My Next Project: The Constructed Wetland
I've been thinking about my next project for several years now. We have a poorly performing septic system that, on occasion, has a tendency to smell pretty bad. It's a White Water system that was one year old when we bought the place. The system doesn't use a field line and it's just as well considering our soil is heavy clay. It utilizes an air pump to provide aeration inside the septic tank to aid the microbial action and supposedly the effluent should be nice and clean. That little air pump costs $300.00 and failed yearly. So I managed to find a pump that was about 1/10th the cost and bought a stack of them. We also have to put chlorine tablets in the outlet where the effluent leaves the tank. Once I thought maybe it had just gotten overwhelmed and had it pumped out. But, alas, within days it was stinking again.
Then one day at work I was in a meeting concerning one of our major projects that was just getting under way and a guy from our environmental department gave a presentation about constructed wetlands. Our project was going to encroach on some natural wetlands and the state would allow us to build a new wetland in order to compensate. During that presentation I realized that a constructed wetland was the answer to my septic tank problem. I could take a bad situation and turn it into a good situation. I started doing a little research and found a lot of info on different kinds of constructed wetlands.
My plan is to build a subsurface flow wetland of a little better than 300 square feet. It will be approximately 1 1/2 feet deep and filled with gravel of varied size. A top layer of mulch with cat tails, elephant ears and such will be planted in order to aid the treatment of the runoff.
Luckily the current location of the outlet pipe seems like a suitable place for the pit to be dug. The orange lines in the photo below indicate the outline of the wetland.
This next photo gives you a little better idea of the size. It's 12 feet wide by 29 feet long. The orange dashed line is where the current PVC pipe lies.
One thing that will make it a little more work is the slope of the ground. There is a pretty good drop from one end to the other. You can see that below. I held the camera fairly level when I took the picture but for some reason the slope looks a little exaggerated.
I should get my pond liner next week and with a little luck it will be dry enough to get the gravel and sand delivered as well. I'll also be reworking the driveway so there'll be an additional 25 tons or so for that as well. I'll keep you updated as I go along. And I'm sure that Lily (below) will help during the entire process. Her job is to plant land mines in my sand piles.
Then one day at work I was in a meeting concerning one of our major projects that was just getting under way and a guy from our environmental department gave a presentation about constructed wetlands. Our project was going to encroach on some natural wetlands and the state would allow us to build a new wetland in order to compensate. During that presentation I realized that a constructed wetland was the answer to my septic tank problem. I could take a bad situation and turn it into a good situation. I started doing a little research and found a lot of info on different kinds of constructed wetlands.
My plan is to build a subsurface flow wetland of a little better than 300 square feet. It will be approximately 1 1/2 feet deep and filled with gravel of varied size. A top layer of mulch with cat tails, elephant ears and such will be planted in order to aid the treatment of the runoff.
Luckily the current location of the outlet pipe seems like a suitable place for the pit to be dug. The orange lines in the photo below indicate the outline of the wetland.
This next photo gives you a little better idea of the size. It's 12 feet wide by 29 feet long. The orange dashed line is where the current PVC pipe lies.
One thing that will make it a little more work is the slope of the ground. There is a pretty good drop from one end to the other. You can see that below. I held the camera fairly level when I took the picture but for some reason the slope looks a little exaggerated.
I should get my pond liner next week and with a little luck it will be dry enough to get the gravel and sand delivered as well. I'll also be reworking the driveway so there'll be an additional 25 tons or so for that as well. I'll keep you updated as I go along. And I'm sure that Lily (below) will help during the entire process. Her job is to plant land mines in my sand piles.
Posted by TBF at 5/28/2009 4:41 PM 
Categories: Daily Life
Tags: pond liner gravel constructed wetland septic system Lily
Categories: Daily Life
Tags: pond liner gravel constructed wetland septic system Lily
Comments