SEWERAGE
From page 34
an installation may be beyond
the budget.
What, then, can one do to,
firstly, minimise one's water
usage and, secondly, re-use as
much as one can of
Schematic of
one's waste in a safe
a multi-chamber
and sustainable way?
sewage treatment
system incorporating
One needs to start by
aeration of waste
separating the
from the black (toilet) water
household grey water (bath,
so that only the latter flows
shower and kitchen waste)
into the
Dual-pipe sewage system incorporating conventional
septic
2-chamber septic tank and grey-water utilisation and
harvesting.
system.
Apart
from
providing one
with
many
hundreds of
litres of
eminently reusable, or
easily treatable,
water, a major
benefit will be
toxic, full of pathogens and
capable of contaminating any
water source it comes into
contact with. It is in fact the
soil through which it passes
out of the soakaway that
renders it harmless.
But for many smallholdings,
and certainly for those that
have existing traditional septic
tank/soakaway systems such
36
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that it will mean much longer
intervals between septic tank
pumpings ~ a particular
benefit in households where
the septic system is, for
whatever reason, on the
small side.
What can one use grey water
for? For a start, one can use it
to flush toilets, thus saving
eight to ten litres of clean
drinking water with each
flush.
Secondly, after a simple
filtering process one can use
it as fertilizer-rich irrigation
water in the garden, because
the dissolved soaps and
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