Constructed Wetland

Hi All.
I am new to this forum. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
I have built a sub surface horizontal flow wetland to treat our greywater. The wetland is approximately 8 square meters.Planted with Canna Indica and some other bog plants. Been in operation for about 10 months and is flourishing.
Greywater (including kitchen) goes through gravity fed woodchip and course sand filter before it enters the wetland. Hardly any smell. Effluent is fairly good.
Does anyone have any suggestions to fine filter and polish the effluent in order to store it longer and reuse in toilet as well?
Also any ideas to bring alkalinity down?

Philip

I have seen people do
1)Grey Water
2)Worm Bed
3)Sediment Filter
4)Duckweed/Azolla Tank
5)Fish Tank
6)Oyster Mushroom Grow Tower (wood chip/straw)
7)Vegetable Grow Bed (sand/gravel bed)
8) Pump, piping, etc

If you are adding 100gallon per day to the system, then your system would have to be  1,000 gallon aka 10X otherwise you can shock the system.

The fish will eat the worms, oyster mushroom compost (mycelium after you eat the the fruiting body, chickens will also eat this), duckweed/Azolla (sheep/goat/cow can also eat this or green manure for compost), you could also add a BSF composting/fish feeder unit in the summer, and also a bug zapper feeder for the fish/chicken.

Philip Scheltens wrote:Hi All.
I am new to this forum. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
I have built a sub surface horizontal flow wetland to treat our greywater. The wetland is approximately 8 square meters.Planted with Canna Indica and some other bog plants. Been in operation for about 10 months and is flourishing.
Greywater (including kitchen) goes through gravity fed woodchip and course sand filter before it enters the wetland. Hardly any smell. Effluent is fairly good.
Does anyone have any suggestions to fine filter and polish the effluent in order to store it longer and reuse in toilet as well?
Also any ideas to bring alkalinity down?

Philip

A holding pond (fish pond) might help polish it a bit.

How much alkalinity are we talking about?  Perhaps reducing the amount of soap going in, or switching to a different type?  Are you including your laundry water?  Perhaps process it separately and use it immediately, while holding the remaining (processed) grey water for toilet use?

For what it's worth, I'm in the process of constructing a similar system with similar goals so I'd be VERY interested in more details on your system, especially details about the contents/quality of your processed grey water.

I'm afraid I don't have much advice to offer but I'm very interested in this type of system. Been wanting to set one up at my place but I'm getting resistance from the county health department.

I'm planning on having mine discharge into a cattail filled pond (small one that I was going to build) that would connect to a swale to help spread the water out. But I first need to get the first constructed wetland approved...

Welcome to Permies Philip. Here in Ireland we're usually blessed with plenty rainfall, so the most ecological and straightforward thing to do is to let gravity bring the wastewater through the wetland and on into the percolation area and then likewise let gravity bring your rain down into a raised holding tank and plumb that to the toilet cistern so that pumps aren't necessary anywhere.

In a drier climate I think I'd use a compost toilet instead of recycling flush water. In fact, I use a dry system anyway, and in our recent "absolute drought" (20 days of no rain, which is unheard of here, but which most of you will probably laugh at) having a dry toilet means I can take some council water for plants and still know that my use is well below average. My 4000 litre rain water storage tanks were emptied for maintenance into my pond at just the wrong time!

In Ireland we'd use about 20-30m2/person for a constructed wetland system for all domestic effluent depending on whether the effluent was being percolated to ground or to a stream. Thus if you're getting good results with your 8m2, then continue whatever is currently working in terms of what you put down the drain.

Perhaps a biosand filter would work well before a final storage pond (http://www.biosandfilter.org/). Consider your N and P loading, and minimise those if you can. These will lead to algal blooms in your pond if the levels are high.