Water reclamation - make your own?

N

ncarr

New member
Maybe I'm missing something... but with all the reclamation systems out there, price seems to be pretty steep on them.

Can't you take a semi-trash water pump (Northern tool has 9500gph for about $500), get another tank, and rig up the vacuum lines and hoses for your application. I could put together an awfully powerful system for less than $1000.

Are there more people doing this, or am I missing something?
 
Nope, not much. There are some things that you are not thinking of, but you do have the basic idea.
 
Hey Scott, in Arizona do you have to filter the water before dumping it into a sanitary sewer. In California we have to filter it to 10 microns, then we can pump it to a tank for holding, then into a sanitary sewer, I was just curious what you guys do.
 
Big E said:
Hey Scott, in Arizona do you have to filter the water before dumping it into a sanitary sewer. In California we have to filter it to 10 microns, then we can pump it to a tank for holding, then into a sanitary sewer, I was just curious what you guys do.
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Yep thats what we have to do up here in N. California. We also have to filter approx. 143+ chemicals from the water before we can discharge to the local sewer. And if you pressure wash, you cannot move ANY substance from point A to point B EVEN though it did not leave the property. You dislodge it, you pick it up. In some cities it is Illegal to rinse or wash your car on your own property. Thats what car washes are for.

However, I was told that we are far behind from most other states. The problem for me is, I can't find those states.

In fact, California already has some of the strictest air quality exhaust emissions than any other state, especially diesel and small gas engines. When you have 54 electoral votes, you tend to have more business thus have to implement more restrictions on pollution in order to keep it healthy. The City of Palo Alto ( Stanford Area ) has a ordinance prohibiting usage of commercial small engines 1 day a week. This is to help with air pollution and noise.

Last night, because of the weather pattern blowing in from the east instead of the west ( "spare the air" day ), the air was considered unhealthy. The Bay Area was put on notice to cease all wood burning fireplaces. The dept. sent out hundreds of people with flashlights to check for people burning a fire in their fireplaces. 1st offense on record, just a notice. 2nd offense $100. 3rd $500, 4th 1,000. This includes camp fires.

Newer homes are now being built without fireplaces in them due to pollution.
 
Jim@Garagecleaning said:
Yep thats what we have to do up here in N. California. We also have to filter approx. 143+ chemicals from the water before we can discharge to the local sewer. And if you pressure wash, you cannot move ANY substance from point A to point B EVEN though it did not leave the property. You dislodge it, you pick it up. In some cities it is Illegal to rinse or wash your car on your own property. Thats what car washes are for.

However, I was told that we are far behind from most other states. The problem for me is, I can't find those states.

In fact, California already has some of the strictest air quality exhaust emissions than any other state, especially diesel and small gas engines. When you have 54 electoral votes, you tend to have more business thus have to implement more restrictions on pollution in order to keep it healthy. The City of Palo Alto ( Stanford Area ) has a ordinance prohibiting usage of commercial small engines 1 day a week. This is to help with air pollution and noise.

Last night, because of the weather pattern blowing in from the east instead of the west ( "spare the air" day ), the air was considered unhealthy. The Bay Area was put on notice to cease all wood burning fireplaces. The dept. sent out hundreds of people with flashlights to check for people burning a fire in their fireplaces. 1st offense on record, just a notice. 2nd offense $100. 3rd $500, 4th 1,000. This includes camp fires.

Newer homes are now being built without fireplaces in them due to pollution.
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Complete insanity
 
HotShot_Anthony said:
You got that right! This state is completely stupid. I'm glad that I kinda live out in the boonies where if somebody is walking around my house shining a flashlight, they will be shot.
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Hey Ant, do you ever do any work here in Vegas?
 
Hello Nathan,

Here are a couple pictures of what we did several years ago when we cleaned a truck fleet. Blocked the drain, sump pump into a tank on our truck and then dumped it into the sanitary.

The sanitary plant told us that we did not need to treat the water, just dump it into the clean-out on site at the truck terminal.

We have had other sanitary districts tell us that we would have to bring the water to their plant. Others have told us that we must put the water through an oil water separator before putting the waste into the sanitary sewer system.

Dave Olson
 

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Thanks for the info Dave, good way to approach it. Maybe I'm missing something on the one pic, what's the wire mesh filter doin?
 
Hello Nathan,

We put the wire mesh filter inline in case there was any trash that the pump picked up. The guy from the sanitary district was concerned that we may plug up the clean out line.

Dave Olson
 
Another option that I have used is similar to Dave's. If the water is draining to the landscape, and that is deemed unacceptable, then you can dig a hole for a 5 gallon bucket, and use quikrete, or another bucket premix concrete to form an apron to the bucket. Drop a sump pump into it, and pump it back to your holding tank. It works slick for a regular weekly account. .
 
I have been looking at using a 55 gallon drum and filter bags to filter the water. I plan on attaching a vacuum head to the top of it and using a small sump pump in the bottom of the drum to pump the filtered water out. If you look around you can design something similar to the filtration systems sold by manufactures. This can be done with a little bit of ingenuity and time. Just plan out how to build it or look over the way other systems are built and get ideas on how to make your own
 
I will post some specs when I get around to building this. I also plan on running some different filters between the solids drum and the recovery tank as well as an oil water seperator to try to reuse some of my washwater i
 
I am thinking about running two rigid vacs that put our 289 cfm each, hooking them both together into a drum, then having one hose coming out similar to other systems, then using bag filters in the drum, from there using a pump to remove the water and running the water through 3 or 4 different canister filters to remove the rest of the contaminats and then back to the washwater tank. Does this sound like it will work as long as there is no oil in the waste water after filtration
 
Quite honestly, most of Arizona allows you to dump into the landscape, or else, we can also dump into the drywells, because there is no off property discharge. We do need to filter large particulates if we are going to dump into the sanitary sewer, but I have a friend with a few 3 part seperators that allows me to use them if I need to, It is nto without cost, but at least it is cheaper than the other option I was looking at, buying my own carwash.
 
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