Lowtech Graph lists low-tech options for every need of a home. Here you can compare them, find tutorials to build them, and link them together into a circular system. Why low-tech?

Treatment

Turning what leaves the toilet into something that can safely go back into the ground or into a sewer. Bacteria do the work in every case; the difference is what they are given to work with. The options differ in the quality of what comes out, in whether they need power, and in how much land they take.

Ranked by effluent quality. The aerated package plant sustains oxygen-loving bacteria and produces the cleanest effluent from the smallest footprint, at the cost of a continuous power draw. A constructed wetland reaches good quality passively but needs real land area. A septic tank settles and digests anaerobically, leaving the drain field to do the final polishing, which is why its site requirements are the strictest.

Solutions

• Septic tank + drain field: A buried tank where sewage settles and breaks down, with the liquid then soaking into a field of perforated pipes in the garden. Bacteria do the work without ai
• Constructed wetland blackwater treatment: A larger, longer series of planted gravel beds that cleans toilet water as well as sink and shower water. Bacteria on the gravel and roots break down the waste
• Aerobic treatment unit / micro-station d'epuration (package plant): A compact buried treatment plant where a small pump blows air into the sewage so bacteria that need oxygen can break it down fast. The water comes out cleaner t
• Mains sewer: Waste water from the house sent into the public sewer and treated at a works elsewhere. There is no tank, no field and nothing to maintain on the property. But