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Worms are a terrific recycling resource that can be used by virtually any gardener. The farms for them can be big or small, they produce virtually no odour, no noise, they can eat their own body weight in waste each day, they are quite simply wonderful!
This Sustainable House (TSH) has implemented 3 worm farms as a secondary waste recycling system. This article explains more about how the system is structured.
The worm farms that have been implemented at TSH are moderately sized-affairs for an undertaking of this nature. Essentially the system comprises of 3 x 500L water tanks (that house the worms), a subterranean sump tank (to collect the worm 'wee'), and a series of pumps and pipes to move fluids around the system. A simplified schematic of the system follows...
As you can see from the above diagram (click on the diagram for a larger version), the entire maintenance system is designed to be as automatic as possible. This is done to allow the occupants to take long periods of absence without affecting the worm recycling system.
At TSH the majority of the garden/kitchen waste is fed through the chickens rather than the worms. The worms are really an additional recycling system rather than a primary one. The one primary recycling task that the worms are charged with is the recycling of the soiled litter from the chicken coop. This manure rich straw/sawdust is feed straight into the worms for processing prior to further use.
However on this scale they could certainly be used as a primary system.
Lessons Learnt
1) Sump Pump – the sump pump I am currently using is a dirty water non-integrated float model. Whilst this model does an adequate job, I have found that the non-integrated nature of the float as ‘created’ two additional problems;
a. The float sometimes catches on the side of the tank causing the pump to run without proper water flow through it. This can lead to overheating.
b. The float drops too quickly cutting off the pump before the water gets low enough in the tank. This may be fixable by modifying the float arm but I haven’t gotten around to trying this yet. The downside of this is that there is too much water left in the bottom of the tank after each draining, leading to bacteria build up.
The easy solution to these ‘problems’ would be to implement an integrated float model.
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