Last week, we finally had the painter paint the floors in the bathroom of BaanLoiNaam. This is the same guy who did the amazing job on the blue water tank, painting it to blend in with the wooden walls.

The floors are made from Shera board, which is meant to be a nice weather resistant and termite resistant flooring. And if done right, it looks pretty nice when painted:

So while the planter box needed to be taken out to do this, the wood workers reinforced it with cross beams so it can handle the pressure of the water and soil inside:

I also decided to be more ambitious and get a second more practical benefit from what was originally designed to be more of an aesthetic feature. Cattails happen to have the really nice benefit that they bring oxygen down to their roots making them ideal for wetland water filtration systems. In addition to the oxygen in their roots providing a place for aerobic bacteria to thrive, they also apparently absorb phosphorus, arsenic, pharmaceuticals, and even explosives.

Since much of what is coming out of the sink right above the planter box is the soap used to wash our hands, and soap often times has high amounts of phosphorus, it occurred to me to run the sink runoff through the bed of plants before filtering it further in a slow sand filter. And if it works for the sink, it should work for the shower. So I am now experimenting with planting the cattails in a bed of sand and letting the roots of the cattails be a first stage pre-filtration system for the grey water coming from the sinks and shower.

Additionally, at the advice of the workers, we decided to go with smaller cattail shoots and plant them in the box like rice is normally done in Thailand:

Here they are: