Water Filter Log

Mon Oct 10, 2016

• Sand filters - http://www.orenco.com/doclib/documents/NTP-RSF-TRB-1.pdf. Use pressure compensating drip tubing from Home Depot instead of their pcv, cheaper and faster, but otherwise it recirculates and gets cleaner and cleaner until it is clogged, the a good backwash to the garden leaves it ready to use again. Notice that redundant systems are encouraged use B when A is clogged just like a normal canister pool filter but this one is horizontal…Orenco has a great website for these filters too.

Sun Oct 9, 2016

• Anecdotes - "10 miles from us 2 teenagers died from bacteria and toxic algae never seen before. so now municipalities must deal with both biological and chemical toxins as well as plain dirt and normal fecal wastes."
• Charcoal - will grow bacteria and algae
• tandard procedure from the Dallas chem lab monitoring their drinking water appears to be reverse osmosis or a pressure filter that cuts out everything bigger than .5 microns.
• may need a 3 -stage filter. last stage must be.5 microns.
• Pump for pressure to get decent flow
• Remember that acteria in plastic tanks can almost not be exterminated! UV at real high watts will help in the tank. Ozone is essential for the tank and then of course you have to run it through a carbon filter. But the step after .5 micron stage is most likely some form of peroxide as it is so much more cost effective than ozone. There are tons of peroxide dosing systems that dose going into the tank, then all you have to do is give it proper residence time and then pump out thro another carbon filter to improve taste and brightness to potable taps…
• That's two pumps and a pressure tank and a stack of filters but it will do the trick--otherwise it is all chlorine
• In Africa we built upflow sand and activated (with naptha) charcoal filters and then used sunlight UV to disinfect…they flush backflow and work well when properly maintained.

Oct 6, 2016

What I have is going to be the typical water organizing module for an earthship. It has 50,500,1000 mesh filters with a drinking water filter (we use a ceramic filter here). The 1000 mesh and drinking filters are just for drinkable water. This is all in addition to a 30/50 water pump and a pressure switch, pressure tank. Now You can add these instead of the drinking water filter (sand, charcoal, ozonator, etc.)

A couple of comments on the off-the-shelf design:

• The overall cost is ~ $1000. A chunk of the cost is the pump and the ceramic filter.