Saturday, February 18, 2012

Shit ...

Literally.

As regulars around here know, I am the proud parent of these two little monsters:


Princess Ziva



Da Chooch


They are great dogs and I love them as much as a parent would love their human children; the Mrs. does too. That said, they are two little shit factories. My god, I think more comes out of them than goes in.

For the last 18 months, I've been either bagging it and tossing it in the trash (needless to say, the garbage is eye-watering by garbage day) or tossing it on the compost (which presents its own 'scent problems' come June, July, and August). It was making me nuts so I sat down and did some research.

Aside from paying some guy to come and pick up after them (that ain't happening), my only option was to compost it. Since I compost my grass and leaves anyway, I wanted to dispose of it where it did some good as opposed to just stinking. I looked around on the intarwebs and found a lot of products ranging from cheap (in quality and price) to gold-plated expensive (we are talking about dog shit after all).

So I did some more poking around on the Google and found this video a guy made of how he dealt with the problem with his two dogs. I went to Home Depot this morning and got busy.

I got a 30 gal. heavy duty plastic trashcan, 50 lbs. of sand, and a box of Rid-X (I use it in the septic system in the house too). I also poked around the yard and collected a 5 gal. bucket full of moderately sized rocks (this is Long Island and one thing we got a lot of - thanks to our geologic history - is rocks).

I drilled a million holes (1/2" dia.) in the side of the trashcan and cut out the bottom. After digging a deep enough hole at the edge of the compost, I filled the bottom with sand (at that depth, it's all clay here so the sand will help the water perk off). I stuck the trash can on top and tossed the rocks in before back-filling. I collected the day's haul, tossed in a half box of Rid-X, and poured 5 gal. of water on top of it all. The cover keeps the rain and bugs out. All good. Took me about 2 hours






I'll let you know how it works out ... or not.

13 comments:

Gordon said...

That's pretty cool.

Fixer said...

Yeah, if it works it'll be excellent.

Gordon said...

It'll work. I think the commercial version of that is called the "Doggie Dooly". Why pay for them to make it when you can do it yourself?

Fixer said...

And just an addendum. It was hard not laying out the holes in the can before I drilled them. I'm so anal that I was tempted to lay out a grid on the can so all the holes would be the same distance apart. Fortunately, I got a grip and eyeballed them all. Nearly killed me. Heh ...

Gordon said...

I'm sure all those holes, now buried underground, will dazzle the gophers anyway. Heh.

tom said...

Well your fellow dog lovers are waiting
still waiting....
I have an 80 pound collie, so let us know as soon as possible!!!
hey will the freeze (if we ever get one again) hurt the de-poopifying machine?
Speaking of Geology is LongIsland really 6K years old ???
signed Tom in Seattle formerly of New Jersey

Fixer said...

Tom: Our frost depth is 12 - 18" and this is about 36" deep. Shouldn't bother it. And Long Island came about after the last Ice Age melted away and left a part of Quebec behind. Mostly French-Canadian rocks. Heh ...

Arthur Mervyn said...

Well, if you aren't patriotic enough to use true American rocks for your depoopifying machine ...

Fixer said...

Look at it like I'm deporting illegals, just like they do in Arizona. Not one of them rocks had papers ...

tom said...

You KNEW the 6 thousand year crack was about the xtian coalition age of the planet !!!

Fixer said...

Indeed, Tom, but Long Island ain't much older. About 13,000 years, a mere eyeblink in geologic time. Maybe that's what the fundies are talking about. Heh ...

labrys said...

That is a great idea...until I came to the digging it in part, of course. We live atop glacial morrain here. The only soil in the yard is what we hauled in or made by composting. Beneath that, rocks and more rocks.

Still....tempting.

Fixer said...

Labrys, if the water can't drain properly, all yer gonna have is a trashcan full of water and shit. It's gotta drain pretty well because the enzymes turn everything into liquid. If you do take the jump, dig a hole as deep as the trashcan and pour a couple gallons of water in it. If it doesn't drain off in an hour, fill the hole back in and forget about it.