Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

No, my sawdust toilet should not be connected to sewer. I do not want to give my valuable manure away, oh wait I wouldn't be simply giving it away, they would be forcing me to pay them to take it away along with the water and they base the payment on the amount of water I use (which they would also make me pay for) and if I don't use enough in their opinion, then they fine me. No I do not want to have to hook up to public water and sewer service.

It isn't just Aussies that are scared of their own poo!!!! Americans are outrageously fecophobic.
The humanure handbook is a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to make compost even if they think they will never try humanure. That book taught me how to make compost easy.

Sigh, I will simply continue to do my best with what I have and what I can. I will be responsible for myself even if I can't be responsible for the rest of the world.

No doubt about how important water is. Lots of great ideas here.....composting toilets, re-using gray water, ect.
I'm surprised no one mentioned a pretty 'low tech' treatment for water, especially in poor countries, any where really. Provide by the good Lord ( or mother nature) and that's ....Good ol' DUCKWEED !

Before public sewers, desease was a real problem as people did not dispose of waste properly. And I am about as big a right wing small government nut as they come, but clearly someone had to manage the waste. State and federal regulation demands that our watse water is treated to remove chemicals and stuff before it is released to the env. In most cases the treated water will be cleaner then the water ways it is released into. I don't have a problem peeing in the tank, but collecting my own poop would not be at all pleasent as I suffer digestive track problems...nope...I won't do it....heck the bunny poop is bad enough...

Disease was a problem because people were simply dumping the waste where ever perhaps even directly back into the drinking water supplies and didn't necessarily have easy access to clean water for washing hands.

However, waste water treatment is not necessarily as perfect as one might think. Chemicals and heavy metals are not necessarily removed prior to it being released back into the environment. Actually, chemicals are often added in an attempt to kill off possible pathogens and these treatment chemicals are not very good for the environment. Sadly not all pathogens are necessarily killed off by sewer treatment even in the best of times and when volumes are up and the plant can't keep up with the flows, waste water is not necessarily fully treated before being released. They are still using the dilution solution in most places. And where you are not hooked to a public sewer system, a septic system is the normal alternative in our Industrialized culture. So what does a septic system do, well it is essentially a settlement tank where sludge settles and floating scum/grease are blocked from flowing out and clogging the leach field. In a properly sized and not abused system, the sludge will be digested slowly by microbes and so hopefully not need pumping out but in our flush it away society the governments are starting to require even fully functional septic tanks to be pumped out regularly even when they don't need it. Anyway, then the waste water goes into the leach field where the water and all it's nutrients being released too deep below the grass roots to be fully utilized by the plants then leaches back down into the water table and drinking water supplies where it is hopefully diluted enough not to cause nitrate problems in the drinking water wells in the area.

Nope, I would much rater compost, it is the only really good way I can think of to take care of the pathogens without causing pollution problems. It just requires a person to take care of their own sh!t rather than flushing it away where some one else has to take care of it.

Remember, there is no "AWAY" anymore and clean drinking water is not an appropriate transport devise.

Now I realize that not everyone is going to Humanure compost even if there were a way they could do it without having to empty buckets but we should all realize that the water based waste water treatments we currently have in place in most of the industrialized world are not nearly as perfect as one might think. Most of them are little more than settlement tanks and then some mechanical and bio-filtration before the water is released and the sludge dried and then either spread on fields or taken to the landfill or sold back to the public as fertilizer.

If you are rural and can do it go for it. Cheaper than making miles of pipe

As for cities, you can't trust people to be responsible, they aren't. Its why so many blame the government for falling out of a tram because the doors didn't close..
Common sense is extinct, was replaced by a lawyer.

Pathogens can be eliminated by removing the food source.
No food no grow.
Removing the food source comes down to filtering and time.

For most sewer systems a more organic approach is required to allow nature to do its thing in a controlled manner.
The problem with most city treatment plants, Sydney's is the worst - you need space to allow the water time to clarify.
Melbourne has the best available land to do this but they don't. Seems a waste to treat water to tertiary levels only to dump it back into the ocean. You have pumped it around for days only to toss it away.

You don't need chemicals at all, just good bacteria, time and algea.
Aglea = energy
Poop to energy - fuel oils or electricity through bio digester (methane) or sim gas (burning into carbon without oxygen).
So for a rough guesstimate if Currum produces 6 tonnes of digestible waste every hour then you have 6000000 kwh per hour of energy.
1 tonne = 1000 kwh

So if you had sim gas you would only be left with metals and carbon. Both can be recycled and Germany makes the filters to do it.
No landfill but a product that can be sold.

The water is then worth cleaning up to A grade standards using energy the system created to filter it down to 200um.
It would then be cleaner than the water from the tap.

Hormones and other nasties don't survive the process, they get too hot as they are proteins and enzymes.
The end products are..
Pure clean water
Electricity or / and Gas
Carbon for compost
Oils from algae (fuel oils)
Compost and compost tea.

Hate this timeout..

600,000 kwh
not million..

And again...3 AM here, sorry...

6000 kwh per hour
=
52 560 000 kwh per year.

5.2 Gwh

If you have surface water that is biologically unclean, but not chemically polluted you can use a slow sand filter.

Here is a wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_sand_filter

Hmm harnessing microbiology on a high surface area medium in a very simple system to get a needed resource seems oddly familiar!

Something about biological interface?

Bacteria will break down most chemicals. Where they don't fungi will.
Any solids can be destroyed by combustion.

or worms

Worms would not produce kilowatts of energy while reducing matter to its basic elements.
I wonder how they would go with synthetic or reactive hormones? Worms with breasts?

Not all sewage is created in tropical and subtropical zones. My parents had a composting toilet for a while at their cabin. Freezing solid all winter meant the thing never got going properly again in the spring. Finally had to put in a mound tank. Even real septic systems in Wisconsin now have to be pumped every three years.

Natural sewage treatment requires lots of space because it takes lots of time and it needs to be maintained at proper temperatures which means inside in most places. Though I still think not converting sewage into methane is a waste of perfectly good energy. The City of Milwaukee, WI often dumps large quantities of untreated sewage into lake Michigan after a heavy rain. It is also one of the only cities to turn human sewage into fertilizer. Go figure. Here is a link to the company that makes the fertilizer.

http://www.milorganite.com/about/history.cfm

I could go on and on with examples illustrating the principle that protecting people from consequences doesn't correct behavior, but actually leads to more of the behavior that you don't want.

Instead, I will just summarize this as a great reason to live in rural areas.

Using drinkable water to flush our waste away is, indeed, foolish. And cities are in the same situation as CAFOs (concentrated animal feedlot operations): both are to crowded to handle wastes in a natural way. CAFOs should be outlawed as they pollute the surface and groundwater and lead to antibiotic resistance (or put them out of business by limiting antibiotic use and subsidies). I'm not sure what to do about cities, but I can think of at least three improvements in under a minute...

On the lighter side: We think it is disgusting that dogs drink from the toilet, but I'm sure they are similarly appalled by what we do in their water bowl.

Part of the problem is deforestation. North Africa and south American nations love to rip into their timber supplies for fuel when they don't have to at all.
The basic rule is warm climate + trees = rain.
Warm climate + no trees = desertification.

Stop them cutting the trees down and you solve the problem.

Compare Haiti to neighboring islands. What a mess!