Liquid Waste Management Techniques

 Nowadays, their are lots of liquid waste produced by kitchen and water-closet. Here I explain two methods for dump your waste in a eco-friendly way. 

1.      Soakage pit system

A soak pit, also known as a soak away or leach pit, is a covered, porous-walled chamber that allows water to slowly soak into the ground.

Feasibility: Houses without adequate space for kitchen garden.

Construction: House owner can construct the pit himself by getting the information of the design. The soak pit should be between 1.5 and 4 m deep, but as a rule of thumb, never less than 2 m above the groundwater table. It should be located at a safe distance from a drinking water source.

 Operation & Maintenance: Filter to be cleaned every fortnight or month, depending on accumulation of dirt.  Make a hook of thick wire and pierce it in the filter and take filter media out and clean/wash it and dry and replace it in the earthen pot. Soak pit loses its capacity within a period of 7 to 8 years of work. At that time take out the boulders from the pit, scrap the walls of the pit in order to remove the oily layer; let the pit dry for a period of 2 to 3 days and clean and dry the boulders and replace into the pit.

2.      Kitchen Garden without Piped Root Zone System

 With this methodology also, greywater can be utilized to grow vegetables, flowers or fruits in the court-yard of the house.

 Feasibility: Houses with adequate court-yard. 

 Construction: The system has following component: • A grease trap to collect silt • A simple bed of appropriate size to absorb the available water • Let the greywater flow into the bed • Plant suitable vegetable or flowers at both the side of the trench.

Operation & Maintenance: Periodical cleaning of the grease trap (every week).

·         Leach Pit

Feasibility: Houses without adequate space for kitchen garden where waste water discharge is relatively more and pit structure is such that it enhances the leaching effect.

Construction:  Leach Pit is a brick lined pit constructed in honeycomb masonry having a volume of about 0.75 cubic meters.  Construct the pit in circular fashion with honey combing in alternate layers. The pit can be constructed with single brick (100mm) with a mortar in the ratio of 1:6. Connect the drain pipe coming from the house to the leach pit via a grease trap. A P-trap is necessary between the pit and the outlet from the house to avoid vectors entering the leach pit. The pit should be covered with RCC cover or flag stone slab. The diameter of the cover should be 100mm more than that of the pit.

Operation & Maintenance:  Periodical cleaning of the P-trap and Periodical removal of the sludge from the pit.

These is two major sustainable techniques for liquid waste management which will be less impacted for the environment.