I been looking at these water reclaiming systems and wow they are crazy exspensive from the ones I see seems like maybe you could build one cheaper then purchase it but maybe I’m talking crazy…
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You can definitely build one dirt cheap…
Any idea on how you would go about it maybe a 55 gallon drum and some type of vacuum pump?
I’d go bigger. Maybe a large ibc tote, with a vacuume pump from like TSC or something. They have pretty decent ones but maybe an online retailer will be better so you can get something industrial that moves more water !
I don’t think an IBC will hold up to any vacuum. It’ll collapse on itself.
I’ve heard of guys collapsing their IBC buffer tanks with their pressure washers, just because their tank wasn’t vented correctly.
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IBC defiantly wont work. You can daisy chain 2-3 55 gallon drums together if you need more capacity. You could do it with 1 but the pump in the 1 drum needs to keep up with the volume you are sucking into it.
Depending on the amount of filtration you want . You can use one 55 gallon drum for vacuum then discharge into a tote to let the sediment settle before discharge. Set your discharge pump half way up the tote tank
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To be clear, I’m talking about a sump pump or something like that, sucking up the water and running it through a garden hose into the top, down through the cap of a tote. Simple, cheap, and would work. Nothing complicated.
Your just dropping the hose in and filling the empty tote. How would that make it crinkle shut ? Maybe if you had some crazy elaborate setup it wouldnt work. But for dumping water into a container just to move it and dump it somewhere else, that would work fine. Unless I’m wrong and dont realize it. I’m far from someone who knows everything. Just spit balling.
Keep an eye out on the interwebs for one. Craigslist, FB marketplace and the like. I picked up a barely used Alkota VFS for pretty cheap, cause there’s not a huge market for them at all, and the guy had been trying to sell it for a while. He had just put all new filters in it too. Depending on what you’re washing though, and your local laws, you could just Tractor Supply (or northern tool) trash pump it directly to the landscaping. There’s a few threads on here about just that setup.
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I use trash pumps every day. They are pricey if you get the good stuff with the Honda engines, but none the less they are amazing, and can be used for soooooo much.
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The point of a reclaim system is to treat the water at the job site so that it’s suitable to dump in a sanitary sewer. Just capturing the water in a tote and hauling it off means treating it off site, then dumping it. Much more time consuming and difficult.
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I live in Florida a lot of guys down here just shoot it down the drain
That’s probably the most common and most illegal method in use across the country. According to the EPA “nothing but rain can go down the drain.”
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Yeah but how many people truly adhere to the regulations most people thinking is if it you don’t get caught oh well
Hydrotek has a reasonable priced system that filters down to 5 microns for reuse. I don’t know if I’d want to reuse even filtered that low but I guess if you don’t mind replacing packings a little early you could. I did a good bit of research and the rzv10 from hydrotek was the best buy for the money for small reclaim projects in my opinion
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Theres 2 different types of legal dumping here, dump to the sanitary sewer where actual sewage is transferred and landscape. There’s not to be any down the storm drains or bodies of water.
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