Grey Water Everywhere

After two weeks of the interns being on site the kitchen sink started backing up and not draining. We knew a problem existed in the grey water line but we hoped it would just fix itself. Unfortunately this did not come to fruition. With Sarah and her friend CJ, the four of us tackled the problem. First was needing to dig up the drainage area. Roby grabbed the shovel and found a wonderful surprise at the bottom of the pile. Several months worth of muck was built up preventing the water from draining appropriately. A good lesson in learning never throw food down a grey water system drain. Initially the smell was not too bad put once he dug up the wood chips which is used to help decompose the matter, the fumes came roaring out. Rotten eggs!!

Now that we had it dug up and cleaned out we needed to add lines to the system so we would not run into this situation again. CJ had to crawl under the yurt to release the old lines and Roby and I carried the pipe away-very carefully because they were full of crap and we did not want to have it spill all over us. Next step was to realign the drains, dig new trenches and attach the new line. While assessing the system Sarah accidently laid in the muck from the drain. Roby was a victim of some pressure released food sewage from one of the pipes. Thankfully I stayed clean.

Once Chris got back from his workshop we put him to work on attaching the new line under the yurt. He put on his work overalls and crawled underneath. All you could hear were moans of disgust to the smell of the line. At dark we pulled him out and re-established the lines to the sink so the interns could use the water.

After dinner we had a little lesson on how to use the grey water system so this fun activity never has to be repeated!