Presentation: Drip Dispersal Maintenance on Residential and
Commercial Projects
Drip
dispersal is the most effective and efficient way to reintroduce treated
effluent back into the soil. There it
can be further treated, nutrients removed by plants and microbes and finally
water made available for reuse and recharge.
The tubing itself is composed primarily of polyethylene and has a
real-life expectancy of greater than 30 years.
The problems that occur over that lifetime can often shorten it and require
replacement if maintenance is not performed on the equipment ahead of the drip
tubing and the tubing itself. The talk
will explore the various aspects of drip dispersal beginning with pretreatment
of the effluent followed by pumping, filtration and time dosing of the
tubing. Maintenance can be broken down
into elements such as pretreatment,
filtration, pumping and dosing as well.
Each of these elements have unique items to maintain and as well as when
the maintenance is performed. Some must
be done daily and weekly while others at longer intervals of monthly and
annually. Mechanical maintenance
includes filters, valves and pumps.
Associated, parallel maintenance items can include UV and chemical
disinfection equipment, flow meters and controllers. Performance maintenance will include flushing
of the drip tubing, chemical treatment to remove precipitants and finally
restoration of reduced flow emitters.
The discussion will cover aspects of both residential and commercial
applications, general differences in equipment and methods or techniques used
to maintain each. The discussion will
focus on the common and unique aspects of maintenance for the two, wastewater
approved drip products used in the industry today.
David Morgan is the Technical Manager
for Geoflow, Inc.
He has a B.S.
degree in Agriculture Engineering from Mississippi State University
He worked two
years for the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce, while there
he set up the state Weights and Measures laboratory and obtained certification
from the U.S. Bureau of Standards
He worked
eighteen years for the Mississippi State Department of Health, while there he
assisted in writing and implementing rules and regulations for soil and site evaluation,
wastewater treatment and disposal systems for the onsite industry. Mr. Morgan also developed training programs
for Public Health Environmentalist, designers, installers, and operators of
individual onsite wastewater treatment and disposal systems.
He worked for
one year for Geoflow, Inc. as the southeastern regional sales manager, while
there he worked with regulators, designers and installers of subsurface drip
disposal systems.
He worked ten
years for Delta Environmental Products, Inc., while there he assisted in the
development and refinement of the Whitewater® Pre-Engineered Subsurface Drip
Disposal System. Mr. Morgan obtained
regulatory approval for the Whitewater® system and trained designers, installers,
operators, and regulatory officials on the proper use of the system. While with Delta he served on the peer-review
team for the TVA guidance document on subsurface drip disposal systems.
Mr. Morgan
returned to Geoflow, Inc. in June of 2008 as the Eastern Regional Manager and
currently assists regulators with development of rules and regulations for
subsurface drip disposal systems.
Currently Mr. Morgan serves as Technical Manager and among other things,
provides training and assist professionals involved in the soil and site evaluation,
system design, installation, and operation and maintenance of subsurface
disposal systems.
James Prochaska, P.E., President, JNM
Technologies Jim holds and
Bachelor’s and Master of Science (Agricultural/Civil Engineering) from Texas
A&M University, 1987. Mr. Prochaska
began his extensive career in waste-water treatment and effluent reuse. Since
that time, he has been responsible for the design and development of projects
ranging from 300 gpd to 8 million gpd. His projects have included domestic, municipal
and industrial waste-water generators. Since 1994, Mr. Prochaska has devoted
the majority of his time towards the development of on-site wastewater
treatment and disposal using subsurface drip irrigation. He has worked as a
principal designer and reviewer on several of these projects and has spent even
more time training and educating engineers and sanitarians on how to design
on-site systems. He has taken this technology to domestic, agricultural and
food processing wastewater generators as an environmentally sound means of
waste-water treatment and dispersal. Currently he is active throughout the
United States in developing the onsite wastewater industry and the use of
subsurface drip dispersal methods. Mr. Prochaska provides leadership and guidance
in his principal role as President of JNM Technologies, Inc. In this capacity
he along with his staff have developed and refined the most modern and
effective methods used for wastewater effluent dispersal using subsurface drip
irrigation. Under his leadership, the company has developed an extensive line
of equipment including patented filtration processes, system controllers,
installation methods and design aides. The equipment and applications range
from single family homes to large, non-sewered communities.
