Sallygardens Smallholding

Excrement Happens - Composting Toilets

How many of you are turning up your noses having just read the title of this post? A couple of years ago I'd have done the same, but since then I've used two fantastic composting toilets and I'm a convert.  The experience was not disgusting, I did not see other peoples poo, there were no coma inducing odours and no flies issued forth from the lifted seat to attack my nether regions. It was all very civilised indeed if you don't mind and thankfully none of my preconceived fears materialised.  Common sense research has added one or two simple factors into the equation to make this a perfectly pleasant experience! In fact I've shifted my opinion from 'no feckin way' to 'actually, I want one of my own'.

Excrement happens, but why contaminate 7 to 15L of water with every flush and then use huge amounts of energy and money to clean up the mess, often performed inefficiently causing ground water and soil contamination? If there was a safe healthy alternative that provided biomass for basket and fence making, fuel for your stove and fertiliser for your plants wouldn't you want to know more? Read on ...

The composting toilet is not an old fashioned hole in the ground latrine, which did result in terrifically bad smells and were not altogether pleasant to put it mildly. A composting toilet avoids the smell by ensuring the decomposition process is performed aerobically (air present for sweet microbes) rather than anaerobically (without air=stink to high heaven). Also some bulking agents are added in the form of sawdust or shredded paper which corrects the nutrient balance and again ensures conditions are ideal for aerobic as opposed to anaerobic digestion. Its not rocket science. So simple, yet very effective.

Let me describe both of the compost toilet options that I was privy to test run. The first was a commercially available toilet by Separett. On first approach it looks exactly like a conventional toilet. It's made from all the materials you would expect a toilet to be made of which does tend to put one at ease. Lifting the lid things initially look complicated ... where do I wee, do I have to get a poo onto that ledge, what if I do it in the wrong place ... a quick tutorial from the proud owner and I soldiered on in the name of sustainable living. A flap covers the contents and only opens when weight is placed on the toilet seat, along with a fan, so theres no 'view' or odour to contend with. This toilet cost €1000 and the owners have been very happy with its performance since they installed it two years ago. 'We didn't want all the bother that goes with installing a septic tank, along with the usual capers of regularly unblocking drains. Septic tanks just don't seem to work in Leitrim. Our toilet needs emptying once a month, then the composted contents are used as fertiliser around the trees and fruit garden'.

The other compost toilet I used was totally home made. On approach it looked quite appealing as it was all made with wood and decorated nicely with eco paint. It felt very 'clean'. There was a lovely smell of pine, not a toilet cleaner overpowering synthetic pine smell, but a natural one. Opening the lid met with no nasty surprises, and revealed the source of the lovely odour as each visitor scatters a small scoop of sawdust to cover any solids. This immediately neutralises any potential odours. The lidded pot needs emptying a couple of times a week. Total Cost €30. When I asked the owner why he chose to use a composting toilet he said 'Speed and simplicity, and wanting to save those good nutrients - plus not wanting to pollute the ground by using a 'normal' system.' It's more eco-friendly than todays septic/sewage treatments? 'No question about it.'

Composting Toilet at Dial House, UK

For those sunny days when we are outdoors a lot, and if your land has plenty of privacy then you might also consider a garden based treebog. This design does not require emptying so the compost is not harvested for use, well at least not directly. Again aeration is the key factor to excluding odour. The other ingredient is the use of nutrient rich plant species to harness the compost. The toilet is placed over a one metre squared space, walled with double chicken wire which is then filled with hay. This provides a visual barrier to the contents but allows aeration. Willow is planted closely around the toilet boundary and then a band of deep rooting comfrey. The nutrient hungry willow can be harvested yearly to provide poles for gardening and basket making, or harvested every few years instead when large enough to burn on in a stove. The comfrey leaves can be harvested annually to make liquid fertiliser for your vegetable garden.

Planning legislation in Ireland in not yet proactive in this area yet. However I did find the planning departments of other countries who provide publications on how to build one or where to buy one, and plenty of information on the web from various users.

