what do you do with your "used" water?

project5k

project5k

Reef enthusiast
so, i've been thinking, i'm not doing a very smart thing, i'm dumping my used salt water in a particular part of the yard, and ofcourse theres nothing growing there now after a year of that, and now that i have moved up to a larger tank, i expect i'll be producing more waste water...

i'm on a septic tank, so i'm a little concerned about the salt possibly killing off the bacteria in the septic tank and causing problems, so i dont flush the water, i do have a good place to dump it, i have a gravel driveway that just wont stop growing weeds, i've spray'd it with weed killer, and i would dump all my salt water out there, but thats just too far to cary buckets, and i think not worth the trouble of setting up any kind of a perm plumbing system...

so, i was wondering, what do ya'll do with your waste water?

i put this in this particular area thinking that this is gonna involve either equipment to sepperate the salt out so that it can be disposed of, or perhaps something for storage, or possibly even an evaporative bed, i dunno.... but it seems to me that there will have to be some equip. envolved, so....
 
I siphon mine into a large trash can and then use a harden hose to drain it to our gravel drive way. You can install a facet hook up towards the bottom of the trash can or just siphon it through the hose ( that's what I do). If you can't siphon you can use a pump.
 
i guess i could string garden hoses all the way from the fish room out to the driveway, but thats more than 500 feet away...

not to mention that i'd forget the hoses are out there, they'd get grown over with grass and then i'd hit them with the mower... so.....

2 thoughts that i had:
1) dig a deep hole just outside the house, a few feet away from the foundation, and burry a bucket, or barrel or something and plumb my drain to that, thus keeping the salt off the surface of the ground and letting the grass come back some day....

2) figuring out some way to sepperate the salt from the water, then i can do whatever i want with the water, and i can dispose of the salt in a dry form, i was kinda thinking like a evap bed, but here again we're talking long hose runs from the house out to the field, or some kind of a filter...

the filter idea does seem to be the smallest, and easiest to set up, a RO membrane could be used to sepperate it, but thoes do need to be replaced every so often, and in that particular situation, if it would even work, would be a pain...
 
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tell ya what, you do it, send me pictures of how wrinkely and crusty you end up after, oh, lets say a year, and then we can talk about me trying it... OK cupcake?
:mrgreen:

not to mention that if i need to remove old dead skin, i use an angle grinder like any other real man... hehehehehe J/K

actually, now that i think about it, i was just watching an epp. of wild west tech, and they were talking about the origins of wild west bare knuckle boxing, and they said that some people would soak thier hands and faces in brine to toughen them up....
 
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I would think that an RO membrain would clog up pretty bad if you tried putting salt water though it.

How about a solar still?

A large shallow container with a dark cover outside in the sun. Then have a coil of hose and another container inside or in a shaded area. Then you could use that water to water your lawn.

Every once in a while you would have to empty salt out of the evaporation container but I think it could work.
 
Tristan said:
whoa my bad tough guy
Click to expand...

i think maybe you took what i was meaning to be funny, and took it too serously, i was only having some linguistic entertainment, thus the :mrgreen: k? no harm or malace intended, just trying to get a laugh...

yea, i was wondering if the salt would plug up the membrane,

yea, the solar still was kinda what i was thinking, only i wasnt thinking about trying to use the water so much as just sepperate the salt out so IT didnt end up on the surface killing the grass...

i supposed one thing that i could do is use the 48sq-ft solar collector i built to heat the evap container, thus just leaving the salt behind... just need to get me one of thoes solar powered circulation pumps to carry the heat transfer fluid from the collector to the tank... hmmmm

crap, that still leaves me having to plumb this mess a long way from the tank to somewhere i can set that stuff up tho.. darnit...
 
Pour it in the neighbors yard?

OR, you could go pour it in the ocean and se how many times you can do that until PETA shows up, then you can have them test your water for you for free!!!
 
I dump mine in the backyard. Our backyard is gravel only, and that's where the dogs hang out, so we are not ever going to try to grow anything back there. Sorry, my answer doesn't help you.
 
yea, but i live in a rural area, no curbs, so, it'd just either come back into my yard, or go into my neighbors, and thats just not right....

hmmm
 
I was also thinking that the amount of salt water you put into your septic system probably wont kill off your bacteria. If you think about it, the bacteria in our tanks do the same thing. Also, they live in :pooh: so they probably can take care of themselves. I would be more concerned about the volume of extra water you are putting in
 
It's not that much more water.

An average 5-minute shower uses approximately 15 gallons of water. And most of us take a shower every day. Dumping the water from a water change down the drain is nothing compared to all the other water that goes down the drain on a daily basis.
 
yea, i guess it really isnt a big deal to the septic... now that i think about the points yall are making, i mean, i know for a fact that my septic tank is 1500 gallons or more, and at most, i'd be looking at dumping maybe at absolute most, like 30 gallons at a time, unless there was some sort of an emergency, and then all bets are off...

30 gallons going into (presumably) 1500 gallons of water, assuming my monthly rid-ex regiment has done what its supposed to do... i should be good...

well then, that really makes my life easier...
 
30 gallons is like two showers worth.

If the bacteria can withstand the bleach, laundry detergent, dish detergent, drain cleaner, etc. that you put down your drain, saltwater isn't going to make them bat their little bacterial eyelashes.
 

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