FileZilla Wiki talk:Community Portal

Thank you for the comment, Nikki. The dtverier is first, then the second barrel on the left in the top picture is (now) just a holding tank, but soon will be another slow sand filter. The wood on top of the dtverier barrel is a spacer and support for the top section of the dtverier. The pipe from the dtverier will feed into the slow sand filter with a 5 gallon bucket on top. The slow sand filter will be a similar design to filter 1 on slowsandfilter.org . As you probably know, the type and quantity of pollutants in your runoff water are directly proportional to the amount of pollutants in the air and on the roof surface, so storage can be a problem depending on the situation. Here, a first flush dtverier is enough in the winter, but in the summer the temps go up and water gets stagnant very quickly, so most of the storage is filtered water.The dtverier will take out most, if not all of the sand-like material that accumulates in the gutter from composition roofing. In the system here, it falls to the bottom of the dtverier barrel and is cleaned out each year its never been a problem for the pump used here. In the top of the 4 inch pipe is a stainless steel screen (the kind you can buy at the hardware store I got these at Lowe's I think they are for a kitchen drain they fit nicely in a 4 inch pvc coupler ) it keeps out all of the large debris that falls into the downspout. The bottom part of the downspout comes off really easily and the screen can be lifted out to remove pine needles, leaves and twigs. This takes about 30 seconds to do. Very easy. Most of this will be in the next series of videos. Water with a high bacterial content will go stagnant very quickly as temperature increases, so it is best to filter it first if possible. The order of operation (ideally) should be ( from start to finish ) : water runs from the roof into the gutter, then downspout, then dtverier, then filter, then storage. However, as you point out, the water will come off of the roof way faster than a small slow sand filter can handle it, and some areas get lots of rain very quickly, so in most cases, water ends up getting stored first and then filtered at a rate that the slow sand filter can handle. The flow rate on an ssf (slow sand filter) will change over time, which further complicates the issue. If you intend to have all the water go from your dtverier to a slow sand filter and then into storage; and you do not want to allow any of the runoff to be lost, you will need to make sure the flow rate of the filter matches the maximum flow rate from the dtverier which will be (I assume) the same as the flow rate from the downspout. The flow rates for three separate small slow sand filters are listed in detail on slowsandfilter.org. What I do here is store the water from the dtverier in a temporary holding tank, it is then filtered and goes to final storage. With only one large storage tank, your options are somewhat limited. The operation here using roof water is small scale; with 100 gallons of temporary storage and about 300 gallons of filtered water stored in 55 gallon barrels. As a result, lots of roof water is lost to overflow. Since we do not use the water as our main source, this is not an issue. We do not use the water from any of these filters for drinking water. In Western Washington state here, we have very little rain in the summer months, and so water must be supplied to the slow sand filter by pumping stored water slowly through the filter to keep in alive in the summer. So far, for the past 4 years this has worked. Even recirculating filtered water through the system has been enough to keep the biofilm alive until the fall and winter rains come along. The thing is it only takes one rain event in the summer to re-fill the pre-filter storage with unfiltered water and the thing the filter really likes is unfiltered water, because it gives the biofilm food. I know there are lots of people in Australia and New Zealand who use roof water without a slow sand filter but they are in a completely different environment than we are here. I am not sure what your situation is, but if you are in an area with trees, and wildlife nearby, you will very likely have lots of nasty bacteria in your roof water, and may want to filter it before you store it. The first year I set up the filter and storage, I had a nasty mess with several hundred gallons of very stagnant water that was unusable, that was before the first flush dtverier was added. After the dtverier was put in the system the water was much less stagnant at the end of the summer.