for a year at our place in Bedfordale (30k South of Perth).

Feel free to arrange a visit. You'll be able to see the organic gardens and my fifhies, too.

Adrian

Hi KE,

Can you get to the otherside of the grease traps (S or P bend ) on either the shower or the bath ? This will be the first hurdle. If not then it could turn into a very expensive exercise. Otherwise there should be diverter kits available from most hardware stores these days..May even qualify for a government rebate

On the other hand have you thought of two rain water tanks ? A small one which catches the rain, and then pump the water upto a bigger tank which can be anywhere else in the yard. Pump switches off when a float valve reaches a certain level in the small tank. I've seen quite a number of systems like this up in the hills where they don't have mains water and the top of the main tank is higher than the house.

or you could do both.

H.

I've never heard of the 2 tank system but it makes sense.

There is good crawling space under the bathroom and hopefully enough height there to send the water out to the front of the house.

Unfortunatly I'm about 2 years away from being able to do this, but happy to keep looking out for ideas.

You would think all of the things we use in AP would be suitable for this type of thing. One of those really cool bead filters, FSB for removal of anything nutrient wise, and then just keep it aerated. Throw in a solar heater to get it pasteurised and it would just be so friggin awesome.... *tries to calm down a bit* gadgets, oh so many gadgets.....