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Overview of the system
The ECOplus is designed to save water and prevent
overloading of septic tank leach fields by recycling selected
greywater back through the toilet system. Only greywater from the
shower, bath and washing machine is used.
This saves flushing good clean water down the
toilet, resulting in considerable water savings. It also reduces the amount
of water in the septic tank and
reduces surges of water into the tank which can wash partially treated
efluent into the leach field, compromising its performance. Reduced
hydraulic loading and mixing of layers in the septic tank results in
better performance and can miraculously
improve a smelly, boggy leach field.
The system produces two secondary advantages:
1. Excess filtered greywater produced by the system
can be used to water the garden, instead of being disposed of to the
gully trap.
2. Where low water pressure is present the shower
will not lose the majority of its cold or hot water when the toilet
is flushed.
Operation
Grey water
from the washing machine, bath and shower are collected in a holding tank
which may be placed above or below ground level (the pump chamber must
be above ground to prevent water ingress; above ground tanks need a
reinforcing bracket ordered through ECOplus). The water is piped to
the holding tank and when full the excess water bypasses the tanks and
flows into the gully trap in the normal manner.
An aeration device and a flow
filter seperate the majority of soaps and lint from the water before
it enters the holding tanks.
Excess soaps
are directed into the gully trap and solids are held in the filter until cleaned out. To
a large extent the filter is self-cleaning, diverting solids to the gully trap. The
water in the end holding tank is then piped to the toilet system by a
12 volt electric pump which turns on when the toilet is
flushed.
A valve
allows the toilet to return to the mains water supply if
required. Eg when the filter requires cleaning or excess use
of the toilet is required (such as a large number of
visitors).
Click Here to view an example of a Typical Layout of an installed ECOplus Water Recycling System
Click
Here to download a prepared paper on Reducing the Wastewater
- Managing the Problem.
This paper was presented at the 2003 Onsite Conference at Armadale, Australia.
Note:
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