Evaporation ponds RARELY work

DoctorIknow · Post by **DoctorIknow** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 9:30 pm

OK, evaporation ponds COULD work if:

1-----It was 100 degrees and sunny every day
2-----There were no dust storms
3-----Absolutely NO water was left in them by Monday morning
4-----Stangers didn't feel the urge to dump their spagetti dish washing water in your pond (its happened to me...)
5-----Stangers didn't unload a gallon of piss they've been saving into your pond (its happened to me...)

During the last two days, I saw COUNTLESS evaporation ponds with more water than they ever could evaporate in both the short amount of time left and the fact that this year the weather was WAY TOO NICE for them to work properly ANY DAY of BM2005! (for those who think it was hot out there, by BM standards, it was like springtime!)

Not to mention, many evap. ponds were full of playa dust from the first Sunday and Monday white outs, which makes the black plastic (solar absorbtion speeding evaporation) ineffective.

When I was leaving late Monday afternoon, I saw at least three spots where people had just dumped their entire evap. pond, making the whole exercise in obeying the rules of BLM kind of silly. And realistically, how can you even attempt to transfer that pond water to containers and haul it out? Wet towels then sqeeze them into a funnel into a container?

I was fortunate enough to be totally disgusted with three years of attempting evap. ponds and this year designed a new system using 12 yards of burlap, which left me, on Monday, with TWO GALLONS of water unevaporated, out of 105 gallons used for showers.

sputnik · Post by **sputnik** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 9:50 pm

Nice. Ubercarney contracted with JOTS for a 325 gallon greywater container. I don't know the total cost right now, but it was relatively inexpensive on a per person basis (like less than $20).

okcismelanie · Post by **okcismelanie** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 9:51 pm

I am sorry but being my frist burn and my first ever shot at an evap pond, I have to DISAGREE! My camp had 50 puls people, with a few camps beside us "sneeking" water into our evap pond and having showers (I didn't mind) along with countless pee's from walker by's, a ton of water dumped on sunday by everyone and by Tuesday No water left what so ever!! It was 20 x50 held up with 2 x 4's worked great and after the wood was burnt all that was left was a smelly plastic sheet-that can be washed and used over again if your heart so desires. I myself had a shower everyday as did most of my campmates. We added a bit of bleach when we had the odd puddle and the water was "swished" around everyday to get rid of any low spots. I saw a bunch of small 5x5 ponds that filled up by Wednesday and alot of people dumping "water" on the playa...maybe camps should "pool" together and build a mega pond-anything smaller than 10X20 seems worthless. GO BIG OR GO HOME! We did have a bit of playa dust but really where doesn't it get into?

Blonde Iguana · Post by **Blonde Iguana** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 6:43 am

Our primitive evap pond worked beautifully this year. We used one medium-sized kiddie pool, a camp shower, a few towels (and we only had 5 people in our camp) - but this year we girls decided to "go dirty" and quit worrying about washing all our long hairs every day. We relied mostly on lots of baby wipes and the no-rinse body and hair wash stuff used in hospitals. We only took very abbreviated camp showers every other day or so. As soon as gray water accumulated in the kiddie pool, we immediately soaked it up with towels before a lot of dust could blow it into it, and hung the towels to dry on a cheap drying rack obtained at Target. They dried out every day and could be re-used as gray water sponges the next day. NO gray water by the end of the event.

Post by **AntiM** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 7:32 am

We had minimal grey water, mainly from dish washing. Used a black cement mixing pan (what are they called really?) and the water dried up beautifully. Our co-campers had more water because they had the solar shower, and their pan wasn't black; they had about half a gallon left over, simply poured it into one of the empty water containers. We always keep a few gallon water jugs uncrushed in order to haul out whatever greywater may still be hanging around. That's the beauty of a solid pan vs. a plastic bag & frame, you can lift the pan and pour it directly into a container.

