Free downloads and some external links below will give you information and drawings for various measures that can be employed by farmers and other landowners. If you don’t find what you’re looking for here, consider coming to one of our workshops.
Ponds
Farm- and community-scale pond guidelines: Hare’s Corner Pond Notes June24
1-page design for plastic lined Hare’s Corner pond
Here’s a video we put together with Tony Whelan of Canola Pictures for the BurrenBeo Hare’s Corner project. It’s designed to be a useful guide for digger drivers for lined pond installations. For unlined ponds the process is easier (and more eco-friendly). Just compact the base if you have good clay soils instead of laying the liner and otherwise proceed in a similar manner to that outlined in the video. https://youtu.be/QK5kjCiDFMI?si=ijt-OEMgU1jt4V4T
Farm Measures
Farm-scale pollution reduction measures from yards and fields: Farm Scale Buffer Zones
Farm-scale willow systems (construction)
Farm-scale willow systems (planting and harvesting)
Rain Gardens
Sketch showing sample rain garden types: Rain Garden Measures
Wastewater & Sanitation
Summary of reed bed and constructed wetland treatment systems: Reed Bed Systems & Treatment Wetlands
Overview of zero-discharge and willow filter systems: Willow System Options
Overview of compost toilet types and applications: Dry Toilet Info
Download our open-source compost toilet designs for emergency situations. The Temporary Design allows for quick construction to protect the local environment and provide people with access to private, safe and clean facilities in an emergency situation. The Permanent Design is more labour and materials intensive to build, but is better suited to longer term use. These designs provide a quick summary of just two of the many different dry sanitation options that are available online. There is a list of links below which provides essential background reading before deciding on which option to select in your particular area and circumstances. The designs are available in English and French. FH Wetland Systems is grateful to translators Paul Lenoir and Carole Lesimple and to Rossion Inc. Print at A4 size.
Follow these external links for valuable background information:
- A Community Guide to Environmental Health. Chapter 7 of this resource provides a through overview on Building Toilets for emergency situations.
- Ecological Sanitation Research website is an invaluable resource for dry toilet systems, with Ecological Sanitation being a good concise document if you want to learn more about this subject before building.
- Toilets that Make Compost is another EcoSanRes document. This shows further advice on many aspects of building and maintaining your own system. Available in English and French.
- The EcoSanRes Factsheets are a good place to start if you want quick guidelines on the subject.
- L’uritonnoir Dry Urinal. This is an ingenious French design that funnels urine into a large round straw bale. The nitrogen in the urine composts the carbon in the straw and after 12 months you have nutrient rich compost. A simpler model is to stand a small square bale on edge so that the straw bristles are standing vertically and peeing directly on that. Screen for privacy and add new bales as needed. Although this only caters for half the population, that’s still a 50% reduction on the urine entering the pit toilets, thus reducing the impact on groundwater.
- Joseph Jenkins’ Humanure Handbook site The classic guide to humanure composting. Jenkins uses the bucket system with an external compost area. It’s quick and easy to set up, but requires more day to day management than the two designs presented above.
- “The Perfect Privy” Built-it-yourself guide in pdf format.
- The Specialist Short guide in pdf format
While some of the images used in the making of this website are property of FH Wetland Systems, some are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License