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The Greywater
Treatment System in the Harmony House has seen several design
evolutions throughout the years. Treatment of water from sinks,
showers, dishwasher and laundry machine has been going on for about
ten years.
Initial
studies were conducted by Stephen Ponce-Pore, and in 1994 Mike
Gable worked on a redesign of this initial system. The original
system was comprised of a set of three large wooden bins, each
about 13 feet long, 1 1/2 feet deep, and 1 1/2 feet wide. These
beds, located in the south-facing sun space of the house were
filled with different types of gravel and were planted with papyrus
(Cyperus alternifolius). The water was delivered to these
beds from an anaerobic settling tank and was allowed to flow
beneath the surface of gravel for the length of these beds before
being discharged from the house.
Mike established four
objectives for this project 1. to replant the greywater beds and
continue to collect water quality data from the system, 2. to
reduce the original size of the beds by one-third as a test of its
efficiency, 3. to make the system self-watering, and 4. to
investigate reported odor problems.
By the fall of 2000 this
system was in need of maintenance and was causing a bad odor in the
house. At this time another MS3 student, Spencer Welton took over
the redesign and construction of a new greywater treatment system.
This project not only included redesign of the greywater treatment
but also the entire sun space where it would be housed. Designing
and constructing this new greywater treatment system was not
intended to provide immediate answers to the challenges of water
treatment. Instead it was designed and built as a toolkit, a
"laboratory" to investigate the possibilities in greywater treament
methods.
The current system was
designed to meet three main goals, 1. easy maintenance, 2. flexible
and adaptable to student investigation and changing needs of the
future, 3. integration of the system into the existing
space.
- Spencer Welton
Alternator Article
Initial Greywater
Recycling System with Papyrus
New
Greywater System
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