i am posting this for norm, as he cannot access the usenet to post
messages, ha can read any responses which i willthen pass on whatever
he may reply.

norm's copy starts he

"Hi all;
I'm not an expert nor am I a plumber but I have a greywater
system that is working fine. I thought that you might want to read
about it.

I did a lot of research on the Internet and found that fresh
greywater is pretty benign. Sure, there are some pathogens in it but
the count is no worse than what you're sitting in when you have a
bath. In other words, LOW!

The problem occurs if you hold that greywater in a tank. It's a
perfect environment for those pathogens to multiply.

The other concern is grease, fat, food scraps, and soap. It's
easy to see that if they go into a tank, they'll create sludge and
feed the pathogens.

Finally, putting soapy water into the soil can, over time, upset
the soil pH. If I remember correctly, it'll make it alkaline.

I also found that ol' Mother Nature does a really good job in
cleaning up and re-balancing the environment.

If you take few buckets of grey water and throw it on your lawn.
In no time, the water soaks into the soil. The pathogens die or are
killed. The grease, fat, and food scraps decay or get eaten by soil
organisms. Finally, the soap degrades and the pH is re-balanced. Ergo,
no problem! Where this process falls apart is when the soil becomes
super-saturated with greywater.

So, the obvious low-tech solution to greywater is to spread a
little bit - all around. That's exactly the process that I am using.

I live in a small country town on an 860 square meter block. My
house is a low-set Queenslander. It has the bathroom and kitchen at
the back of the house. The laundry room is also at the back of the
house, at ground level. The bath tub and bathroom sink used to drain
into one ground sump. The kitchen sink and laundry drain into another
ground sump.

Using the standard 50mm plastic plumbing pipe, I connected all
the greywater sources to one common pipe. The common pipe drains into
the ground sump close to the outside laundry room. I have a screw-on
plastic piece that goes from the end of this pipe to the ground sump.

This screw-on pipe is where I connect my greywater hose.

I got a plastic cap that screws onto the afore-mentioned pipe. I
drilled a large hole through it and glued a 25mm hose connector to it.
I purchased about 30 meters of 25mm hose and connected it all up.

That's it - that's my greywater system. The plastic cap plugs the
afore-mentioned pipe and the greywater drains off through the 25mm
hose.

Every morning, after feeding my chooks, I move the end of the
25mm hose to another part of my lot. It doesn't have to be moved much,
a few meters every day.

The 25mm hose doesn't drain as fast as a 50mm pipe. This isn't
really a problem as any excess flow backs up into the laundry tubs and
will eventually drain out. This only occurs when emptying the bathtub.

I don't worry about putting the greywater on our root vegetables.
With the low pathogen count and the natural cleansing of the soil,
plus the fact that we only eat cooked root vegetables that have been
washed - how can it be a problem?

Sometimes, the 25mm pipe plugs up at the plastic cap end - once
from a dead green frog, once from soil from pots that we washed out in
the laundry tubs. The fact that the laundry tub was filling up with
water (and not draining) clued us to the problem. It was easy to
disconnect the screw cap and clean it out.

We've been using this simple system for 4 years now and it's
working just fine. We haven't been sick or anything and our plants are
thriving. There is nothing about this system that has caused a
problem.

Norm"

end copy.


With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

"gardenlen" wrote in message
...
i am posting this for norm, as he cannot access the usenet to post
messages

he cant access groups.google.com?

dunno dave,

how does that work then i can tell him.

just some of the smaller isp's don't support usenet, and the only free
news reader that is available is also only for reading no posting it
makes life difficult for some.

but anyway explain to me about the google and i'll tell him if it
works for him i'm sue he'll be happy.

On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 10:44:04 +0800, "Dave -Turner" wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

think i worked it out dave,

i sent the link to norm.

ta


On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 10:44:04 +0800, "Dave -Turner" wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

Thanks all, I'm on google groups. My old ISP allowed me to post into
Aus.Gardens, my new one doesn't so I've only been able to read any
posts via a free newsgroup server. I didn't know that I could get in
via google. Anyway, I'm here now...

I'm not an expert in gardening, I just enjgoy it - keeps me fit and
sane. I have missed being able to ask advice and in a few cases share
some low-tech ways to do things.

So, I feels good to be back... I feel like I'm now part of a very
friendly world. All is right once again! LOL

Norm

gardenlen wrote:
dunno dave,

how does that work then i can tell him.

just some of the smaller isp's don't support usenet, and the only free
news reader that is available is also only for reading no posting it
makes life difficult for some.

