ALMOST LIKE IN THE CITY!

Having started setting up the household on a neglected dacha plot, I installed a cabinet with a sink in the kitchen. I hung a washbasin and placed a bucket underneath for drainage. This works for rural areas, but at least twice a day I had to take out the filled bucket and find a place to empty it. I started thinking about the simplest sewage system…

I purchased a corrugated plastic sleeve used for electrical wiring, selecting it by diameter to connect with the sink outlet. I cut a hole in the kitchen floor, passed the sleeve into the crawl space, then brought it outside and laid it further along a ditch dug “one spade deep” to the fence. Along the fence, I dug a trench 0.5 m deep. (It worked out well here that my plot in this location has a slight natural slope, so there were no problems with drainage through the pipe later.) After filling the bottom of the trench with a 10-cm layer of gravel, I laid part of the plastic sleeve on it, having previously punctured many holes in it with a 4-mm nail. I covered this part of the pipe with a nylon mesh (window mesh for mosquito protection). I poured more gravel into the trench to approximately half its depth, and filled it with soil. I left the end of the sleeve on the surface, plugging the outlet with a stopper and covering it with a housing made from a bucket: if necessary, the pipe can be flushed through this opening. And on the sink, I installed a mesh filter so that kitchen waste wouldn’t clog the drain. With a daily water consumption of one to two buckets, the sewage trench easily absorbs it.

The sewage issue was resolved, but since there was no centralized water supply on my plot and none was expected (we carry water from a well), it was time to think about something resembling a water supply. For this, I installed a 10-liter plastic canister under the sink and inserted two fittings into its cap. I connected one with a rubber hose to the faucet on the sink, and the other to a foot pump-“frog”. A few pumps with the foot, and water flows from the faucet – almost like in the city!

Alexander SLAVSKY