Now this is a septic system

[Jim Dunn]

Largest I've built as yet. It's for a cookie factory pretreatment system. 100,000gallons and 2 10hp blower motors.

[Art Mulder]

two 10hp blower moters!?!?!? What are those for?

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

C'mon over my place. Bring a back hoe and one of those tanks please. I have a 75 year old system on the verge of collapse.

My tank is decomposing at an increasing rate and the leachfields are all silted up. I have a baffle box that is right on top of a bottomless hole where no amount of water can pool. I have tried leaving a hose to run rinsing the drain pipes out and flushing the baffle box and I can't get the 75 year old gravel next to the baffle box to fill with water no matter how long or fast I run the water.

So Really All I need is one of those big tanks.

Is saturday morning OK? I'll have breakfast ready.

[Stuart Johnson]

It sounds like it is an aerobic system with the blowers.

[John Schreiber]

When you say it's a pre-treatment system, does that mean it's for water coming into the plant, or is it pre-treatment of waste before it goes into a municipal system? I didn't know septic systems were used like that.

There's a lot I don't know about septic systems.

[Ken Garlock]

2 10 HP blowers should had 'something' to the neighborhood.:eek:

[Mark Pruitt]

two 10hp blower moters!?!?!? What are those for?
Do you REALLY want to know???:eek: :p

[Jim Dunn]

John this plant manufacturers a food product. The waste entering the public system has to be pretreated before the city can handle it in their wastewater tanks. Here in Missouri you are allowed to dispose of waste into a publicly owned system that has a maximum of 300 BOD. This manufacturers BOD was about 13,000.

This system is designed to reduce the BOD loading of the sugars and other materials before they enter the city sewer sysem.

The blowers are designed to add oxygen to the 5 tanks. 100scfm at 12psi.

1 tank is 5700lbs and cost about like gold since the polimars have risen dramatically since oil prices have gone so high. Each tank is 35' long by 10' in diameter. 20,000 gallons each. Those fiberglass pipe are 48" in diameter.

This is so far the largest single system I've had the pleasure of working on.

We still need to remove 300 truck loads of dirt from the fenced in area to make a big enough hole:eek:

[Charles McKinley]

If you think resin is high, price stainless steel. Make sure you are sitting down.

[Jim Dunn]

Considerable SS in this system Charles. The expensive kind;) meaning designed by an engineer:o

[Art Mulder]

Do you REALLY want to know???:eek: :p

Kind of.

I grew up in the country on a septic system. That consisted of one take, and a leach field. No fans. No vents. Just lots of grass that grew extra fast in a grid pattern over the tile lines... :rolleyes:

I know that cow manure produces a lot of methane gas when it decomposes. (which I see more and more places capturing and burning for electricity) So I was just curious if this was the same sort of thing or something else.

[Charles McKinley]

Ing-ga-neer!?! Run a WAYYYYYYY! ;)

The last job I was on before the company went under was in a chemical plant and they speced Carpenter 20 SS. Miserable stuff to work with, outragougsly expensive, but it could stand up to the acid.

I hope that the job goes well for you. It looks like a BIG project.

I have a great deal of respect for anyone that can bid a job to get it and still make enough money to make it worth while.

[John Schreiber]

Thanks for the information Jim. I learn a lot by asking questions.

Anybody else wondering what BOD is?

BOD - biochemical (biological) oxygen demand - or as I understand it, the stuff in the water that can be processed biologically by oxygen. Stuff that can be processed by oxygen is food for microbes in this example. Higher numbers = more food = more pollution.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochemical_oxygen_demand)

[Jim Dunn]

John another way to look at it is the amount of oxygen that the waste is going to use in the body of water it is ultimately going into. More oxygen usage from outside sources less oxygen for what is already there (fish for example).

Engineers are alright if you just ignore some of what they say. For example, the engineer said that the dirt would be stable if we just dug straight down 15'. No sloped excavation. I told him he could work in the bottom of the hole. He declined. Looks to dangerous he says.

We thought about turning it into a methane plant but we need to process the domestic waste too. Also. the added expense for the return was minimal.