Monday, June 8, 2009

update on the worm farm composter


Here is an updated picture of the idea from Wretha. Just click on the small picture to see the larger one. Notice that air flow goes in one barrel and out the other. I divided grey water and sewage, but really I was just dividing the load between the two barrels. Yes, pun intended :)

You can put compost in either one though. You can have gravity drain for the water output or use a pump (solar powered ideally). Also, the vent pipe is black so it will heat up and act as a solar chimney. As the hot air rises, it sucks air in through the other tank cap.

Also, since the sewage is on the right, it goes through the first worm compost, sand, gravel then through the other gravel in the left bin before exiting.

6 comments:

  1. Super! I like it, another tweak, and this would be optional depending on your soil (how hard it is to dig), perhaps offset the sewage barrel by a foot or so above the greywater barrel, that way the liquid coming from the sewage barrel would have a chance to go though the full layers of compost material in the greywater barrel. I did a pic here
    http://wretha.googlepages.com/worm-composting.jpg
    feel free to use it.

    Wretha

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  2. I have been looking at buying a composting toilet but they are kind of pricey. This may be a good alternative for me. I was wondering if the compost needs to be removed regularly like with the composting toilets I have been reading about or if I can just hook it up and forget about it. This is a great blog. Lots of god information. Keep up the good work.

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  3. You will need to separate the compost layer from the rest with a worm-proof membrane or all the layers will mix, ruining the sand/gravel filtration.

    Also, an air supply is required to the gravel bed in order for it to remain aerobic.

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  4. I've seen compost full of worms and dirt on top of sand before and there is some mixing, but i don't think it really matters because that kind of thing happens in nature all the time. But you could put a screen or fine mesh between them. I would hope that the mesh didn't get clogged up over time because using this for sewage and grey water means a lot of water flow.

    This composter doesn't rely on air to break things down as much as the worms. But the worms do need air and that is provided by the air vent.

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  5. When you click on the picture of the tanks, you are taken to http://searchreinvented.com/?dn=poormanguides.net&flrdr=yes&nxte=jpg and not to the larger picture.

    I am following this interesting blog. I have seen some of Richard's youtube video's and always thought this guy was really out there! He must be independently wealthy to spend as much time on this as he obviously does. TONS of great ideas and I am only up to June8th.

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  6. Thanks for the kind words, Texasman. I fixed the link above for the picture. What part of Texas do you live in? I used to live in Dallas back in 98 to 2002.

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