The Humanure Handbook is the place to start if you are interested. Try your local library, request it on Freecycle, buy it from your local bookshop or lastly, order it from our Sallygardens Bookshop  by Amazon.

Do you think you could use one?

Thinking Outside the Box - An Organic House

Since we decided we'd think about building an extension on the house I have been reading all I can find about architecture, eco-sensitive materials, high energy efficiency windows, environmentally friendly insulation and all the rest of it. My head is spinning at this stage! But something that keeps cropping up is the organic house. We are all familiar by now with the environmentally friendly house, they cost a lot to build but with top spec materials often no heating is necessary and the savings come with little or no heating bills over a lifetime. Generally the manufactured costly but effective materials are said to be eco-friendly as a consequence.

So what is an organic house? Take a look at this because a picture can say what a thousand words could never convey (well not my words anyway, but somebody this poetic I'm sure wouldn't have the slightest problem).

 
Low Impact Woodland Home
by Simon Dale

AD33 Today ; The Cob Gallery

Before you read on, what is your initial reaction? Fantastic or ridiculous?

And the difference between this and a conventional environmentally friendly house is? It's designed by the occupants, not an architect. It's built by the occupants, not a building company. It's constructed using local building materials. eg. staw bale, cob (thats mud, from the ground, your ground hopefully, more specifically clay), timber. People of any age can do it, 4 to 400. Power tools required? Hands and feet, until you get to the roofing.  Due to all these factors the energy and resources required to construct one is minimal. Their creation has little or no impact on the environment. They are cheap to build and can be constructed without a mortgage. Yes thats right, no mortgage. There are little or no right angles in the construction which an awful lot of people, myself included, find incredibly satisfying, comforting, healing, relaxing, I've read that grown men have been known to cry when they first visit a place like this (and probably women too, but grown women crying is less of a newsflash, I even cry watching Neighbours for gods sake!) ... perhaps it's because there are no right angles in nature that  the organic house appeals to us on even the purest primitive levels. Hands up who didn't secretly wish that they lived in a Hobbit house when they first saw Lord of the Rings?

The question is, is that space for our family going to be a garden feature ... a tiny structure in which I or other family members can escape to for a bit of 'me' time ... or is it to be incorporated into the extension ... or is it to be a new home ... or perhaps its not for us at all? I wonder what the view of the local planning authority is towards these low impact dwellings?  We are sleeping on it, probably for a few years knowing us. Please tell me its a mad hat plan.

In a month or so the spring sowings will begin and the polytunnel will keep me safe from any more of these wild and dreamy tangents! The silly season will officially be over, or will it.

Define Sustainable Building

I'm in a bit of a quandary. Since moving into our Irish farmhouse two years ago we have renovated it slowly and now we are at a crucial stage of decision making. Living sustainably is something we try our best to do in all aspects of life.  Its all very well knowing the buzzwords but there's still a lot of ambiguity when it comes to applying those definitions to the reality of everyday situations.

We want to build an extension. Or at least I think we do. It all began with the simple and innocent thought that we'd love to have a sun room or conservatory to sit in during sunny days, even in winter. We began to think about how we could apply sustainable principles to this new venture ... perhaps we could use passive solar gain from a sun room to heat the rest of the house? With this initial thought we had unwittingly opened up a pandoras box. Do we go down the architect route and get something really very special in appearance, high tech in energy efficiency performance which would reduce our lifetimes energy consumption and score high on Irelands new Building Energy Rating scheme. The architect could solve some basic household problems while we're at it by designing something that would give us a bathroom upstairs and a toilet downstairs ... at present there is only a single bathroom/toilet which is downstairs. This plan is very attractive yet extremely expensive coming in at around €100,000 and involving the upheaval of probably the best part of a year in a mobile home on site while the work is being carried out, plus the sale of my late mothers house to fund the project.

