Water and Soil
Submitted by admin_green on Fri, 09/11/2009 - 15:07
What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
Waste water treatment is going to be an important issue for the Green Leaf Inn, as we intend to be "off the grid" of the local sewer system and deal with all waste water issues on site. This is nothing new for us; the current house is not on a sewer line, and the local sewer system won't reach us until well after the Inn has been built. This type of system is known as a Private Onsite Wastewater Treatment System, or POWTS. Learn more here.
Sometimes necessity and philosophy work hand in hand.
Hydric rating of our soil shows a line of highly saturated soil running smack dab through the middle of our property. The water in the soil is largely the result of runoff from the farm field to the North. Click the image to see a larger version.
Our soil and groundwater were evaluated by Herr Environmental on May 13, 2008 (you can visit Herr's Web site by clicking here). Unfortunately, from the standpoint of soil, we got fairly low marks. Wastewater treatment is easiest when your soil isn't already saturated, and we discovered we had a wide swath of very, very wet soil dividing our property into pretty much three equal thirds. Much of this underground water is runoff from a neighboring farm to the North.
Lesson learned: no man is an island, and no Inn is an island either. You must account for all of your surrounding environment as you plan your green building.
We currently have an anaerobic system, also known as a septic system, which is located in the Eastern end of the property. As you can see, that's in the drier soil. Our system is adequate for our personal use, but not for the water generated by 18 couples, hot tubs and all. There simply isn't enough "dry" soil area for the system we would require. This means that the Green Leaf Inn will need to convert to an aerobic system (there is a very thorough, perhaps TOO thorough, discussion of the differences here).
Aerobic systems are more efficient at processing waste, and require less space, but they require more energy to run (which we will have to build into the overall energy model for the Inn), and they lack the "out of sight, out of mind" advantage that anaerobic systems offer. There will be a visible mound on our grounds (admittedly, the current system has a mound as well), as well as above-ground storage so water can be introduced in measured "doses." The idea that there is a connection between waste from the Inn and outside air will no doubt give some people the willies.
Diagram of a water system that combines rainwater and gray water capture and re-use. Click the image to see a larger version.
We had also hoped to do exclusively "gray water" capture and re-use (learn more here), but Herr recommended we also capture and store rainwater, including using it for toilet flushing (learn more here). This actually works with the goal of the Inn, as the combined system will allow us to demonstrate both approaches onsite.
Obviously, we would need to do both rainwater and gray water capture, because here in Wisconsin the water that falls from the sky between the months of November and March...sometimes May, is decidedly solid: white, fluffy and solid.
You can see the full report that Herr submitted, including a breakdown of alternatives and costs, by clicking this link. As we evaluate our options and make our decisions, we'll update the information on the site.
