PolyParadise Water Reclamation - 2007

October 16, 2007

Thanks and praise be to Camp Daddy and his trusted sidekick Wildchild for working their asses off all year long building, painting, procuring, organizing, storing, planning, loading, unloading, setting up, tearing down, cleaning.... Thank you for doing all that and more!

Twist and Sarah for designing, building and transporting such a fine pair of excellent camp necessities in the form of the shower base and kitchen sink system! Excellent work my friends!

Thanks to Hypno for saving my emotional ass when the "love/fear" aspects of this project started slipsliding away on me. Thank you my dearest friend.

Thanks to all who helped me with water transfers, construction work and especially Mark for rewiring the main effluent pump and got several more days of operation before it finally met it's maker.

And lastly, thanks for all who used the shower responsibly and ditto for disposing of personal wastewater correctly. Thanks also go out to everyone who took the high road when the shower pump dropped offline and didn't complain or make a stink. You folks are unsung heroes!

Evapotron 2.0 was a departure on several levels from Evapotron 1.1.

 - We wanted a less power hungry system;
 - One that had a smaller footprint;
 - One that was simpler to setup and maintain;
 - One that was quieter;
 - And one that worked more efficiently.

On several items we exceeded expectations, on others we didn't. Sometimes we created problems because we did some things so well they negatively impacted other operations. Case in point: The kitchen sink worked so well we created more wastewater this year then last by a factor of two or three. This is a good trade though when you consider how much easier dishwashing was this year. Midway through the week our main pump failed so we used our shower pump as backup. This impacted shower users negatively but allowed us to keep up with processing the gray we were generating. We started the week with two gravel filters that worked as designed but we lost track of our chunk strainers so filter # one was used as a filter/ strainer until the lost strainers could be found. They were found so we dumped filter #1 and started using filter #2. Everything was doing well until a camper dumped raw, unstrained personal kitchen waste directly into filter # two.

Then another camper dumped shower gray water into filter # two overflowing the filter and allowing kitchen crap into the filtered effluent storage tank creating plugging problems in the sprayers. So by giving people a way to dispose of their gray we created problems for disposing of all our gray!

Was Evapotron 2.0 better than the previous version? Yes and No.
Some aspects shined, others didn't.  We maintained evaporation at significantly higher levels then the year before. We had a higher camper count and more sources of wastewater. The HCW seemed busier and more people were using the HCW space after closing. But through all this the system worked pretty well at getting rid of water. We also created a system that used less far less power and saved many gallons of gasoline and more importantly, a lot less generator wear. We did good by shrinking and simplifying the shower area and the kitchen sink system was a huge success. Downsides were increased operator labor, the inability to evaporate the deluge at the end of the week and it's finicky operation left it vulnerable to misuse, abuse and neglect by users.

An example of a typical day after Wednesday looked like this:
At dawn the storage tank would contain ten to fifteen gallons. The pump would be started and leftover gray would be poured into the filter. Kitchen water would be about ten gallons leftover from the night before; HCW leftover was easily four or five buckets so that's about fifteen gallons give or take; Shower water would be added through the day and a reasonable guess would be 25 gallons; The afternoon HCW might be another fifteen gallons; Personal gray might be ten gallons; Then there might be some from afternoon kitchen of five gallons. I know there are a lot of "might's" and "could be's" but the last thing I was doing was tracking each gallon that got processed! So a decent guess was about seventy gallons a day! That's not bad for using a 12vdc pump as the only power load. Not bad at all!

Now it's time for some observations and recommendations:
First off, let me say I enjoy doing this kind of project. It gives me a sense of purpose and connects me to our community. I don't enjoy the feeling of panic when things go wrong and I hate feeling anger when people aren't responsible for themselves. I went through both emotions several times through the week and next year my personal goal will be to create a water plan that will be bombproof. I want everyone's needs to be met including my own. Before anybody asks what that bombproof plan will be, hold off and wait a bit for us to invent it. Stay tuned!

One of our overlaying problems is the dynamics of population growth and water usage through the week. At first few people are in camp; cooking is minimal; showers are infrequent; HCW is slow. Then the population builds; more cooking; The HCW heats up. By Saturday we are inundated with wastewater; everybody wants a shower; the kitchen is running full tilt; at the very point we need to get rid of as much water as we can, we are generating more than ever!

Another problem that seems to occur, both this year and last, is the negative human element we don't seem to be able to educate out of operations. Some people just don't have a clue that they are responsible for themselves and their actions. Poly Paradise is a Leave No Trace camp and people still left empty water containers for someone else to clean up and haul away. Same for all sorts of paper trash, shampoo and soap containers, washcloths and assorted clothes. The worst was people not taking care of their waste water!

Next year we will be topping one hundred campers. Our plans will take this and other factors into consideration, and it's a good guess camp fees will increase to cover the costs of our water issues. The offset will be better water handling and trash reduction as well as a better shower system too. We will make sure the community is brought up to speed on projected plans as they develop. After trying evaporation systems for two years now, I'm convinced another direction will yield better results. If we get the same weather cycle as we had in 2000, wet and cold at the end of the week, then even the best design would grind to a halt. One plan we have is to rent two storage tanks, buy potable water for one and use the other for gray disposal. Lots of problems could get solved by going this direction. The other end of the spectrum is to make everybody responsible for hauling home their portion of the problem. Haul it in, haul it out. As Scotto and other's have said, we are working on a reasonable solution to this issue. Stay tuned!

Namaste,
Tailfeather