But there is another approach to building sustainably. Why spend such a huge amount of money to get a toilet upstairs? Is it worth the investment just to avoid a trip downstairs to the toilet at night every so often, is it ridiculous to even consider such a payout? But its not just the toilet, there's the sun room. Couldn't we build a little sun room ourselves for a tenth of the cost? Would using  natural local materials be a far more efficient approach, efficient in terms of production and transport of the materials, but then again not so good in terms of long term fuel savings? That is the million dollar question. Its a question that Peter Cowman of the Living Architecture Centre asked himself and now offers solutions to those who wish to design and build their own living space, mortgage free, with local materials. Funnily enough, he lives just down the road from us.

 

The quandary ... high tech high spec heat insulating materials that have high energy costs in their production or lower efficiency local eco friendly materials on a small scale. Perhaps the pros and cons of each individual project need to be considered.  What do you think?

Painting the House

Once  you start devoting your time to growing your own meat and vegetables on a smallholding, other things get put on the long finger. Things such as painting the outside of the house. This has been on the 'to do' list for two years now so a couple of weeks ago we finally admitted that enough free time would never present itself for us to do the task ourselves. A few enquiries around Leitrim, word of mouth recommendations, a subsequent phone call and the same afternoon Johnny Markey (086 6059090) promptly turned up at our house and gave us a quote. So here she is before ....

and after an intensive week of power washing, gutter clearing, paint scraping, wire brushing and several coats of paint ... this is what she looks like now in all her glory ...

The door is a Victorian blue. We have a salvage Victorian knocker to fit that I inherited from my Dad who saw the magic of salvage in the 1970s when much of Victorian Dublin was being demolished.  Decades later salvage is now trendy, and indeed an important part saving architectural  history. We have ordered reproduction brass letter box and door knob to match. The staff at Knobs & Knockers in Dublin couldn't have been more helpful ... it was a pleasure to speak to them, never rushed, true gentlemen and couldn't do enough for us.

Now all I need is a makeover of this intensity for myself!

During - Brown

I'm sitting up in bed and I've found some pics I took last week of the decorating, before the bugs won. All thats left to do is paint the brown floorboards cream, in batches, while juggling the furniture about. We ought to get a new fireplace surround too, as we currently have a gaping hole in the wall. Wouldn't an open fire be just a little bit more romantic!

Before - Brown

I had hoped broadband would see the end of our unpredictable internet connection, but unfortunately, although faster when working, it is just as cantankerous. When its windy, the line fails to make a connection. This week, it has mainly been windy, and hence incredibly frustrating.

January is generally our month for pressing on with DIY and renovations. This year our own bedroom is finally getting some attention. The original brown painted woodwork is receiving a facelift. Traditional blue Shaker milk paints for the bedroom door, Auro organic white paint for 3 of the walls, and Sanderson wallpaper for the remaining wall. 'After' photos will follow, hopefully in the not too distant future ... weather permitting!

Choosing Paint

When we first began renovating our Irish farmhouse we foolishly started by choosing paint colours. After one year of full time renovations and a further year of evening and weekend renovations we are finally actually ready to choose some paint!

We have decided to opt for organic eco friendly Auro paints in the areas we spend the majority of our time ie all our living and sleeping areas. These are stocked by EcoShop in Co. Wicklow, and in my neck of the woods by the wonderfully helpful and genuinely friendly Lynches Paint, Kilclare, Co Leitrim. Due to the higher financial costs of using eco-paint we are using run of the mill brands for halls and staircases. Dan is also doing a make your own organic paint course next month at Rossinver Organic Centre. We hope he can make house paint for our own use, and possibly also make his own paint for his Hobby Horses and other toys in the design phase.

Renovation Project

When we first bought our Irish farmhouse we contacted a local Leitrim architect, Peter Cowman of the Living Architecture Centre. Have you an image of a professional architect in your mind? Perhaps you expect them to rock up in an intimidating  flash car, wearing a beautifully tailored expensive suit and carrying a state of the art laptop? (I did!) That’s not Peter! He met us at the house for a tour of the property, turning up in a sky blue vintage VW pick-up and dressed in very comfortable clothing! Hmm, cool, I thought. He emerged holding a well worn and weather beaten leather satchel, and began silently looking from room to room. Dan and I followed him in curious silence, and then suddenly Peter began talking passionately about the various clues around the house, inside and out, pointing to fascinating construction history and the various ‘improvements’ which had been undertaken over the years. This included the removal of a suspended wooden floor downstairs and its replacement with cement which had led to some problems with rising damp.

