If you remember from some previous posts, the idea behind the biofiltered pond is that when the water is pumped (slowly!) through the sand in the sand filtration area, a thin biological layer of “good” bacteria and other small organisms digest and break down the viruses, “bad” bacteria, algae and raw nutrients (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus,…
Rain deluge
After a few days of leaving the pond overflow pipe open to drain the nearly daily falling rains, the rains tapered off. And since the pond water level looked like it could go up another 50cm without causing any problems around the land, this afternoon I decided to close it to see how quickly it…
Pond is full and rising
I swung by the land on Wednesday after heavy rainfall for two days to see the pond “full” for the first time. I define a full pond by the water level reaching the overflow pipe. I had the overflow valve closed during the rains, so the water level is now up near the top of the…
Pond water level nearly full
I check the pond level every once in a while, and it looks like we are within about 7cm of the overflow pipe now: There are still another month or two of heavy rains, so the pond is very likely to fill up this year. The next question is how far it will drop during…
Sump pump and really high ground water level
A lot of water rained down on the land over the last week. Sometimes in torrents. The pond is nearly full now. But the rain has help us to identify the parts of the land that need better drainage. The back of BaanMae seems to become a giant puddle sometimes, and we noticed some of…
Keeping the mosquitoes out of the slow sand filter
The slow sand filter that we use to treat both the untreated greywater and the aerobic treatment system (ATS) treated black water has been working quite well. Now that it has been running in its final configuration for a few weeks, we are planning on sending the output water to be professionally tested pretty soon…
Irrigation using collected rainwater
We previously built a first flush diverter to improve the quality of the rainwater we collect off of the roofs, and it has been working quite well. The first rains fill up the diverter with water that contains dust and animal droppings from the roof, and then after that, the water comes down a chain to full…
Sand filters, PVC pipes, siphons and weirs
We have been using a slow sand filter to treat our gray water for some months now and it has been working quite well. There was a problem due to normal intermittent use that the water level would drop due to evaporation and expose the sand, which basically kills off the biofiltration layer, but we…
New Project: First flush rain diverter
Over the summer, we had a mechanical engineering intern named Chanon helping out on an experimental project. The problem is that while rain water is mostly clean, the roof it hits is often not. In addition to the dust and other pollution that collects between rains, there is also feces from birds, lizards, and other…
OnTheNet: Testing tap water for chlorine
With all of the water quality stuff I’ve been experimenting with recently, I’ve been considering sending some of the filtered water samples to a professional lab for testing. So I did some looking around on YouTube to see what other people are doing. I found this video to be pleasantly geeky and informative: It appears…
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