Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

not many secrets, most good info can be found through some of the links on my site. Compost secret, Urine. Check out the Humanure link.

anyway, I'm not too far along on much other than the composting. The gardens are comming along but I still need to get lots of organic matter onto the ground all the time.

Anyway, keep checking back as I'm always trying to improve and the web pages rarely go more than a few days without minor changes.

Hey TCLynx!

The dome on your site was designed by one of our users (CloudHidden, not sure if he is still using VectorWorks or not), and rendered using the rendering add-on that I work on!

I'd love to have a copy of your house's VectorWorks file, I can use it to test rendering. I should be able to render the lighting better with our latest version...

Just remember to restrict you doses to the system if your health is not 100% - don't want to infect the tank TC

Dave, I'm not sure what Jim used for the rendering. I don't have any copies of such files from him, I only have the finished rendering jpg and pdfs of the construction drawings. He is probably quite careful about letting source files/drawings out since making changes to his designs is really his job. He is a really good designer in any case, been to his web site lately?

LKB, I go ya there, no sickies peeing in the ponics. I am currently running some bacteria tests to see how well urine does at killing off bacteria. Should have the first three results tonight.

Hi TC, Jim and I go way back I have the file, playing with different renderings of it ATM.

Test results are in on the first three samples.

The aged sample shows negative on this test. This seems to support the assertion that the aged urine manages to kill off bacteria. Stands to reason since people have used ammonia for ages to clean and sterilize.

The fresh sample shows signs of bacteria as does the intentionally contaminated fresh sample.

Still aging some contaminated urine to see if the aging/pH kills off the bacteria we know is present.

The test kit is for coliform bacteria in general and not necessarily of actual pathogenic bacteria.

thanks for doing these tests, very interesting results

Neat! Thanks for the experimental effort!

You are all welcome. When a few people raised some questions that I discovered I couldn't confidently answer, it make me want to learn the answer.

Being quite comfortable with the safety of humanure composting, the ick factor doesn't really get to me, hence I figured I might be a good one to do the science project. By the way, some of these kids science experiment kits are pretty good.

I have to add some more field line to my system.. What if I dug a large pit, plumbed the line to the bottom, drilled it full of holes and filled the pit with gravel and planted something thats really water hungry? Pampa grass and basel for a good smell..

This idea intrigues me. Dang one more project to add to the list..

On this thought, if you are eating and drinking organically already, it seems that recycling your own wastes should not introduce anything you aren't already putting into your body. If you are setting up a community-wide recycling system, that's a different story, but if you are just doing a home-based recycling project, then you should only get out what you put in ... just don't let your drug-using houseguests use the same pot.

And now after the preliminary round of urine bacteria testing. I believe the urine needs to be saved for a time period (in order to kill off bacteria) before use as fertilizer or in any sort of ponics systems. This usually requires the use of some sort of bottle and makes segragation of unwanted urine easier.

Of course in my estimation, at least half of the urine a person generates in required to go into the humanure composting system to keep that hot enough to be effective. If you have guests with questionable habits, make them pee in the humanure bucket (since the composting process should take care of most issues there) and don't share your pee bottle with them.

Dan, I don't know how well that would work as I'm not a septic system specialist. I really don't like flushing anything through a septic system since the vary nature of a septic tank will turn grey water into black water which you don't want near the surface. If you are flushing nutrient rich human waste (along with previously clean drinking water) into a septic system and leach field, you are generally placing the nutrient laiden water too deep for most plants to make use of and anything other than lawn grass growing over the leach field will usually cause you root blockage problems.

rainbird, just drinking the water will dose you with antibiotics, estrogens, and who knows what else.

The aged contaminated urine has hit a pH over 9 so a sample has gone into the bacteria test. Watch for results in 48 hours.

Now I know I've said this sort of testing isn't such a big deal but I have to comment that the odor of the aged contaminated urine was a bit funky. Not necessarily any worse than aged urine but funky anyway.

On a bit of a side note. It seems that the urine of different people will take differing lengths of time to reach that pH of 9. I'm sure there are several factors that can play a part like size of sample and air space left in the bottle as well as temp and light but I'm thinking the biggest factor is probably more to do with the donors body chemistry.

TC

Not sure if you saw it a while back but there was a Mythbusters program on fecal coliform on toothbrushes. It was found that everything in or near the bathroom was contaminated, so basically we all cope with it in small amounts.

Am currently cycling my 4' fishtank using urine (fresh). Been about 1 1/2 weeks had 2.5 cups of urine. I initially added chlorine remover (Start Right from All Pet) and 4 litres of water from the growbeds ph just under 7. Checked after one week ph was sitting at 6.4 so boosted it to 7.6 with sodium bicarb. Ammonia about .50 mgl no nitrites or nitrates. No odour that I can detect. Keeping it dark (green sheet over it) to stop algae growth.

Water is slightly milky/opaque but I have had that before cycling with fish.

Be interesting to see if the high ph/ammonia does kill bacteria in your test.