completely non thumper, but someone might have an idea...

[SteveL]

having just finished installing a waste water recycling system (a 500 ltr sump in the garden collecting bath and shower water, with 2 12 volt submersible bilge pumps to service the 2 toilet cisterns, which are fitted with float switches) it all works a treat, powered from a car battery which maintains it's charge from a small solar panel....BUT
i don't know whether it was because we went on holiday after I'd installed the sump system, and the water in the sump was left for 3 weeks before i got round to plumbing in the cisterns, but the water STINKS, almost as bad as my septic tank!, swmbo is beginning to think non green thaughts.....
is there a treatment I can use which is conducive with septic tanks, or anything else i can do to nullify the pong. I'm thinking i might pump the sump out onto the garden and hope that constant recycling of 'fresh' bathwater might keep it under control........any ideas from the collective (and extensive) TC brain would be most welcome

[guest7]

Would aerating (sp?) it help? Pehaps a little fishtank pump might keep the water fresher?

GC

[themoudie]

Evening Steve,

All a bit ironic this! Another year passes and my mother sends me a book called "The Not so Little Book of Dung", by Caroline Holmes, ISBN 0-7509-4051-4. Reviewed in the EAT a couple of months ago and a good giggle, belly laugh or pause for thought it is.

As for your grey water, the bacteria love it and you holding it in bulk during the 'warm' spell has created ideal bacteria breeding conditions, hence the warm, sweet sickly smell of fermenting sweaty bodies!

Try this link : http://www.cat.org.uk/information/catinfo.tmpl?command=search&db=catinfo.db&eqSKUdatarq=InfoSheet_Greywater&eqCURRENTdatarq=0

The other place to look is on Google and search for [ "grey water" treatment ], don't enter the brackets!

The smell won't be as bad as on a land reclamation site I was working on, where treated sewage sludge at 4000 tonnes to the hectare had been applied. "The Black Lagoon"!

Hope this helps, you in your 'Coke of Holkam Hall' endevours.

"Tha's a lot o squit he say!"

[SteveL]

blast bor, you'm dead roit.....both of'em

yup, did the google bit, and it looks like it's gone anaerobic, and what with the weather and not being cycled (and maybe the fact that the plastic barrel had had 500 ltrs of pickled onions in it before i got my hands on it! did i not mention that....) so.... i'll pump it out at the weekend and clean it out with a bit of antibacterial stuff, and tell swmbo to have a bath (she's cleaner than me!) and see what happens. if it turns sour again, i'll have to think of some filtering gadget of some sort.

yeah that .gov page was good too
thanks for the info chaps

[guest27]

Hi There

Is it the phosphates in the soap or sopmmat that you are supposed to address too - hence reed beds or the like.  However there are a number of small aeration pumps for fish tanks - which may help.  Bob Flowerdew sits them in all his water butts - he recons (with reason) that aerated water is actually beneficial to the plants and they also help keep dowm the bad smells.  The Independent had an ad for a solar fish pond aeration pump not long ago, complete with solar panel etc.  Mind I have been thinking that a piston type pump like the old stule fish pumps would be good if driven by a small windmill - not sure how to transfer the rotation of the windmill to the pump mind - being at they want to be a few metres apart.

R

[guest27]

Coo I thought I ate alot of pickles!  And your Boss complains about the smell of the water - thought the wind from the onions would be worse.

Seriously though - what sort of head do the pumps have?  I keeplooking at all the water running down the drain and wonder about [pumping it up the garden - butwe have quite a drop - house at bottom of slope not top.

R

[Paulgertie]

The reed beds work, a mate of mine cleans his water with them, though you obviously need them to be above the height of your tank. Another idea for killing the bacteria is an ultra violet light, though this takes power, probably more than a cheaper solar panel would supply. You would still need to filter off the soap though this can be done either with fish pond filters or sand. Please keep us posted as it's something I'm thinking of doing when I put in a new bathroom.
Paul

[guest27]

So if I can pump the water - as a reasonable cost - up the field I could run a reed bed and still capture the run off in a storage tank - could I include grass carp in there too I wonder?

R

[SteveL]

the pumps are 12 volt submersible bilge pumps, and cost around £12 each, and the other end of the circuit is controlled by a couple of fluid level switches at a fiver each. but as the switches are only reed switches, and can only handle a max of 1 amp, i'm using them to switch a relay which can handle the 5 amps that the pumps draw.
the pumps are supposed to push a 10m head, which, for the price, i thought was pretty good, in practice, probably because of the convoluted pipework to the upstairs loo, it doesn't exactly gush out, but is sufficient and thats an estimated 5m head. I'm really pleased with the way it all works, If i can cure the pong it'll be a complete success. I have drained the tank and cleaned it with anti-bacterial spray, also bleached the shower/bath waste pipe, so the next few days will tell me if a constant cycling of the sump keeps it sweet, if not then it's going to be some form of aeriation as plan B