Architectural Technology - Greywater Treatment Systems

deco72

Hi Guys

I am trying to find information on Grey water treatment systems to be used in domestic homes but finding it difficult to find anything.

Does anybody know any company websites that have information on these systems?? I need to get prices of systems and literature on systems for a thesis.

Poor Uncle Tom

Grey waters are directed into the treatment system or Septic Tank for the house.

deco72

yeah I know they gotta go into a treatment system to be reused in the house however im finding it difficult to find any information on such systems

Poor Uncle Tom

deco72 wrote: »

yeah I know they gotta go into a treatment system to be reused in the house however im finding it difficult to find any information on such systems

:eek: am I missing something here?

Grey waters (run off from the kitchen sink, bath, shower and wash hand basin) should not be re-used unless you are specifically talking about using bath and shower waters for filling cisterns?

You need to be a bit clearer in the information you need.

deco72

Looking for information on what sort of treatment that greywater needs to go through before it can be used for washing machines, toilets, garden watering etc...

Yeah basically what I am doing is a thesis on "To investigate the opportunities for water conservation in Domestic Homes". I am gathering information on systems such as rainwater harvesting, greywater treatment systems and also an integrated system. I want to do a feasibility study to show which is better to conserve water and also money.

I have found a lot of info on rainwater harvesting however grey water is hard to come by in Ireland.

Poor Uncle Tom

That sounds very interesting, I imagine you would need settlement tanks for the shower and bath waters to try to remove the soaps, etc., the kitchen waste is a little trickier. You have the grease traps to remove a lot of the gunk before the water generally enters the treatment system.

Each treatment system is set to produce a fairly standard quality of run-off which goes to the percolation area for re-integration into the groundwaters.

I assume if you talk to any of the standard manufacturers of the domestic treatment systems you should get a lot of information on grey water treatment.

BryanF

deco72 wrote: »

rainwater harvesting, greywater treatment systems and also an integrated system....to show which is better to conserve water and also money

i understand that Colm Cryan's students in UL have developed and are testing a domestic rainwater gravity feed system, that is a little better than the usual ground storage system as it seems to have no elec pump mechanism etc. (i have yet to see the figures)

'water conservation'
as I understand it, if you can use the mains supply, it will have a lower Embodied energy/Co2 usage than if an individual was to attempt their own recycling of grey water. As the public supply is already operating, we should all just be conserving our water usage and that would suffice in Ireland, with maybe using roof rain water for flushing toilets and watering the garden.. I found the Water-Book-Judith-Thornton informative and easy to follow, also check out Nick Grants book Sewage-Solutions-Answering-Nature

as regards 'cost'
the set-up cost v future council water fees + possible shortages is a different argument and probably one you can consider on a excel sheet.

deco72

Cheers for the help guys much appreciated. BryanF yeah its mainly a feasibility study that I wanna concentrate on so I will be doing an excel sheet to represent this payback period, thanks for those books I will def buy them and have a read.

Instead of just as individual house incorporating these in I was also going to look at an idea of communal systems for a proposed housing estate. At the minute there are a few house in the estate but more are proposed and I was interested in using this site as a case study to determine if it was feasible for it to have communal or individual system.

To be honest I would probably agree that Ireland would be ok just to use the rainwater without the use of greywater treatment for reuse as there is definitely enough rainfall here but I would just like to see the difference in comparison to each other and also the public's view on these systems by use of a questionnaire.

BryanF

deco72 wrote: »

Instead of just as individual house incorporating these in I was also going to look at an idea of communal systems for a proposed housing estate. At the minute there are a few house in the estate but more are proposed and I was interested in using this site as a case study to determine if it was feasible for it to have communal or individual system.

we are stilling talking about greywater treatment here? i would questions the elec cost and embodied energy costs of such a system? can you point to any of these housing estates? the only estates im aware off are just using their storm water attenuation tanks so its, essentially just communal rainwater-harvesting - and i'm still not convinced as there's probably a large elec driven pump somewhere on the system

I would just like to see the difference in comparison to each other and also the public's view on these systems by use of a questionnaire.

sure why not, its an interesting topic, best of luck with it

lauramaster wrote: »

Grey waters are directed into the treatment system

? i think Deco's considerations are a little past this laura..

Raver8

BryanF wrote: »

? i think Deco's considerations are a little past this laura..

Looks like Laura has been banned..

deco72

BryanF wrote: »

the only estates im aware off are just using their storm water attenuation tanks so its, essentially just communal rainwater-harvesting - and i'm still not convinced as there's probably a large elec driven pump somewhere on the system

Could you tell me these estates as it might be interesting to look at these. Had a meeting with my lecturer today and was talking about what happens to the sealed surface water.

Sorry I think I didnt explain myself properly, the estate Im talking about is not using any of these systems at the minute thats why I want to do a feasability study to see if they can be used in relation to the new water charges.

BryanF

why not start with some of the main engineering/ rain-harvesting suppliers in ireland

doubledan454

Deco 72, hows things could u pm your email address, I am undertaking a dissertation on a familiar topic and would like to get in contact, if possible to discuss a few items. Regards.