Graywater is so fucking exciting —it’s what you get when you wash dishes. More accurately,it’s “exciting”when you don’t deal with it properly…what we want,and have partially achieved,is boredom. You want water processing to be foolproof and mundane. We got very close in 2008.
2007 and before worked out mostly OK —we washed dishes in a shallow pan (actually,that sucked) and dumped the resulting goo-shit into the Mark VII Greywater Processing and Filtering System (patents pending). Which consisted of a big water bottle spray-painted orange (lest you attempt to drink it) with a big funnel in top,which had a paint-strainer bag in it,held together with benjiii cords I mean bungie cords. Then the greywater was decanted into a sprinkle can and sprinkled on the road. The water supply was a plastic container hung on a hook,with a valve that required two hands to operate (as it turned out),meaning you had to touch it with your dirty hands. No one got ill due to extreme care though,but it wasn’t exactly confidence-instilling.
It worked,but —it flopped around on the ground in the wind. The filter overflowed once in a while. It was a PITA to empty into the sprinkle can. Washing dishes in a shallow plastic tray whilst squatting in the dust sucked. The various components preferred to not stay in camp,but to travel swiftly with the many (breaking) winds. It was disgusting.
After 2007 I thought about our experience in time-and-motion detail,and we enumerated the following sore points:
- Wash table area too small,that sucked.
- Too-small wash and rise basins sucked.
- Lifting the water supply up in the air,sucked.
- Dirty hands on the clean water nozzle,verily sucked.
- Dumping wash water (greywater) into the big funnel,sucked.
- Overflowing the collection bottle,really sucked.
- Sprinking semi-clean water on the street,sucked.
- Lugging 5-gallon buckets of dirty water around,sucked.
The new system would have to deal with these little details. To make a long story short,I worked out the following requirements:
- A full 6-foot table dedicated to washing.
- LARGE! wash basins.
- A foot-pedal-operated water pump,with movable nozzle over the basins.
- If water supply is the same size as graywater collection jug,when one is empty the other is full,amen.
- Real filtering to make greywater clean.
- Evaporator instead of sprinkle can.
- Avoid all lifting!
Here’s what worked in 2008.
Contents
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Overview
We had a small PVC quonset hut dedicated to the wash station,a 6-foot table with wash basins,a garbage/graywater dump,a nice water sprayhead and an overhead light. The rest of the graywater processing and the water supply lived in the trailer we used to transport it to and from the playa.
Wash Station
The new wash station had it’s own minimal shade structure (a subset of the PVC quonset hut;just five hoops and a 50% shade tarp over the top),big table,light,and water supply. It worked pretty damn well. (For 2009:add a third container for holding clean dishes.)
Sure doesn’t look like much,back here on a laptop in Los Angeles. But as anyone who’s been to the playa knows,it’s tough out there! It’s all in the details…bungies holding down the containers,the table nailed to the playa. Nothing delicate here. Note the big cast-aluminum footpedal on the ground. That’s the switch for the water pump. The water supply (next section) isn’t visible here,it’s out back.
The left-most basin (added on-playa;it’s way too small) is the de-goop station;a rubber spatula is used to remove the bulk food goo. This water is very dirty. The middle one is the actual wash tub. Dishes are rinsed there too,the water draining into the wash tub for washing. The right-most tub collects clean dishes. This worked OK,but it tended to collect water in the bottom that was potentially gross. Holes in the bottom would fix that.
Yous washes your dishes. Thens you dumps the resulting greywaters into the big funnel. This catches all the tasty chunks,leaving mostly liquid goo (with fats and finely-suspended solids) in the jug. When full,this got hauled out to the rest of the processing system (next).
This last step —the hauling of the 5-gallon jug of graywater —is a crock. It is targeted for elimination in 2009. I hope to have the whole system gravity-fed by then —no lugging at all!
A hugely important detail was “discovered”(sic) —use only Dr. Bronners soaps in the wash system! The people who did the Freshmakkur system (in 2003) figured this out,we just copied them. But using “Joy”type household dishwashing liquid fouled up our greywater system in 2007,though we didn’t know it. It’s pH or something. Needs a little research to determine exactly why…but Dr. Bronners makes the system work! Mark my words! (we pH-adjusting substances —lye (super-high pH) and vinegar (low pH) but didn’t find pH measuring strips in time).
Water Supply
This year,we had a foot-operated electric water supply for washing dishes! Inside it’s own little shade structure! Faaaancy!
The water supply consists of a number of water-cooler type jugs,an electric pump that fits inside them,and a little nozzle (showerhead) that hung right over the wash basins. No need to ever touch the nozzle,so it stayed clean. Whew!
We lug the jugs up from Los Angeles,empty,in the trailer,and fill them in Reno on the last leg of the trip to the playa. NEW FEATURE:never remove full jugs from the trailer. When the water supply jug is empty,you just move the pump to the next jug. At the same time,the greywater collector is probably full —a reminder to empty it. We had no toxic spills this year. The footpedal is a simple switch (I had a 5-second timer on it instead but that turned out to be wasteful;David ECO’d it on the spot) that runs the pump. The wash station had it’s own battery,that also powered the overhead 48-LED floodlight,that charged off the Carbon Dioxide Camp Power Plant.
Graywater Processing
Graywater processing consists of four steps:
- Bulk filtration (the filter funnel done in the wash station this year).
- Flocculation.
- Sand filtration.
- Evaporation.
The filtration step is quite simple and easy,and described above. The coarsely filtered graywater from the wash station is decanted into a 5-gallon “paint bucket”back in the graywater processing area,and the jug returned to service.
Flocculation is easy if you use Dr. Bronners soap to wash dishes with! I added 4 –8 heaping tablespoons of alum —aluminum sulphate —to each 5-gallon jug,stirred,and waited 10 minutes to 4 hours,depending on external party level. Suspended solids and bound-up fats sink to the bottom,clear (but faintly coffee-colored) water remains on top. Note that sometimes a thin film of particles floats on top;it appears they attach to tiny air bubbles and float. A delicate stirring seems to disturb the balance,the bubbles disconnect,and the remaining floc sinks.
The clear liquid is then decanted into the sand filter (see separate page on it’s construction). With the new avoid all lifting principle,the heavy sand filter was put in the trailer back in Los Angeles,and left there —it never left the trailer!