Our evap pans were behind camp, off the street, right next to our neighbors' evap systems, sort of a micro water treatment area. Every evap pond, whether a pan or a plastic bag and frame set-up was dry by Monday with the one exception.

Martiansky · Post by **Martiansky** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 8:35 am

I built a small 4'x4' evap pond out of 1"x6"s with a heavy 20 mil pond liner and although I never poured too much water into it, it seemed to work beautifully. I only used it for dish water and rinsing my hair (which was funny because shortly after doing this my hair was playa-fied again-heh) I did use a towel to soak up some water and then hung it up which helped with the evap process.

Dustdevil · Post by **Dustdevil** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 9:28 am

I do not know who built it, but I saw a terrific evap pond on 8:30 about 40 feet of the Esplanade. It was a tall column of approx 6-8" in diameter of lava rocks. The rocks were within a chicken wire framework. At the base was a small swimming pool, if I remember correctly. The builders used a small pump to bring the water to the top. As it ran down the lava rocks, the heat collected by the rocks along with the wind currents did a marvelous job. The pool was often empty.

HughMungus · Post by **HughMungus** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 2:28 pm

We had a jury-rigged evap pond made of a spare tarp and 4 stakes and it worked great. I guess it depends on what you expect from it. We just wanted to get rid of graywater from 6 people and I think we got rid of all of it. I didn't plan an evap pond for this year but it's definitely part of the plan for next year.

Fat SAM · Post by **Fat SAM** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 5:17 pm

Ours worked like a dream. It was a 3 x 8 or so wood frame with black visqueen. That was it. By Monday morning, we had yucky mud and that was it.

mars · Post by **mars** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 12:41 pm

Last year, ours was an abysmal failure. I think there were just too many people for not a big enough surface area. This year, someone brought a fold-up kitchen counter and sink that had a tube that drained into a large, sealable container and they just hauled it out. Worked great.

I appreciate hearing about the different evap ponds.

dahen · Post by **dahen** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 1:37 pm

dahen · Post by **dahen** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 1:38 pm

DoctorIknow wrote:this year designed a new system using 12 ards of burlap, which left me, on Monday, with TWO GALLONS of water unevaporated, out of 105 gallons used for showers.

Care to share how your system works?

Lassen Forge · Post by **Lassen Forge** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 2:18 pm

Our camp also watched our shower and cleaning water usage *really* carefully (the wind that kept chilling us in the shower helped, too - Brrrr...) and our remnant water was negligable - even with 5 gallons of sink waste water.

I think next year, tho, we will do a bigger evap system - what we had could have been better had we had more evap space... the biggest key, tho, was not to have water too deep in the pond. The shallower it was the better the pond worked.

Dork · Post by **Dork** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 2:47 pm

Maybe the weather this year was more friendly to evaporation ponds, but in the 4 previous years I'd never seen one work. I'm talking about 4 ponds built by 4 different people, all experienced burners, so it's not as if there was something in particular I was doing wrong. This year we just had a big 55 gallon drum that we poured it all into. No fuss, no muss. Other than disposing it at the end, of course

Honestly, the amount of space required for all 35,000 people to evaporate all their waste water is not reasonable. Most people wind up dumping it on the playa, either on the spot or later because their pond didn't evaporate enough or leaked the whole week. I say chalk it up as a bad idea and make people haul their waste out with them.

Fat SAM · Post by **Fat SAM** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 6:13 pm

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

keepercurrent · Post by **keepercurrent** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 6:28 pm

9'x3' black platic, duct taped to a slightly elevated PVC pipe structure.
Then a towel at one end to absorb, that which fell into the shadow first.
Last day, took that scuzzy towl, draped it over the hood of the black car, as we were loading, and then put it into the garbage before we left! It all went really well, honestly! It wasn't large enough to invite too many
neighbors to feel cool dumping into either!

Rusted Iron · Post by **Rusted Iron** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 7:12 pm

So, instead, I collected all the empty plastic water jugs that were so easy to find, and poured all the bad water into them. From there, they went to the dump.

