Sunday 25th November, part 2
With the town
distracted by the parades associated with the religious holiday, we were out
emptying the septic tank of a local school…
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| Parade in the town centre |
We have a
little generator on site powering lights for the night-work
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| The roofs are off, awaiting the first sludge delivery |
The vacutug
arrives, pulled by a tractor
The hose is
connected to the back…
And finally
our first sight (and smell) of the long waited-for sludge…
Except it’s
not very sludgy…and is a lot like wastewater!
We decide to just use the filter beds for this lot, as this isn’t the
consistency that we were designing for, and if we put it in the flat beds, we
will just have smelly puddles.
It seems the
vacutug is best for removing the liquid portion of the septic tanks contents,
and cannot remove the solid/ sludge part.
A learning point – clear definitions of ‘sludge’ are needed when setting
up/ operating FSM designs/ projects.
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| Animated discussions about sludge |
There then follows lots of
deliberations about the sludge issue – whether the septic tanks will have the
right stuff in, if not, where to get it from, how to remove it, how to
transport it, who to do it, how much we need…
Meanwhile,
the filters start draining out the excess water – slightly clearer than what
went in!
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| Drained effluent from the three filter beds |
One of the beds had some wiggling travellers in....
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| Maggots |
Night falls,
and we retire for the evening, and plan to reconvene at Practical Action’s
offices in the morning to plan our next steps.
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