How I Built My Own Bio Filter For My Gray Water System

When we bought our home a few years back we knew that there was a problem with the plumbing, three drainage pipes from three kitchen sink were too small and would keep on greeting clogged. 

Eventually I just had to drill a hole in the wall and let the water dragon into the garden. 

The trees and flower bushes really loved it. 

But it was a bit nasty. 

Finally I put together this bio filter and it seems to work great. 

Here is how I did it...

I cut a plastic barrel in half and drilled a drainage hole half way up one of the sides. 

Then the bottom up to the drainage hole with wood chips inside a steel screen. 

I feed the pipe from the sink through an older planter pot with more steel screen and some old astroterf for a filter.

Then I added some alovera and gravel. 

Covered it up with stone to look nice and done. 

Just some green thinking..

Spirulina - So Is It Really Good For You?

With my last order of dry herbs from my supplier I received a complimentary bottle of Spirulina capsules.

Be then I never took the stuff on a regular basis.

But after taking it for a while I did feel an overall effect of better health.

So was it all in my head? 

After reading up on the research it seems not. 

There is some good proof that Spirulina helps with allergies and heart disease, as will as a number of other things. 

Also it is safe to take and is a good source of vitamins and other goodies for the body, so why not? 

Here is a link to a great article that sums up the research. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136577/

Digestive Tonic Syrup

So after years of success with my winter herbal formulas for colds and couphs I really wanted to create a new formula for some thing different. 

So after a few tims of my kids complaning about stomach aiches I decided that it was time for a syrup for digestional discomforts. 

The formula I put together was actually really simple.

It consisted of four herbs. 

• Pepper mint 

• Spiramint

• Sage

• Ginger

In order for the syrup to be tasty I only used a small amount of the sage in comparison to the other three herbs. 

I started off by boiling 30 grams of fresh Ginger in one liter of water for about 15 minutes, then I added 30 grams of dry spiramint, 30 grams of dry pepper mint and ten grams of sage and let it steep for about an hour.

After straining and pressing the concenrated extract and filtering it through a cheese cloth I added 1.5 grams of sugar for every ml of liquid and heated over a low flam until all the sugar was disolved. 

It came out good, the tast is good and also the effect. What is really nice about it is that the strong mint has a fast cooling efect on the stomach as soon as you take it.