Individual.net (the german newserver) is 10 bucks a year. Well worth it.
Yeah, many smaller ISPs appear to be run by TAFE graduates who appear to
know squat about Thuh Inteynet (they think Thuh Web is Thuh Inteynet).
Someone from Snowy.net (to which I'd just subscribed and spent a fruitless
few minutes trying to find the newserver) informed me that no one uses
Newsgroups any more. (he was the only person at the ISP who had even heard
of it).

--
ant
Don't try to email me;
I'm borrowing the spammer du jour's addy

"ant" wrote in message

Someone from Snowy.net (to which I'd just subscribed and spent a
fruitless
few minutes trying to find the newserver) informed me that no one
uses
Newsgroups any more. (he was the only person at the ISP who had even
heard
of it).

Snort! You are so right. Here I am, an old fart in my mid 50s and I
got onto my ISP to ask if they permitted me to "mung my addy". I got
some snotty nosed wee lad who's voice hadn't yet broken and he didn't
have a clue what I was talking about. I had to explain to him what
ngs were and how to get them to show up on one's machine etc, etc ad
nauseum.

Farm1 wrote:
"ant" wrote in message

Someone from Snowy.net (to which I'd just subscribed and spent a
fruitless few minutes trying to find the newserver) informed me
that no one uses Newsgroups any more. (he was the only person at
the ISP who had even heard of it).

Snort! You are so right. Here I am, an old fart in my mid 50s and I
got onto my ISP to ask if they permitted me to "mung my addy". I got
some snotty nosed wee lad who's voice hadn't yet broken and he didn't
have a clue what I was talking about. I had to explain to him what
ngs were and how to get them to show up on one's machine etc, etc ad
nauseum.

They seem to have learned exactly what they need to make the servers go, and
no more. Which is why I think they went to TAFE rather than just learning it
by being interested in it - very structured, defined learning, limited by
what the teacher knew. Of course, there's nothing stopping them from going
further and finding out stuff for themselves, but most of them seem not to.

even though I now am on an ISP with a giant newserver, I maintain and use my
German newserver subscription, because it gets pretty well every message,
bugger-all latency and drop outs, but the main thing is I can use it
anywhere in the world. Very handy when you spend 5 months of every year in
the US!


--
ant
Don't try to email me;
I'm borrowing the spammer du jour's addy

ant wrote:

They seem to have learned exactly what they need to make the servers go, and
no more. Which is why I think they went to TAFE rather than just learning it
by being interested in it -

Naah, the eployers want some piece of paper. It is far easier and until
TAFE is completely gutted, you have some hope that he may have actually
performed what he said he has, rather than the usual "oh I've done all
that".

Plus, if they can last through a TAFE course, there is some chance they
are not going to decides two weeks later that this isn't exciting enough
and they want to go elsewhere.

You can find out the really keen ones by asking about what computers
they have at home or play with elsewhere. hint, ask them what problems
they had. No problems = no learning.

Been there, done that. Prefer to buy lottery tickets than gamble on
unvalidated claims.

Terryc wrote:
ant wrote:

They seem to have learned exactly what they need to make the
servers go, and no more. Which is why I think they went to TAFE
rather than just learning it by being interested in it -

Naah, the eployers want some piece of paper

Employers are terrible at employing. this is yet another example. They don't
have a clue how to find the staff they want, or how to keep them.

--
ant
Don't try to email me;
I'm borrowing the spammer du jour's addy

ant wrote:

Employers are terrible at employing. this is yet another example. They don't
have a clue how to find the staff they want, or how to keep them.

From an employers point of view, it is the most efficent way. Firstly,
for the modern small business owner, you are spending so much time at
your business that you don't have time to interact with the community to
find these kids that really know what they are doing.

Nor can I afford to gamble modern hardware in a locked room with an
applicant and none of them know the old stuff I've acculmulated.

Anyway, beautiful Sunday, time to get out the noddy sprinkler and empty
the tanks onto the garden as they need a good drench.

gardenlen writes:
just some of the smaller isp's don't support usenet,

That's true; though some of the large ones don't offer usenet, either.

It is not widely known that many ISPs now have an Australia-wide dialin
number, so regardless of where you live, you still pay only the local
call cost to dial in. So no one need feel they are forced to stay with a
low quality ISP because of isolation. Anyone can use any ISP, so you
can make sure you select one which offers a good newsserver.

In similar vein, tourists and travellers can dial in from anywhere in Oz
for the cost of a local call (when accessing from a landline phone).
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)