I know it's not as nice as recycling the jugs, but it did keep the pasta water off the playa.

Note to self: Next year don't cook pasta. Don't cook anything that produces waste water.

DoctorIknow · Post by **DoctorIknow** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 8:30 pm

Dahen writes:

Care to share how your system works?

__________________________________

I do want to, and will as soon as I find the guy who took all the pictures I'll do a materials list and construction plans. And maybe even a naked couple using the shower!

I see some posts in this thread where people talked of using towels... my idea was born of that concept when I found myself taking all my dirtly laundry last year, especially socks, and tossing it into my SAD looking overfilled evap pond. The fabric really ate up the water, then when placed in the sun, dried up in no time...to be dunked again and again....

I was about to just haul all my grey water home this year out of disgust for evap ponds, but thought maybe burlap could replace my laundry, and the new "system" worked FAR better than I ever dreamed of. As I said, 105 gallons of showers gone into the air!

The criteria for the "non-black plastic evap pond" was:
----be cheap
----be compact for transport
----be lightweight (I loved the lava rock idea presented above, but way too cumbersome for a small vehicle to transport...)
----be able to take 70mph winds
----not be recognized by a yahoo burner as being a dump location
----not use any electricity of any form
----in case of no sun, grey water would be easy to place back in containers
----in case of white out after white out, have ability to protect burlap from being covered in playa dust
----be cleanable at home, and re-usable for many BM's to come.

phil · Post by **phil** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 8:40 pm

Rusted Iron wrote:So, instead, I collected all the empty plastic water jugs that were so easy to find, and poured all the bad water into them. From there, they went to the dump.
>SNIP<

Two alternatives: First, there are chemicals that will absorb the water in a container, turning it into compostable, flushable goo so that it doesn't slosh around and spill during transport. Same stuff used in disposable diapers. Haul buckets of goop to the Reno Transfer Station and drop it in the maw. Or take it home and pour it down the toilet.

Second, Louise and I emailed the BMOrg person about 'treating' grey water per a JRS article which said treated grey water can be poured onto the playa. Her instructions: Filter water into a container to remove particulates. Add a quarter cup of bleach per five gallons of filtered water. Let stand at least ten minutes. Disperse into the road to keep dust down.

Davoid · Post by **Davoid** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 11:56 pm

Mentioned this in "lessons learned", but I made a very minimal usage evap pond out of 2 large trash bags, obviously black, taped back-to-back for thickness. That's about 29.5" x 32", minus a few inches on each side to duct tape to the basic PVC frame that was the base of our humble shower. Because of the directional orientation of our camp (which will change next year) and structure design (shower integrated to flagpole integrated to main structure), the pond was in the shade for at least 1/3 of the day. It didn't matter because the two of us ended up taking just one shower apiece on Thursday for a total of about 2.5 gallons, and put another gallon or two in of cooking water. Our dishwashing was minimal (for better or worse), and we didn't use it at all towards the end. Nothing but some clay left.

Our camp may be larger/more populous next year, so I look forward to more designs, and more details on the burlap. Though the filtering/treating method may be the way we'll go.

diane o'thirst · Post by **diane o'thirst** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:13 pm

Here's a design my neighbours Stranjbrew Hoop-Dee-Doo did a few years back. Worked great.

Make a shallow "pond" with 2x4s and a black pond liner. In the middle of this, place a plastic-lined waterproof box or crate, like an old-fashioned peach crate, and situate a pond pump in this box. It can be solar if you want to spend the money or run off your car's battery and an inverter.

The water is poured INTO THE PLASTIC-LINED BOX and the pump sprays it out onto the black pond liner, where it evaporates within minutes. You do not pour the water into the pond at large, just the box. You can also stick a block or something under the pond liner and the box to position it on a "hill" which will make the water evaporate faster as it slides downhill towards the 2x4 frame. At the end of the week, they simply rolled up the tarp and had no greywater problems. Their camp consisted of two people and a 4x4' pond took care of them.

