Gauteng Smallholder July 2015 | Page 36

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 www.sasmallholder.co.za 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 Continued on page 37