Treatment plant desludging

[Roger440]

4 minutes ago, JamesP said:

Inclined to agree with your comment. I enclose a picture of where I removed the waste pipes and then shoved a pressure hose down the vertical to clear the SSR.

Wish I had paid a bit more attention to the design of the internals before filling. 

If and when emptied I will throughly clean out and take note of internal parts.

 

Intersting. Mine was blocked on the pipe intake. Indeed, several times before i got it right, though i suspect there was a build up of sludge around the entry as a result of lack of flow. Sadly, when i did get it emptied i wasnt there. One of my bubblers has never worked, (3 in mine)and i missed the opportunity to find out why.

 

BCO was also of the view that the integral sampling chamber didnt qualify as such. He still signed it off though.

 

Edited to add, does your return pipe not have an opening along the run where it got blocked?

Edited April 29, 2021 by Roger440

[joe90]

My Vortex is slightly different to the diagram above and the one on their website, my tubes go into the air action chamber not the sampling chamber. I understand the air pump produces bubbles but don’t understand how an air compressor can pump fluid from one chamber to another, it’s not explained on the website, anyone know? I wish I had taken photos of the insides before it got filled.

Edited April 29, 2021 by joe90

[Onoff]

15 minutes ago, joe90 said:

wish I had taken photos of the insides before it got filled.

 

NOW...this thread is everything WITHOUT pictures...?

[PeterTweeter]

Hi

In our last house we installed a Platinum Mini - an early type of treatment plant. The 3 stages were: solid separation - literally the heavy stuff dropping to the bottom; aeration - where the liquor is encouraged to further refine & the last stage did something else (not entirely sure what, now); the overflow then trickling over to the porous drainage set-up. In all our time, the tank was desludged maybe twice; it was never an issue (yes, you can dip for the sludge level). The secret is the nose test - if it smells sweet, then everything is Ok. Any "off smell" is a problem.

The aerator can, at a pinch, be offline for a week or more. Our usual tanker driver used to travel all over the country - can't think why - but was a good source of advice.
So, bottom line is/was - desludging was an "as required" job.

[joe90]

1 minute ago, PeterTweeter said:

The secret is the nose test

In that case mine is definitely “off”. ?.

[PeterTweeter]

BTW

The compressors used usually aerate fish ponds - they don't shift the liquor, merely make the bubbles (just like the Aero advert!). The movement between chambers is effected by the incoming effluent.

[joe90]

6 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

NOW...this thread is everything WITHOUT pictures...?

Perhaps we need a scratch and sniff app on this forum ?

[joe90]

3 minutes ago, PeterTweeter said:

The movement between chambers is effected by the incoming effluent.

I don’t think that is the case with the Vortex, the pipe runs in the above diagram run above the water level so some “pumping” must be done!

edit, just found this on the official website.   Air from the blower spurs from the regulator to two sludge return pipes,

Edited April 29, 2021 by joe90

[PeterTweeter]

Joe

This is why old-school septic tanks work well (if they're not cracked). The one we replaced by modern techology had NEVER been emptied!

[joe90]

1 minute ago, PeterTweeter said:

Joe

This is why old-school septic tanks work well (if they're not cracked). The one we replaced by modern techology had NEVER been emptied!

But a septic tank would not work for me. I am on solid clay so no drainage field, Vortex is one (the?) only treatment plant to be able to discharge to a ditch that is dry fir a portion of the year, which is our only way to dispose of the outfall.

[Onoff]

"I'm just going for an outfall"...it's got a ring about it.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, joe90 said:

but don’t understand how an air compressor can pump fluid from one chamber to another,

Is it the same way that cheap fish tank filters work?

 

The air lowers the density of the surrounding fluid and it then rises.

[dpmiller]

yep, a big air-lift.

[joe90]

21 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Is it the same way that cheap fish tank filters work?

 

The air lowers the density of the surrounding fluid and it then rises.

 

10 minutes ago, dpmiller said:

yep, a big air-lift.

 

10 minutes ago, dpmiller said:

yep, a big air-lift.

Every day is a school day ?

[Roger440]

10 hours ago, joe90 said:

In that case mine is definitely “off”. ?.

