Browse Forums Eco Living 1 Feb 02, 2010 8:24 am What type of home sewage treatment are you using and why? everyone has a different opinion and reccomends the one they are selling, which makes it hard to choose. Re: HSTP 2Feb 02, 2010 11:55 am Any approved septic system will 'work' but it depends on what's important to you. - Capital cost - Maintenance costs - Usage patterns - Ability to reuse the water - How you want to use the water - indoor/outdoor, subsurface/surface (check with your regulating authority) - Space or geographical limitations on the site - Tolerance to varying hydraulic loads - Environmental impact The commonest, cheapest and most compact solution is a standard anaerobic septic tank with soakage trench. Reed beds are a 'natural' system but requires an appropriate drainage area. Aerobic systems are expensive but allow more flexible use of the wastewater. There are various disinfection regimes for indoor/above ground use - UV (expensive to run), chlorination (environmental impact) or ozonation (not yet commercialised for residential apps). Re: HSTP 3Feb 02, 2010 7:39 pm Hi there It depends on the council that you reside. Some councils don't allow the use of septic installations, so check with your council first. One option was missed which is a membrane system, which that expensive compared to other systems Regards Shane Re: HSTP 4Feb 02, 2010 10:32 pm sbudge Hi there It depends on the council that you reside. Some councils don't allow the use of septic installations, so check with your council first. One option was missed which is a membrane system, which that expensive compared to other systems Regards Shane Along with Composting Toilets of course Re: HSTP 5Feb 03, 2010 3:00 am These particular systems are used by one of Australia's more recognised gardening personalities. This person also specialises in including these and more advanced systems in their day to day designs. http://www.westernwastewater.com.au/ Re: HSTP 7Feb 03, 2010 12:53 pm No they are not really but do use them in nearly all projects undertaken in mining and community. They do have one domestically and are very commonly used in domestic homes in WA's Sou'west. They handle very large homes and the normal volumes they produce. Ozone is also available as an alternative to Alum Re: HSTP 8Feb 03, 2010 1:58 pm Excavation costs for multi-chamber unit? How much for the unit and what is electricity consumption to run pump and ozone generator? What are servicing requirements for the unit - frequency, cost, who does it? Re: HSTP 9Feb 04, 2010 5:16 pm Council will not allow septic, or say what i should use. I would like to use the water for surface irrigation on gardens, but I dont want a system that is expensive to service. The problem is, everyone I speak to tells me their system is the best.....how do I get inbiased advice? Re: HSTP 10Feb 04, 2010 8:34 pm To purify water acceptable for surface irrigation will require a degree of complexity and cost no matter which unit you use. Each jurisdiction will have their own guidelines but generally they are stricter than WHO recommendations. How you apply the water and whether it occurs on edible plants or play areas will determine how 'pure' the water must be. Here is the SA document on Reclaimed water use: The process of sewage recycling includes: - Primary treatment - to remove most of the visible solids - Secondary treatment - to reduce the bacterial count - Tertiary treatment - to completely eliminate chemical compounds in the water - Disinfection - to remove any residual bacteria Septic tanks achieve primary treatment with most of the secondary treatment occurring in the soakage trenches. Aerobic wastewater systems generally achieve high secondary treatment levels. Tertiary treatment is required for town water supplies. Disinfection is generally a costly exercise and generally applied to potable sources although some wastewater recycling systems also allow a disinfection option to further reduce microbiological activity The remaining bacterial count is the main determinant how you use the water and how you apply it. Even with above ground application most times regulations still won't allow you to irrigate surface grown vegetables or a recreational lawn. It sounds like you want some kind of aerobic waste-water system +/- disinfection option. They all pretty much achieve the same thing but in different ways. Some are multi-chamber systems. Often the first part is no different from a septic tank. The effluent is then pumped into another aerobic tank to further process the wastewater. There may be other intervening tanks to filter or sediment the water Oxygenation is achieved with various things including stirrers, bubblers or tricklers. Septic tanks need pumping out by qualified personnel to 'desludge' the tank of biosolids. This is not DIY due to EPA issues. Most councils won't allow you to use this humanure to fertilise your property. Other running cost comes from the pumps or other machinery to agitate and/or oxygenate the wastewater. The final step is disinfection which I mentioned in a previous post. We chose an elegant Australian invention called Biolytix which won the New Inventors. It is a trickling biofilter which incorporates worms and other micro-organisms to process the water. It is a single tank design that contains several layers of filtering media and self-propagating humus. 'Bugs' colonise this spongy network and help digest the effluent. Water and solids don't sit in an anaerobic pool like a normal septic tank but are suspended within the meshwork. Therefore they remain in an aerobic environment. A low powered pump continually circulates air through the tank. There is one other larger pump that periodically removes the collected purified water at the bottom of the tank which is then distributed to a subsurface network of pipes The advantages are lower excavation costs (one tank), lower complexity (two pumps) and running costs (3kWh/day) The limitations are: - To obtain the 20 year extended warranty you are obliged to pay around $350 in annual fees which gives you a yearly service and any parts required (there is an opt out) - The annual service involves removing any residual biosolids on the surface, shuffling the filter bags around or removing full ones (must be done a professional and disposed appropriately) - The subsurface irrigation only allows you to water lawn, garden or fruit trees in most states - There is a chance