We took on the task of excavating the cement floors, replacing them with suspended wooden floorboards, and reopening ventilation slats, thus recreating a breathable floor and reducing damp. Wow, that sounds so easy to say, and only took less than 30 seconds to type … very misleading!!! Family, friends and children all helped to dig out hundreds of wheel barrows full of cement and underlying earth. Joists were cut and laid. It took a lot of research to source a good and reasonably priced supply of the wood … 7 ½ inch wide solid Russian pine floorboards from McArdles of Cavan.

Peters insight into the needs of our family, and how that translated onto our living space was very refreshing. He helped us realise those needs by providing us with some workbooks from his course, which has since become available on CD-ROM. Its his aim to help you realise and define your own needs so your home becomes as organic and as comfortable as a second skin. He also strives for mortgage free constructions which is enough to catch the interest of most people. Add to that his eco-sensitive ideals, engaging intelligence and humble charismatic nature and you can’t help but warm to him as a person and be fascinated by his outlook. When we moved into our house, floors completed, we invited Peter over, enjoyed a fine meal and an evening of craic.

Fantasy DIY SoS

As the latest phase in our renovation project draws to a close and the men folk declare the job ‘finished’ I am left with dust that will last for months to come. Subsequently, every time I vacuum I am removing 1% of existing dust, and rearranging the remaining 99%. Just as the dust levels seem to be returning to a normal level, its generally time to start another renovating job … back to square one. In a way its heartbreaking to set into each task knowing its going to be three steps back before you get the one step forward that makes it all worthwhile. The onset of a new task is generally marked by the arrival of a close relative or friend, who have come to stay for a week and offered to help with the next job in hand! A lifetime of thanks are owed to all the hands that have given their time to the renovation of our home. Oh how I have fantasised about returning from a day trip to find that DIY SoS may have travelled to Eire and completed our home, so that I can cry with gratitude on the presenters shoulder for all their efforts, and once again know the pure luxury of a skirting board.

Wall Insulation ... Temperatures Rising

This week our Irish farmhouse is in DIY turmoil. Living in a house that requires ongoing renovations in between our normal working lives while rearing two small children is no easy task. Every so often we launch into the next job on a long evolving list, knowing that for the couple of weeks it takes to do the job, family life and home will be in turmoil and covered with a thick coating of dust.

The task in hand is to insulate the walls upstairs. Cue the arrival of a most obliging and helpful Father-in-Law. Yes I do seem to have more than my fair share of wonderful In-Laws, don’t I!

Our house is built from cut stone. In winter the stone loses its heat, especially at the external corners where the wind whips around the edges. The resulting internal cool walls then become coated in condensation at night. This provides the perfect conditions for the growth of a sinister looking black mould. We can cure this by either refraining from breathing at night, or by insulating. We chose the latter, thus temperatures won’t drop low enough to cause condensation on the walls anymore. We did a lot of research into hemp-lime plasters which did look like a great insulation option. In the end our one week tight time constraint dictated we use dry lining cosy board instead. Eco options are not always feasible. First, it takes quite a bit of research to source what your after. Try and find a one stop shop like Ecoshop or Sustainable Ireland with many of the options under one roof. Then it takes a good while to digest all the information you receive and mull over which options suit your house, budget and time constraints. We always try to meet and talk to people who have been living with the various options, and in doing so have met some fantastic characters and made new like minded friends. At first I found it very difficult to abandon some of the eco-options, but unless you are time rich and cash rich, many of these solutions just seem to creep beyond reach. I have come to accept that we can only do what we can, and as long as we have done our research on all the options, favouring the eco options whenever possible, then we are on the right road. I have sought to ease my feelings of guilt about not going for hemp-lime plaster insulation with the fact that we installed solar panels a couple of months ago!