Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Score @ Habitat...scavenger hunting for water filtration system supplies

SCORE @ THE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY RE-STORE TODAY!!!
The third of four padded toilet seats we need to cushion the kitchen water jugs!
HINGES for the back utility closet doors!! I have been wanting to build these two doors, but waiting to find the right hinges!!
This I will use to make the form for the hole in the bottom of the bath tub. Once I get the wood frame built I will cut a hole, fit this into it and then wrap the fiberglass resin embedded cloth down into the hole and out to accept the plumbing.
This will mount to the underside of the TRLR and provide more ventilation for the solar batteries.
While I have been working away for 2 months now on the red oak portions of the roof trusses I have realized something about the order of operations with regards to construction. While I have been really frustrated at how long and cumbersome wood working can be (especially when you are working primarily with chisels, a back saw and sand paper...) I am kind of glad because it has given me time to think through some other design issues and start finding the supplies and where-with-all for building the water filtration system. The gist is that once the roof trusses go up the oak will need to be protected by the roofing and siding, but once I put the siding up it will be more difficult to install some parts of the water system (like the tanks in the sub floor). Also, I will need to build the intake and out-take ports into the siding as I go.. and to do that, and choose the right hardware, etc. so that all the pipes and tubes fit together, I need to know what supplies I will be using, from start to finish, even before I install the final system. That has brought the question to my attention " How can it be that I could pour "contaminated water" from a river or creek even, into the trailer, and have it come out clean and even drinkable?! Filters and UV light.

Water will enter the TRLR through ports built into the side, using these motorcycle gas caps and bungs I found on eBay and @ the Harley store. The bung will be welded in the siding itself, and the body of the gas cap screws tight into place, then center part unscrews to allow access to the water system. I chose these style caps because they are tamper proof, to a point. I will build a box that locks to house the spigot for getting water out after it has been cleaned. After water has been poured into the TRLR it will pass through a filter like this:
and it will either go to one of two 30 gallon tanks like this ( from DM Plastics in Alberta)There will be one tank for the bathroom and one tank for the washing machine. At the point of use in the bathroom there will be other filters like these:
used in conjunction with a point of use hot water heater, so that water used for bathing will be filtered twice and water used for washing clothes will be filtered once. Then, after it drains from either the bathroom sink, bathtub/shower, or washing machine it will enter a system that is designed to clean the water to make it drinkable.

These are UV light tubes that people use in koi pond, and it will be connected to a series of filters of a reverse osmosis system for removal of particles and heavy metals:
and then into a 60 gallon tank like this from DM Plastics.ca
This tank will also be receiving rain water from gutters that will be fed into the UV/filtration system.... and the hope is that once water has passed through the trailer and comes out the spigot at the back it could be used to refill the water jugs, taken to the front of the trailer and used for cooking and washing dishes... maybe even shared with neighbors if we are in someplace that doesn't have clean drinking water. I am saving up for the water tanks right now.

1 comment:

  1. Right on and solid thought process. You certainly have lots of alternatives at this stage: gravity feeding versus pumping, depending on what the filter specs require matched with a liberal use factor (3 people).

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