the pipes get blocked from biofilm and will require some form of chemical scouring - Since it is a biological system you have to be careful about environmental hazards e.g. excessive use of harsh chemicals, drugs (although Biolytix claim no loss of performance with 'average' exposures to these) - Worms could also die from tank flooding (pump failure, stormwater entrance) or excessive heat (Biolytix can ship some more worms - cost unknown) There are other domestic systems that might achieve higher levels of water quality but that doesn't automatically allow you to do something different with it. On the other hand there are also simpler and cheaper alternatives that are entirely adequate for your particular situation e.g. composting toilet + grey-water recycling of laundry and bathroom Re: HSTP 11Feb 05, 2010 12:48 am dymonite69 Excavation costs for multi-chamber unit? How much for the unit and what is electricity consumption to run pump and ozone generator? What are servicing requirements for the unit - frequency, cost, who does it? Excavation costs? Here in WA they would be far less than in the east. Deep sands and softer soils for the most part. Running costs? Buggered if I know. Who does it? A business headed by one of Australia's more respected water usage authorities, Dr Ross Mars Re: HSTP 12Feb 05, 2010 7:30 am Fu Manchu Running costs? Buggered if I know. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Not a lot of info on the Aquarius website but it looks like at least 4 pumps to move the water between and out of the tanks + 2 ozone pumps + ozone generator. Probably also need to pump out the primary tank and the alum flocculation tank. The website says 2 service calls a year. Biolytix has 2 pumps and one service per year, no desludging required. Re: HSTP 13Feb 07, 2010 10:00 pm I'll add from my experiences only. Last home had a Septech. Concrete tanks, lots of excavation, quite noisy and alarm kept going off (weekly). Complex to reset so had to get someone out to do it (luckily he lived nearby and would call out for free). At this house we installed an Ozzikleen. It has one poly tank and is very quiet. Alarm has only gone off once when we had a flood in the bathroom and masses of water poured down the plug hole. TBH one of the reasons we chose the Ozzikleen was the fact that we could use normal household detergents (front loading washing powder, washing up liquid, disinfectant, occasional Napisan) except for dishwasher tablets with the power ball. The price was good too. Both systems require 4 visits a year, currently cost $75/visit. Re: HSTP 14Jul 16, 2010 9:58 pm We're looking at a block that needs a waste management system (not septic) and the one I was eyeing off was the Biolytix, so it was great reading your post dymonite69. Anything changed with you since you posted? Still happy with the system? ~ trying to build our dream home by the sea ~ Re: HSTP 15Jul 16, 2010 10:55 pm We are pretty happy with the Biolytix. No real running problems. The first service revealed very little undigestible solids and health worm activity. We are not fanatical about using eco-products as some of them don't work that well. We use Finish in the dishwasher, BioZet (lowish sodium/phosphate) for the washing machine and a green product for toilet/bath. I mop floors with just water and a Vileda microfibre mop. The plumber did discover a leaking pie that evacuated the sump. The consequence of this was that the irrigation field was not getting the full amount of water and unfortunately some of our newly planted summer fruit trees died. There was just thin strips of green grass. The lines did not scouring. I like the fact that the aeration system is cheap to run compared to a lot of other systems and that it only needs one service. The downside is the cost of servicing through the 20 year optional warranty. However, if the main pump goes it could end up being an expensive re-fit (which apparently can occur). I couldn't imagine fixing it would be technically difficult but since there are EPA issues you have to go through the expensive official route. If you lived in the third world with less red-tape you probably could cobble a similar system out of standard parts. Re: HSTP 17Jul 17, 2010 9:58 am All the systems probably work. It just depends on your needs. What did it for me was the simplicity of the Biolytix system, the fact that you can re-use the water, the low running costs and a process that didn't involve chemicals. You can also throw stuff down the sink like food matter and even fats without causing the system to seize up. Septic tanks with soakage trenches can't be used for irrigation and don't like fats and oils. Multi-chamber aerobic tanks still need desludging. Some of them have multiple pumps - more components that could fail Aerobic system with stirrers and bubblers used a lot more energy. A lot of advanced systems involved disinfection with chlorination (chemicals) or UV light/ozonation (high component costs) - but we weren't using the water above ground. The downside of a worm-based system is that it theoretically more fragile - chemicals, drowning the worms if the pump fails, killing them if it gets too hot. Our local annual temperature variation is generally 3.5 to 35 degrees for 90% of the year. Although I have heard that Biolytix can fail if they are not used for a while e.g. holiday homes - it is not something that we anticipate doing. Re: HSTP 18Jul 17, 2010 11:56 am All of those things are what appealed to us too, I want to be able reuse the water to irrigate the grass and gardens, while not being 'stinky' and being safe for children. Only thing I can see that we might have trouble is with the temp ... so I better look into that a bit more. ~ trying to build our dream home by the sea ~ Re: HSTP 19Jul 17, 2010 12:35 pm The company recommends covering the unit with mulch helps with keeping the worms cool. They are not common earthworms but ones that like eating human waste. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenia_foetida Re: HSTP 20Jul 17, 2010 9:10 pm ooh ... that sounds very appealing ... lol. Even better about coving the unit with mulch, it's sounding more appealing each time ... I don't have to have this huge concrete 'feature' out in the yard. They have just started promoting these units up here, so I gather that means the temp range is ok ... but I'll still ask that question of the supplier. ~ trying to build our dream home by the sea ~ |