Grey water to reed bed to AP

[head rush]

That's fantastic info Dennis. Thanks.
Battery acid? ? ? sounds toxic....
I'm going to look at this ferrocement stuff right now.
Ta !

[head rush]

Just looked at the ferrocement stuff. quite cool. We in South Africa have various cement supply companies that manufacture "artistic cement" products. Cemcrete is one of them. Not to mention waterproof compounds to seal the cement/concrete. Once this is sealed the concrete becomes inert and does not leech off any harmful by product/chemicals...
I was thinking of not going the concrete route, but rather using a thicker dam liner plastic for the gravel reed beds.
The ferrocement for the tanks might just be the way to go.....
I'll think about it.

[dennis]

yes i was going to look into food grade pond liners we call them here , not sure which would be lower cost, i think ferrocement would last longer, to be considered in the cost, i hear you should nutrilize the concreat before using for the system, i am not positive on how to do that perhaps someone here can answer that question

[rfeiller]

the commercial grades or GAC (granular activated carbon) are specifically designed for the adsorbtion of specific gasses, chems, organics. they are graded by iodine rating, grain size, derived from what type of carbon, etc. i wouldn't attempt to make it. without the proper equipment it would be pretty worthless stuff.

slow sand filters (the key word here is slow) are the simplist way to purify water. methods of water purification of course run the gambit. slow sand filters meet the basic need of producing potable water from poluted sources for those that do not have decent water, about 1.1billion people do not have an adequate potable water source. thank you nestle co. and the world bank.

[dennis]

well about the activated charcoal if i pull off my plans in the philippines, i will get around to producing it, as i have a strong intrest in natural med.s in growing processing etc, i have read a fair amount, no sorry i am being humble i have read more about this subject them 99 percent of people in the world, am i not stupid, and i will hire the needed college types in the PI to do it all right , and have you bothered to read how to do it , it is not that hard, all i was doing was giving just a bit of info for him to look into if he chooses to research etc that is his business, you are a little too quick to try to impress and shoot someone down, making charcoal activated is very simple really compaired to oh even compaired to an advance aquaponics system, ( i am not going to bother at this time to look up details and make any point to you about it just waste my time. a The truth is if you do not know what is going on in the world the coming bank failure etc you might also want to learn how to make it and such things as oh say olive leaf extract, let me guess it is too hard to make the med's from olive leaf?? lol
just because YOU would not do something does not mean someone else does not have a need or ability to do something, i dont mean to rant but i am very american and born with this passion of not being told what to do, you do seem like a very nice helpfull smart guy, with great intentions, but to tell me not to do something so simple as make activated charcoal,
now i can understand if i had printed a detailed manual of how to make it and you saw faults in my printed manual and you wanted to offer a word of caution fine, but i just pointed at a low cost low tech possibility, this stuff has been made for a very long time NOT high tech, ask any good high school chem teacher and he could design a system to make and use low cost equipment to make it

[dennis]

in defense of mr rfeiller perhaps i should have made it clear, those that seek low tech info on clean water for multi use, should check out activated charcoal , in my response i could see the gentelamn from south africa is a smart guy and seems well read and knows how to research, guess i tend to have faith in people, it may go beyond the scope of this fourm to discuss all methods of cleaning water for mankind, but of those methods activated charcoal is a very old and really low tech when looking at many methods used today NO it is not a cure all a little research will show what it does and does not do here is a like to a very simple method, yes this method does use chem's and i do NOT prefeer this method but then most activated charcoal used in med's uses chem's http://www.ehow.com/how_4827208_make-ac ... rcoal.html it is a doityourself low cost way not my choosen way but just to show it is simple, and also note there are benifits in even lower cost methods, using plain charcoal, mr rfeiller , i see your remarks about world bank and we agree and are on the same page, i have spent thousands of hours of research on that subject, new world order, and that is the big reason i pointed out info about activated charcoal, people may soon need such info to survive, i have been to " third world countries" and in my simple methods i see how lives could have been saved with my low tech ideas or methods, even if it is not the best method, the faces of such dead children that I KNEW haunts my dreams, in one case a home made charcoal would have helped, ( he used to sneak up on me and place the only "toy " he hever had a pet spider on my ear, and his laughter i will never forget i was not there when he died and yes my first choice would have been to take him to a doc ) that is the real reason i seek info on things like aquaponics and activated charcoal, they BOTH can help people, i did not mean to rant so much but i am correct about this! by the way slow sand is wonderful but it does not remove all from water either, to do it right it would take testing i understand in some countries and cases it simple methods might be used, a person could make charcoal not even activated pound it to a fine powder and run water thru it and improve the water quality, is that perfect no but it is PROVEN to help

