King Fisher Ecolodge

M took me on a tour of the lodge. It's pretty amazing what he has.

Several villas- some w/ their own bathrooms, others that share a bathroom villa. All facing the great plain to the east. This morning I watched buffalo chomp through the grass in the wetlands under the rising sun.

I don't know if I can upload photos- I'll see. He has a limit on his bandwidth on this satellite internet connection.

1. Water tower. A well of 20m depth or so supplies copious amounts of water here. Unfortunately, it's full of dissolved iron. So what he has are two sand filters in the form of large concrete tanks or columns. Water is aerated to help the iron come out as suspended iron oxide particles, which sand and gravel filters help remove. There are two, in series, both aerating, and both letting the water fall through the sand and gravel filters by gravity into a reservoir. Two pumps push water from the reservoir through carbon and charcoal filters which further remove odors and other contaminants. These filters need to be backwashed every 2 days. He'd like to be able to wash the sand filters that often too, but today, because it's rice harvest time, he can't find help in the village too easily. The sand and gravel have to be carefully lifted out of the large concrete columns, each about 10 ft (3m) high. They're rinsed with a hose, then have to be repacked. Nifty eh? Then, through the secondary filters, the pumps lift the water to the elevated storage tank, about 30 ft (10m) high I'd say. This supplies all the comfort water. Drinking and cooking water however is purchased in big jugs and trucked in from Pakse. The water from the well at this point is generally safe to drink (aresnic levels are non-zero, but below current international standards he says), but it's not pretty to look at (a little cloudy). In the toilets you can see some rust stains.

All that done, for drinking and cooking, M purchases filtered water in the nearby city of Pakse. His filtered well water still comes out a bit cloudy- safe to drink, but not pleasant to look at.

2. Solar Water heaters. These are the type with bright silver tanks on the top. The solar collectors are made of glass tubes, I believe, and water flows into them; once it gets hot, it rises to the top and gets stored in the tanks. No moving parts. Green technology, made in where else but China. $400 ea. These are also on towers- lower than the main water tower, but high enough A- to get unobstructed sun and B- to provide enough pressure for that warm shower you're dying for at the end of a humid day in these parts. He has several of these, mostly built on wooden towers that are rotting away- didn't use hardwood like he did with his bungalows. So he's planning to replace them with concrete. He hesitates using trees because there's no such thing as sustainable forestry here. There are some teak plantations that are going up, but they won't be ready for harvest for probably a decade at least. The concrete towers look better than I thought once painted a dark brown to make them blend in better. The wood towers are a nice touch though.

3. Electricity. Until about a year ago before electricity came this way, he ran everything off a gasoline powered generator, which is now dormant, but here for emergencies. The electrical company recently asked his wife why their usage was so low. Turns out he has a few PV arrays here and there, like the water systems, on towers, and they supply the mainy CFLs he has throughout. They dump into a bank of batteries he has here, and, on a separate low voltage DC circuit, he powers a number of his lights, etc. The other part of the answer is that electricity is typically used to heat water. Not needed here thanks to his solar hot water.

4. Laundry. Borrowing from an idea from The Boat Landing, a Green Globe certified ecolodge, located up north, there is a room in the laundry under a fiberglass corrugated roof. Two fans blow around the air heated up by the sun quickly drying their laundry hung on racks and lines strung across the room. In the adjacent room is the Korean made washer and ironing boards, all powered by grid electricity.

5. Waste water. Grey water is sent directly to the forest floor. From the villas, they go into a french drain that's been packed in gravel. Seems to work very nicely. This includes sink, shower water, and water from the laundry, which goes into a drainage nearby. Not surprisingly, the flora there are going crazy. Black water, from toilets and the kitchen sink, go to septic tanks. Kitchen sink water go through a grease trap which has to be emptied several times a week. There are a number of septic tanks for the bungalows and bath house.

6. Solid waste. Kitchen scraps are composted. Turns out chickens are pigs with beaks. They eat everything M explains. (Interesting that "kitchen" is a spoonerism of "chicken," eh?) Other waste he actually hauls out back to Pakse for disposal. Which we don't really know what that means...

All in all, it's really amazing- talk about building from the ground up. The place is clean and comfortable, the food is really fantastic.