 

If you can smell it, its not working right.

 

One morning i detected a smell, just like a old septic tank, and found that it had indeed stopped working. Not sure for how long it had been like that. Getting it going again, the smell was gone in a day.

[joe90]

Found this and it contains better drawings of the internals and where the air pipes go (could not copy just the drawings) https://sites.create-cdn.net/sitefiles/10/1/1/101189/Manual_Vortex_Operation.pdf

just plucking up courage to open it up and start stirring the sh1t ?

[dpmiller]

using small bore tubes to move "settled" sludge looks like a not-so-tasty recipe for disaster.

[joe90]

9 minutes ago, dpmiller said:

using small bore tubes to move "settled" sludge looks like a not-so-tasty recipe for disaster.

These are 50mm pipes. But I have found the problem 

 

a large dead rat

Came floating to the surface, not a good way to go. I will now fit a grill to the outlet pipe as that’s the only way it could have got in.

 

I still have to work out which valve controls each function as they appear to have no effect..........

[ToughButterCup]

On 28/04/2021 at 12:32, Stones said:

...  Whether we drop to a 3 yearly empty when the kids depart, I'm not sure.

 

But they'll regularly bring members of the opposite sex back for feeding and washing and general maintenance. Which means only one thing..... yearly de-sludging. ?

Edited April 30, 2021 by ToughButterCup

[joe90]

Although working its having problems dealing with the dead sludge (floating stuff) so guess it needs emptying, it has been working for a couple of years.

[Crunchynut]

For those wishing they took a closer look at the internals of their vortex before putting it into use.

 

https://youtu.be/WlHp0BCdD6E

 

 

 

 

 

[Crunchynut]

On 30/04/2021 at 10:34, joe90 said:

Although working its having problems dealing with the dead sludge (floating stuff) so guess it needs emptying, it has been working for a couple of years.

 

Yes - I’m starting to have this problem. The floating sludge is so thick that the floating sludge return barely touches it. Did you find a solution?

 

 

 

 

 

[joe90]

6 minutes ago, Crunchynut said:

 

Yes - I’m starting to have this problem. The floating sludge is so thick that the floating sludge return barely touches it. Did you find a solution?

 

 

 

 

 

Well it cleared itself, no idea why, working fine now and very little floating sludge.

[Roger440]

47 minutes ago, Crunchynut said:

 

Yes - I’m starting to have this problem. The floating sludge is so thick that the floating sludge return barely touches it. Did you find a solution?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Increase the frequency or length of the floating sludge return maybe

 

assuming of course the pipe work protrudes above the water line.

 

What heppens when the sludge return is running? Can you see the crud going down the pipe?

[Crunchynut]

Pipework and levels are perfect and everything is working as it should (in theory).
 

I increased the rate from 5 minutes per hour to 5 minutes per 45 minutes. The problem is that if the layer is too thick - and we are talking perhaps 15-20mm - then its resistance to move across the surface towards the pipe is so much greater than clear water that flows from beneath the layer. So, if you get a stick and direct the layer towards the pipe then sure enough it gets sucked away, but left under its own devices it is hardly affected. 

 

I don’t understand why the layer has formed. Clearly the floc is too buoyant and floating (I think it is called ‘bulking’), but trying to understand the causes behind this from internet search is hard. Anything I find relates to industrial scale plant, not domestic plant, though the theory is nominally the same. It seems the world of domestic activated sludge plant is a bit of a black art.

 

The 6 person tank in a house of 4 people has only been installed 7months, so it shouldn’t need emptying yet. I do periodic settlement tests and the 30minute %settled is 80%, and the spec says to de-sludge if this goes above 90%. I have tried increasing aeration so will give it a bit more time to see if that changes the equilibrium. @joe90said his just cleared up of its own accord.
 

On a positive note, I chose Vortex over other plant so I can see what is going on and intervene if things aren’t quite right, so that’s good. On the whole I am happy with it.  I imagine there are plant in use all over the country that are not quite operating as they should, but owners might be oblivious.

 

Please let me know if you have any other thoughts. I’m eager to learn from experience or theory.