If you are lucky to already have a rain water collector system that can be used for toilet, laundry and the garden, you might have some thoughts when you take a shower with precious water: the water is nearly 99% pure water, the rest being hairs and soap/shampoo. And if you dilute that into the tank… while good soaps / shampoo are fertiliser for the garden.
So one day….
The start situation was like that:
Since I wanted to be able to switch the shower water back to the waste water (e.g. needing to use a specific shampoo), I planed to put two pipes side by side. So I could switch between them.
Shower coming from the top goes into right tube to the rain collector (top left tube could be the one from the tub)That would be the situation when shower water would not be reused. Now I knew how I would put the tubes, I could start to drill 🙂To avoid too much dust in the room: attach a cylinder around the hole with a side hole for the vacuum cleaner. Yeah, the wall was done. For now. The idea was to join the vertical tube that came from the little heat pump roof. Unfortunately I discovered that the pipes was leading “no where”…. 🙁 it meant extra work. First I need to find the real underground pipe..And was soon lucky! (See the orange pipe in the lower right corner)But then I decided to drill as well the side wall…For which I needed as well to make a cut into the base concrete plate. And drill from the other side…Sometimes you have bad luck.. but it was exchanged against a smile! 🙂Drilled through the concreteAnd the last hole to get to the pipe
Placing the tubes
The connecting pipe to the house (below the staircase)And the pipe bringing the water to the main rain collector pipeThat’s Biovitor: it let the water flow much calmer out into the tank and act as a kind of composting device inside of the tankThe main trick is: make the tank a bit less acidic (rain and no concrete tank) and the increase the surface for the biological activation. Put all together Empty the tank….And here you see 4 years of diet from the roofs. So I pimped a bit the Biovitor to slower even more the waterBut letting the possibility to move away if too much water would come inside. It was time to go into work. But: you don’t know if some aerobic decomposing process have happened. It could be not enough oxygen inside the tank. Therefore you need to use the water hose to bring water and air into the tank. And get out the brown sauce looking like chocolate. Some had less luck And the pollen was all on the wall. The biovitor was finally placed. Light was needed to work in the dark…And after a while it was connected. The black thick pipe is the water entry to the biovitor (from roof and shower). It has to small angles at the bottom to better position the biovitor. And when there is not much water, the waterfall is broken and slowed downs The orange one is the overflow: of the tank is full or to many leaves are entered, they will escape from there to the overflow, which I made higher to have some more volume. Because the cover is not water tight, there was as well dirt /soil from the cover coming into the tank..So I put a protection from a rest of plastic, with a hole..…which was directly leading into the overflow of the tank. Now the electric needed to be put…And the sensors and it’s counter pole: an aluminium bar to which the cables where attached. Ten cables for the signal… segments of 10%Some welding…Insulating…and making place to put the removed stones. Flowers 🙂Now the big baby (thank you Iris!!!)And cutting the tiles. So they would fit Some painted wood to have flat tiles and tests of insulation to avoid herbs growing through the sand. Here we are… Including the water level in 10% steps Now we know how the soil came into the tank: ants!