I'm using this design for my camp this year.

bdeywoo · Post by **bdeywoo** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 9:39 am

Ours was stellar! 10x12 feet or so 45 people many who took showers every day. Our shower is elevated and leaks on to a bunch of old throw away shirts that kept water in them and evaporated. For the water that actually drained into the pond we had a cheap little suction device that sucked excess pond water up about 2 feet and released it into PVC pipes that had shirts hanging over the pond. The water dripped onto them and wind and sun did the rest. We had excess water everyday but by the time moday rolled around we were dry (we just cut showers off sunday morning). Pain in the arse to set up and break down but it worked like a dream.

Lassen Forge · Post by **Lassen Forge** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 1:40 pm

Yeah... as long as you shut them down in plenty of time (we killed ours midnite post burn) they'll work fine...

They have to be *big* enough to sprad the water out *far* enough so they're not deep. Deep ponds don't get ht enough to evap well. The space for a couple extra 2x4's to stretch the pond out further and the extra plastic is so minor you don't notice it packing or unpacking.

Other trick - because you can usually get the bigger painter tarps (like 20x20) in clear, and the black stuff is usually only 5-8' wide (maybe 10') - you can put the black down (as an underliner) and then put the clear big tarp on top of it. One, it saves your expensive black tarp for next year, and two, you get the heat absorbation of black with the watertightness of the big clear tarps. Oh, it also helps keep the "liner" tarp from scuffing holes because the black acts like a "carpet pad" gig.

Oh - please DON'T put your evap in another kamp (not good for friendly relations), and make sure it's not leaking. We had both probs from a neighboring camp last year, and it left us with a nasty playa scar to deal with, while they had left 2 days before. >grrrrrr...< (I won't talk about their horrendous moop remnants, either, which we did some clean up on rather than being able to exodus a day earlier... )

Remember, too - you can *always* sprinkle *some* of your clear water waste (*clean* cooler water) as a dust pallative, or if it's really clean, like a beer-can-only cooler melt, you can use it for showers.

bb

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 2:32 pm

Apparently the greywater fountain in Wheeeeeee!ville last year worked.

Tumbleweed · Post by **Tumbleweed** » Tue May 09, 2006 10:40 pm

My evap pond worked pretty well last year. The trick was using it sparingly. It was primarily used to catch and evaporate shower water. I would only pour other graywater (like dishwater) into it after the shower water had completely evaporated. The remaining graywater from dishwashing, etc, I poured into a 5 gallon bucket with a lid, which I hauled away with me.

Gravity Mike · Post by **Gravity Mike** » Fri May 12, 2006 4:42 pm

Work or not work, it all depends upon the size of your camp, and your per person water usage - and the size of your pond. Our camp was around 45 people last year, and we allow a 1 1/2 gallon shower per person per day, plus there's dish washing. Now a 10x10 evap pond might work for 5 campers, but not 45 - and we didn't want to have a 100x100 pond!!

Evap never worked for us (unless we went too big), so we went ACTIVE last year. I had a 3000cfm fan blowing up through a tunnel packed with 30gpm of misters. Much of this water would surface condense and have to be re-misted. All in all, we evaped 50-75 gal/day (our usage, depending upon population) in about 3 hours. But it was finicky and required babysitting, so this year we're just going to truck out grey waste out and run it down the drain at home.

A 'fountain' evaporator is another very good alternative, somewhere between a passive pond and my high-maintenence monster.

Showers: We have shower basins, made of wood, about 3x3, about 18" above the ground. Water runs out into a 5 gal bucket where it is chunk filtered (with T-shirts) and with an outlet about 6" above the playa there is a hose outlet to run water to the evap pond. All is gravity feed.

