Friday 20 May 2011

Worm power!

Well, actually, that should read worms AND power, but I thought the idea of worm power was kinda cool...

The last of the earth-work type jobs happened mid-November 2007. The first was trenching down the hill to mum and dad's electricity supply pit and connecting our house up to the grid. After much umming and ahhing about renewables, financially it made more sense to connect to the grid than to deploy a battery bank. So, that meant trenching and cabling.





The trenching bloke also dug across to the tank so the pipes could be laid to and from the house.



Instead of a traditional septic tank system we opted for a worm-farm based waste system. All of the grey- and black-water from the house is piped to a large, underground worm farm. The worms eat all manner of biodegradable matter including paper, food scraps and human waste. The liquids are dispersed via a series of subterranean slotted pipes. Essentially there is no waste. It works beautifully.











2 comments:

  1. Wow! Very interested to learn more about your worm based septic system and if it could work here in a low lying area where the ground can be quite water logged during the winter months? The house is looking great, we'll have to come and check it out some time soon.

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  2. That'd be lovely. I know they use them at Tarwin Primary school which'd have a similar soil type to yours. And a friend at Meeniyan had to include a pump in his set up because his block was too flat for gravity-fed outflow... Anything is possible!

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