Stupid Question

[cincarus]

Your spoiling my fun bob

[Elderberry]

JK asked a question a page ago about using a rocks-n-sand water filter. I tried that in 07 and wouldn't really recommend it. There were many problems with my solution that were just plain mistakes First, the evap method I had planned just didn't work. We had help from a neighbor for awhile, but ended up needing pumping by the JOTS guy at the end of the week. Another part of that is I underestimated the water output from a camp of 20 or so people.

What I did was take a beer tub sized tub filled with rocks-n-sand to use as a filter, with a tee-shirt stretched over the top to catch the big stuff. I fitted it into the top of a regular sized trash can to use as a reservoir. Due to lack of capacity on the outflow, it got pretty backed up and the rocks-n-sand were soaked with gray water much of the time. The resulting filtered water was not very clean. So that was a bunch of pure engineering failure, which hopefully you would not make.

HOWEVER, at the end of the week we had a huge heavy tub of NARSTY wet rocks-n-sand that we had to haul home. I triple wrapped it in trash bags and hauled it to the dump. But, oh, was it foul. All the kitchen waste, shower waste, and who-knows-what had been filtering out of the gray water and festering in the sun for a week. That was not an engineering fail and goes with the territory.

Interesting. How large was your outflow pipe/hole? I would think you'd need minimum 2 inch?

It's hard to picture the filter not working...the filter materials would need to be put in layers with the finest at the bottom. You'd need some sort of mesh like the cotton T shirt you used. And the water would need to be treated with chlorene bleach before pouring it through the filter, which is why the activated carbon would be the last layer.

I'll be doing a test run here in a few more months just to see; but I've filtered a lot of large volume aquarium tanks in my youth, and can't recall water not flowing smoothly through gravel, sand and charcoal.

We have done the evap ponds and have discovered a couple of tricks--build the evap pond large enough, bring a broom and make it a rule that anyone that takes a shower has to broom the water over the pond, additionally people should get into the habit of brooming the water when they notice it puddling in the evep pond--that last trick is the main one that worked for us. One thing we did was to build a sump in one end of the pond and rigged a small pump to a makeshift fountain that dripped onto some drapped cheese cloth. This didn't work all that well as fare as helping the evaporation, but it did add a curiosity factor that caused people to do a lot more brooming to keep the fountain working.

Only our first year did we have to have the pond pumped by the JOTS guys. It's all trial and error and a lot of research on web sites like this one.

JK

[djnormanj]

Apparently you've never seen a dead rat peeking out of a stuck water tank valve.

Yes, at the ranch where they pull the road water.

I guess they should have used that double-check-valve backflow system after all.

Yeah, I know the water comes from the ranch, and I apologize if my retort was a bit hostile. I was up late and you just hit a nerve with the christian scientist thing!

I guess it's true though... ignorance is bliss!

[theCryptofishist]

Apparently you've never seen a dead rat peeking out of a stuck water tank valve.

Hey! That rat was just finishing its bath and was perfectly clean!

[cincarus]

This whole rat 'issue' just reminds me of something. I was talking to a farmer once and he told me of all the 'stuff' that gets scooped up in the combines as they pass through the fields. And you're worrying about water trucks?

Think about that the next time you toss some flour into your gravy!

hey life is too short to worry about rats, dead birds and bugs!

[Bob]

That, and when refilling you can't really expect to wash out the snot (dust palliative) they use to water the outside roads.