And the shower itself is gravity feed. We have a light duty water tower made of 20' 2x6 beams. We erect it lieing down, then lift it up (not too heavy). Block and tackle is used to hoist up your individual shower water. This is good for water conservation in a large camp. Water is siphoned from the back of the truck (whose floor is about 3-4 feet high) into the 5 gallon buckets. Again, all gravity feed.

I wish I had photos, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Gravity

The CO · Post by **The CO** » Tue May 16, 2006 9:46 am

Our camp had 20ish people, 2 solar showers rotated in one booth, and a 8' by 20'+ evap pond that worked wonderfully. We also had a second 8'x8' evap pond as backup. I have found from personal experiance making them long, wide, and SHALLOW works best. I have a reusable frame of 1"x3" that has been to BRC twice and works great.

My empirical rules of thumb:
Six-eight square feet of evap pond per person using it, MAX HEIGHT 3"!
Don't bother making a pond less than 8'x8' wide/long. You will fill it to fast.
If there is more than 3/4" water in covering the entire surface area of your pond, it is full!
If you are putting a shower over the evap pond for direct runnoff, that counts as two people (for math purposes).
Bring a squeegee for distributing water, or use the greywater towel/sponge idea (brilliant! did it by accident 2 years ago).

Tumbleweed · Post by **Tumbleweed** » Tue May 16, 2006 1:18 pm

The CO wrote:I have found from personal experiance making them long, wide, and SHALLOW works best.

Yeah, I agree, especially on the "shallow" part. A shallow layer of water on an evap pond evaporates remarkably fast (especially when black plastic sheeting is used). But if the pond gets deep, most of the water will probably be there for the duration.

stargeezer · Post by **stargeezer** » Wed May 17, 2006 10:39 pm

You have the right idea, but you are going in the wrong direction. Think vertical.

I am not real good with visualizations, but try to picture this. We start small, with a roll of toilet paper. Pull the paper off the roll until it extends down to the floor and you can bring it back to the top of the roll. I know this is a pretty crappie description, but I shall continue. Now change the scale of things to replace the TP with a bath towel, preferably a dark one. Growing up a bit more, make the TP holder 5 feet wide and 5 feet above the ground. This loop of dark towel, when moistened, and out in the sunlight with a light breeze can evaporate about a gallon per hour. This does not sound like much, so let us grow it a little more. Rather than having a single 5x5 panel, make 3 that are 8x8, and place them in a “U” around the kiddie pool that you use for a shower. These panels replace the ones that are normally tarps that some want for a little privacy, so you have taken no additional space. Now build a trough that the bottom of the towel can sit in, make the trough about a foot wide, 8 foot long, and about 6 inches deep. Put a second pipe in the bottom of the towel loop so that it holds the towel down in the water. Now, periodically, rotate the towel through the water to get the entire towel damp. If you do this about once an hour (or whenever the towel dries) during the day, you can evaporate about 60 gallons. By going vertical, you have taken very little space, but still have an evaporation area of nearly 400 square feet. The big thing to remember is to keep your towel material dark so it is a nice solar collector, and make sure someone rotates the towel during the day. Yes, there are several ways to automate the system, but that adds complexity and cost that are really not necessary.

Gravity Mike · Post by **Gravity Mike** » Thu May 18, 2006 1:08 pm

This is basically a giant swamp cooler. This should also provide improved evaporation per unit camp space. I thought of doing this last year, but went with the giant mist cannon I described in a post above. I'd love to see this in action!

As far as evap ponds, of course bigger/shallower is better - water evaporation is a surface effect. The question is, how much camp space are you willing to dedicate to evap? We felt too much was needed for our 40+ person camp, so we chose a more technological approach, which unfortunately required too much attention and somewhat spoiled my burn.

Gravity

Evaporation ponds RARELY work

Evaporation ponds RARELY work

Re: Evaporation ponds RARELY work

Re: Evaporation ponds RARELY work

first time builder/worked wonderfully

We forgot all the evaporation station material...

Re: Evaporation ponds RARELY work

Re: We forgot all the evaporation station material...