Sanitation
This module takes you from understanding what wastewater your household makes, through the legal approval route, to choosing, sizing, building and running a safe system. It covers septic tanks and drainfields, mounds and advanced treatment units, composting, urine-diverting and incinerating toilets, greywater reuse and constructed wetlands. Three calculators estimate your daily flows, septic pump-out interval and greywater irrigation area.
Why it matters
Badly handled sewage can contaminate your own well, your garden and your neighbours' water, and failures are slow and costly to fix. Sanitation is also the system most tightly controlled by law, so the approval route shapes your whole site layout. Choosing dry toilets or greywater reuse can cut your water demand and return nutrients to the soil, which changes how you size water storage and food growing areas.
Understand your wastewater (Plan)
- Learn the wastewater streams sanitation-1
- Estimate your daily flows sanitation-2
- Choose your overall sanitation strategy sanitation-3
Approvals, site and separation distances (Plan)
- Find your legal approval pathway sanitation-4
- Have the site and soil evaluated sanitation-5
- Set separation distances from wells, water and buildings sanitation-6
Choose and design blackwater treatment (Design)
- Design a conventional septic tank and drainfield sanitation-7
- Consider mounds and advanced treatment for difficult sites sanitation-8
- Choose a composting toilet sanitation-9
- Consider urine diversion sanitation-10
- Consider incinerating toilets sanitation-11
- Set up an emergency two-bucket toilet sanitation-25
- Plan safe handling of compost from toilets sanitation-12
Greywater reuse and natural treatment (Design)
- Decide what greywater to reuse and what to exclude sanitation-13
- Build a laundry-to-landscape system sanitation-14
- Build branched drain and mulch basin systems sanitation-15
- Size the greywater irrigation area sanitation-16
- Consider a constructed wetland or reed bed sanitation-17
Install and commission (Install)
- Install and get inspected before backfilling sanitation-18
- Commission, label and record the system sanitation-19
Live with and maintain the system (Run)
- Protect the system every day sanitation-20
- Schedule pumping and inspections sanitation-21
- Recognise failure signs and respond sanitation-22
- Set up hygiene and handwashing sanitation-23
- Run a hygiene routine when power and water pressure fail sanitation-26
- Plan for changes, sale and decommissioning sanitation-24