We seem to spend and unhealthy amount of time looking down holes in this job. Officially known as the 'gubbins' of the system. We were looking at the simple separating system. oh and its contents will need shovelling!

Follow on from an earlier blog about the development of the low impact Yurt camp site at Craflwyn. The development is now in the interesting phase – what to do with the waste (human) and stick to the low impact ethos of the camp site. Both Paul and I were there on Fri doing our ‘pastoral’ role. visiting properties to see whats happening and to discuss with people at the coal face the coming years work. Emyr Hall the building surveyor managing the camp-site building work at Craflwyn showed us the work around the new composting toilets at the Craflwyn camp site. The simple yet clever separation system of liquid from solids and then the liquids final destination is a  new horizontal flow reed bed lower down the field. It will be good to see how this combination of systems works in terms of quality of the final ‘water’! The composting system is what you’d call the primary treatments - separating stuff and letting it break down. the reedbed in this instance does the secondary and tertiary treatment (further break down and polish). We have five tertiary reed bed systems in place and it will be interesting over the coming years to see how the quality of the discharge comes out after testing and any maintenance implications. having seen quite a few vertical flow system ‘gum up’ as it were

Oh and Doug one of the rangers has agreed to be the shoveller for this system as he has helped design it.

The horizontal reed bed system ready for the reeds. In the shadow of the Iron age hill fort of Dinas Emrys