Benmore Cottages

Reed Beds

Reed Beds at Benmore

Benmore cares about the environment and shows this is a number of ways.  One way is by treating dirty water in an environmentally friendly way.

This article explains:

• How dirty water can - and does- pollute our rivers and streams
• How Benmore treats its dirty water
• When reed beds should be used.

Benny the goat and Murphy the donkey are both looking at ponds, which are filled with plants.  Benny's pond is brimming with life, but Murphy's is polluted so that no water lilies, fish or dragon flies can live there.

It's rare that pollution kills everything.  Instead it changes the plants and animals that can survive.  So what grandpa says is true: things really were different when he was a lad.  There was less pollution so there was more wildlife.

Unless properly treated, things like silage, slurry and sewage can strip oxygen from our rivers and streams, sufforcating fish and other animals.  The more polluting a liquid the more oxygen-guzzlers it contains.  They literally eat up the oxygen (o₂) so there is little left for fish and other animals, which need it to live.

Benmore uses a "Reed Bed system" to purify its dirty water.  The outflow is so clean that Murphy that Donkey can safely drink it.  This shows how good a reed bed is at cleaning this dirty water which, after all, comes from the Kitchen, bathroon - and loo!

Not that the lumpy bits ever reach the reed bed.  They are caught in the septic tank, which is buried between the house and the reed beds.  The lump free liquid flows from the tank and trickles out of a pipe beneath Benny's feet.  It then flows through stones in which reeds or other wetland plants are grown.  The liquid passes by the roots of these plants,which think they've been served sunday lunch!  What we think is dirt in the water, they consider food.  They absorb it and in the process, clean the water.

Down among the roots and gravel there are microscopic plants called algae, which love to destroy oxygen-guzzlers.  They are the gladiators of the sewage world, slaying the foe.  It is the algae in the reed beds, which make them mother nature's version of a sewage treatment works.

If reed beds are so good at cleaning dirty water, why doesn't everyone do it?

One reason is that not everyone needs one.

Unless your dirty water is going to a public sewage treatment works, you will usually have a septic tank.  These are like big vases buried underground.  They catch and treat the lumpy bits in waste water and let the rest - the lump free liquid - pass out into the surrounding soil.

This is fine when the sand is soil or gravel.  Sandy or gravelly soil lets air in, so that algae - the gladiators (hatched areas in the picture) - can live deep in the soil.  They chomp away at all the oxygen guzzlers while the soil itself catches fine particles of dirt.  Providing that they don't have too much dirty liquid to deal with, these soils can work as well as a reed bed.

However, the same is not true for gloopy clay soils, which don't let water drain away or allow much air beneath the surface.  Algal gladiators cannot live in such soils so more and more oxygen-guzzlers are trapped in the soil, until finally they escape to pollute our rivers and streams.

Benmore has heavy clay soil and could all too easily pollute neighbouring streams and nearby Lower Lough Erne.  To prevent this it put in a Reed Bed system to purify its dirty water and do its bit for the environment.

Other environment friendly aspects of Benmore are:

• Planting native trees in the ground
• Managing the woodland
• Growing its own renewable fuel for the wood stoves in the cottages
• Encouraging areas of wildflower meadow
• Using goats, instead of chemical weed killers, to control brambles and other undergrowth.
• Whenever possible avoiding chemicals in fertilisers, herbicides or cleaning materials
• Providing can and bottle bins to mae it easy for those staying in the cottages to recycle  their waste
• Demonstrating sustainable building practice by putting up as an animal shelter the first straw bale building in County Fermanagh

Benmore won the 1997 Environmental Endeavour Award for their Reed Bed System - The first commecial one in Northern Ireland.  

This leaflet was funded by the sponsors of the Environmental Endeavour Awards - ESB, NIE, The Calouste Gubenkian Foundation together with Groundwork and the Conservation Volunteers Ireland.