Cody, I can’t find a better place to message you so I’ll try here. I’ve watched your stuff since 2012. I feel such a kinship to you and your approach to life and exploration of ideas. We grew up in pretty similar areas, me in southern Idaho. It’s parasocial and weird I’m sure but I’ve felt like I’ve kept up with you as a distant friend for the past 10+ years and always keep your experiments and flights of fancy in back of my mind. Anyway I came across this guy recently and it gave me the same manic science excitement that I felt first watching your videos. Thought you should see if you hadn’t already https://youtu.be/QF7vFlIrtVE?si=J9NJIbvoy39TpSVy . Anyhow if you ever wanna come do something wild on the Oregon coast I have all the stuff lol
Take care man, and thanks for all the fun!
Traeger Ruhter
2024-12-01 09:04:07 +0000 UTC
So at any rate I've added a handful of powdered limestone chalk to the system to get the ph back up.
CodyDon Reeder
2024-10-22 01:57:14 +0000 UTC
I am enjoying this project and updates.
You mentioned that pouring urine on the plants will burn them which is true to an extent. you can process a fair amount of your urine just by peeing on your garden. As long as you aren't doing it in the same few spots constantly you will get the same breakdown in the ground.
Brad Hallisey
2024-10-22 00:43:32 +0000 UTC
Yes, but odor is not the preferred method to estimate ammonium concentration - an aquarium test kit for high range ammonia/ammonium could work better.
Harold Leverenz
2024-10-22 00:35:02 +0000 UTC
Ah so I need to take a sample and add some alkalinity eg sodium hydroxide and see if the ammonia smell returns?
CodyDon Reeder
2024-10-22 00:17:36 +0000 UTC
This video made we want to pee so damn bad! Good work!
Patrick
2024-10-22 00:09:12 +0000 UTC
Thank you for this update on the biofilter. It looks like the reaction may be limited by not enough alkalinity; here you are achieving biological stabilization, where nitrogen loss has been stopped by the acidic conditions. Assuming you added 10 L of urine in total, with 10 g N/L and negligible losses, there should be 100 g N added/present. If you now have about 100 L of water with 200 mg/L N (~800 ppm nitrate), that should be 20 g N as nitrate, and probably the other 80 g N as ammonium in solution. Note that you can't smell ammonium when pH is acidic. If you like this nitrate to ammonium ratio maybe you could let it run as-is, or you could try mixing fine limestone chips of shells into the char bed if you wanted more nitrate production. Some cases with high ammonium loading we have made the whole filter bed out of limestone sand/gravel to help buffer the reaction.
Harold Leverenz
2024-10-21 23:44:43 +0000 UTC
Just piroodically release some of the liquid to the garden... Or an evaporating tray.