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piss gutter rework Monday, November 9 2009
I spent much of the day reworking (in programming this is called "refactoring") the funnel system that catches the urine from the brownhouse's urine gutter. As one-off devices go, the urine gutter is amazingly effective. It seemingly catches 100% of the urine of a "toilet use" and sends it off down a hose I've set up for collecting it. But the PVC funnel system at its lower end was proving too large. At the top, the funnel was four inches across and intruded into space I needed for the brownhouse's lower sink. So this morning I went into town to buy some three inch fittings in hopes of using those to make a smaller funnel. But once I was home, I figured out a way to use a two inch 45 degree fitting as a funnel, reducing its volume by an order of magnitude. I'd erred on the side of having a larger funnel because I wanted to be able to store up urine in case the output pipe froze solid (as frequently happens in the winter), but my plan now was to have the funnel system overflow into the internal sink drainage system that would be emptying into a drywell immediately to the north of the brownhouse.
That drywell ended up being a particularly deep part of the trench where I'd buried the power and air supply line running to and through the fill to the west of the greenhouse. That deep part had resulted from the necessary extraction of a rounded boulder. That boulder's top had stuck up too high, but its roots were set deep in the virgin soil left in the wake of the Wisconsin glacial retreat.
This evening Gretchen and Penny went on something of a shopping spree at Target. They came back with a lovely new rug and a striped chair (whose stripes matched the colors on the carpet). Gretchen is still in process when it comes to redesigning our living room.
The way the piss gutter looked today after I reworked it and attached it to the drywell drainage system.
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