Another month has been completed and lots of changes. Plenty of new fill stations have come online (3 new ones in SoCal!), lots of activity on Twitter (new followers, retweets & favorites) and a Wastewater Treatment Plant in Southern California made graphics for an article I posted.
Lets get to the content roll up for August 2015 – below is a list of every article written since the July 2015 – Content Roll Up.
In the last post, the safety hazards associated with driving with a half full IBC Tote were looked at. A full tote, weighs 2600 pounds and has very little to no sloshing, except when taking corners, the mass of the water will work to pull your vehicle over. This was experienced by a passenger in an F350 carrying 275 gallons of water.
When a tote is half full, there is about 1250 pounds of water that moves, so when you turn left, that water moves with considerable momentum to the right. If physics calculations were performed we could figure out how much force is being applied to a vehicle at any given speed if we knew the mass.
Lets call this mass of water moving in a tank as slosh. How can you minimize slosh in an IBC tote?
The most common tank to use when transporting recycled water is a 275 or 300 gallon IBC tote. When full it weighs ~ 2500+ pounds, if we include the weight of the tote, its more like 2600 pounds. That weight in the back of most half tons trucks is too much and thus begins safety hazards associated with transporting recycled water.
Honda Ridgeline filled above capacity
Lets cue up a recent photo of a Honda Ridgeline filling up a 275 gallon tote. Please note that a Ridgeline is only rated at 1500 pounds payload capacity. A Ridgeline should only haul ~ 165 gallons if we include the weight of the tote. Direct your attention to the significant drop in the back end of the vehicle (and the wear and tear on the struts/read end) and the significant rise in the front end of the vehicle. This makes steering difficult and travel is rather unsafe.
All recycled water fill stations have stressed to not take more water than your vehicle can hold, but yet people still do it. This article has been designed to show you through a Youtube video what happens to water in a tote full and half full.
City of Brentwood sent me some fill station statistics. After a brief overview, they gave away nearly 4,300,000 gallons of recycled water in 8 weeks. Faster than CCCSD, DSRSD and Ironhouse SD.
They’ve been so successful, they even created this awesome youtube video:
Designer water
The notion of Designer Water should not be a new concept, but to many it is.
Think about this for a moment. You can buy a dress shirt off the rack which fits but not perfectly, or you can get a designer shirt tailored to your body which will make heads turn. Designer clothing has a similar function compared to designer recycled water.
Depending on where you live and what level of treatment is performed at a wastewater treatment plant near you determines the type of recycled water available. Continue reading
Ironhouse SD Fill Station Stats – July 2015
July was a busy month for the Ironhouse Sanitary District. Their free recycled water fill station saw a lot of activity and it has made their employees and board members ecstatic! When the fill station first opened, they had 21,000 gallons water storage, but when demand picked up they quickly grew to 58,000 gallons of storage.
Now, as they are accommodating nearly 300 visitors a day, the Board of Directors approved a pipeline from their water recycling plant to the fill station, which enables more than 58,000 gallons give away, a day. Continue reading
Bill Clarkson – Mayor
RecycledH2O had a conversation with Mayor Bill Clarkson from the City of San Ramon and we discussed the use of recycled water through city parks and median strips. Below is that conversation.
In 1995, a partnership called DSRSD-EBMUD Recycled Water Authority (DERWA), between Dublin San Ramon Services District and East Bay Municipal Utility District was created to provide “a safe, reliable and consistent supply of recycled water, and to maximize the amount of recycled water delivered.”
The San Ramon Valley Recycled Water Program (SRVRWP) currently provides recycled water to customers in Dublin and San Ramon. Future phases will extend recycled water delivery to portions of Blackhawk and Danville.
Lots of activity this time around. The twitter handle @RecycledH20 has grown, so has our Facebook.com/RecycledH2O page. If you’re on either medium, be sure to follow/like the page.
Below is every article written since the last content roll-up. 21 articles total.
What is it good for? Absolutely everything! 😉
Source: centralsan.org
We’re near the end of another month and people like stats, especially when we’re talking big numbers. Between longer hours, better traffic control and a more efficient way to track fill station usage, CCCSD sure has come a long way from the beginning. Just two weeks ago, if you asked for a data set you could get it that day, but the data was old. Data entry was making the entire process very inefficient.
When the fill station started, expectations were low so all data entry occurred on paper. Up until about the middle of July, everything was done by hand. Now that they’ve written some custom software and acquired a drivers license scanner, data is available in 15 minute increments. Yes, once they get enough data they will know when the busy and slow times are. 🙂
The data charts I received are up to July 28th, 2015. I’ll post the graphics they create, plus some analysis.
The Central Contra Costa Sanitary District in Martinez has been operating a Free Recycled Water Fill Station since October, 2014. In 10 months, they have learned quite a bit about procedure, human nature and how to more efficiently give free recycled water away to the thousands of residents willing to haul recycled water home for use in their yards. Just recently they have made some changes that I’ve noticed and thought I would share them with you.
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