Revisiting the Waste Water

I decided to do something different with the Commercial Kitchen/Store waste water than the Lagoon. After talking with a friend that installs septic systems and mini waste water treatment plants. He sold me on just going with the lagoon for the Cabin and one of the waste water treatment units his outfit builds for the store. The big selling point is no leech field, and no lagoon needed and he can build the required grease traps into the unit, that are much easier to remove and clean than a separate grease trap, and his units are State and County approved for both residential and commercial use........... and I got a really big discount

Not as passive of a system as I would like but overall more efficient. The drawing does not show the grease filter or the trap and is missing the chlorination unit in the last chamber. The discharge water runs right into a drainage ditch and done. This is getting installed tmrw morning for the store and burned me for only $3,200 (Normally around $6500) installed and connected to the store and the ditch. I have talked with other folks around the country and pretty the same unit in some areas installed gets into $20K+ or more for the ones being used commercially. Health Inspector was out yesterday to give a few variances and the final approval for the project. And he is much happier with this than with the lagoon. I am happier because now my hogs have a new pond to wallow in where the the lagoon was going to be and I don't have to give up a good size chunk of the nursery pen. Drawbacks are it requires electric for the air pump, effluent pump and control panel, but is low power and will work easily off the solar battery bank.

Guess I was a bit out of date on more modern waste water treatment options

 

Well all installed and fully functional in less than 3 hours this morning. I am happy but more importantly the Health Inspector was happy!

 

It's nice when things go according to plan, and that you have an amenable Health Inspector. Now that the sexy exciting stuff is over....from now on in, it's maintenance, maintenance and maintenance.

 

I figured 20 years ago I could have adversarial or amicable relationship with the Health Departments in my areas of operation and Dept. of Agriculture compliance officers. I chose amicable and that has been nothing but good and I have became good friends with a couple of them over the years. Not sure that is good as they make no bones about it......... They know I know the rules and regulations and if I try to pull something, they will bust my balls harder than they would someone else On the flip side I also catch some breaks in the interpreting of the codes and regulations, that someone who is adversarial would be held to the strictest interpretation of those codes and regulations. Like this waste water system required some variances that were easily granted, someone who was a consistent pain in their ass probably would not have been granted variances and would have had to re-plan the whole thing. I look at the regulators at the State and Local level as partners working toward the same goal as myself.. Safe wholesome food and that is really how the vast majority of those folks see things as well. There are few assholes that just try to make business owners lives miserable and I decided long ago to just not do business in their jurisdictions. Anyway life is a lot easier when the regulators are working with you, instead of **Sport Hunting** you.

This unit will be very low maintenance as it is only grey water going into it. The inspector did ask if there was anyway I could hook a toilet into it and flush a turd a couple of times per week so there would be enough bacterial action in the tank. Or maybe pop the lid once a week and dump a bucket of pig turds in it to get the organic matter and bacterial action going and sustain it. LOL I told him I can do either, so making sure it gets fed some poop on a regular basis seems like is going to be the biggest maintenance of it.