[head rush]

Woha ! dennis...i'm sure that rfeiller never meant it as you seem to have taken it.
I think you have taken his point of view as a personal attack.....
From my perspective this was not so. Please let's not turn this into a slug fest..
I value both your comments. ! ! ! !
I will have to make a filter bed for the water run off. And yes, it will have to be slow.
With the amount of water that will be added to the first reed beds with every load of washing and shower I presume that I would HAVE to speed up the process of purifying the water. Before it gets to the main pond which will be supplying my AP system in the long run.This obviously will have to go through many cleaning beds with various reeds and plants absorbing different intensities of impurities. Charcoal/ activated carbon is one of the ways of possibly adding it to the filter reed beds.

But the thing is - where in nature do you get charcoal/activate carbon in natural reed beds.......?
Is it just more feasible for man to add it in to speed up the process of cleaning the water?
Is this something that I will inevitably have to do?
Would wood charcoal not do the trick? Why do you have to activate it? I thought it was a ready to use product. 'scuse my ignorance.
Dennis, i'm not too keen on the battery acid idea......steam sounds more earth friendly....
Wood.... I have stacks and stacks of wood that could be turned into charcoal......Coconut husks were short of here.... a rare commodity. So with your knowledge.... can this be done here??

rfeiller I don't know much about the politics of water..... I know that here in S/Africa we are running out of the stuff.
Millions are dependable on it and have no acess to it or have none at all. So sad
Hence my small contribution in trying to make a difference.

Thanks to all of you for your comments so far !

[head rush]

dennis - I see you beat me to it.... You must of just sneaked in your post before me......
Speedy Gonzalez !!

[dennis]

yes i also do not want a slug fest mr rfeiller seems like a very smart guy, and i am perhaps a bit sensitive but if you read my motivation and i note i agree with him on the world bank so i am 100 percent on the same page with him on many things, in truth after learning how the world bank has used my country to hurt devloping countries, see a book called " confessions of an economic hitman " to explain, well lets say i used to have such pride in america and our people! now that i see the truth and how we have let ourselves be used to hurt poor people in other countries, i am not proude and all i can do in my simple way try to help, i am not a writer but i am informed on a few things
see i was right you are very perceptive and smart all i had to do was mention charcoal and you already made a very educated guess, yes normal charcoal will do alot,

[rfeiller]

refined GAC was developed for air purification. but i can remember 50yrs ago when it was called by it's low quality name of carbon. this was basically what can be easily made. very limited in it's abiltity to adsorb.
GAC if used in water with a lot of organics or turbity will load up very quickly. in short order it becomes nothing more than a nitrifiying bed. it is excellent because of it's porosity to colonize bacteria.

if you have seen electron microscopic photos of an RO membrane after having been in service you will have seen colonies of bacteria.

water purification is a very complex process if one is trying to produce a truely pure product. RO, DI (cation, anion resins) nanofiltration, UV (which is worthless in water with heavy organics or turbity), ozone, GAC, specific minerals, coagulators, percipitators and on and on.

basic filtration for minimal potable filtration is slow sand. then if you should have carbon available as a last step run it through. look inside of a wine or whiskey cask this is why they are charred.

you can construct a large slow sand filter if you have the resources and equipment.