Selfbuild Live
Environmentally friendly solutions for water management including domestic wastewater treatment and rainwater harvesting.
For over 50 years, the GRAF brand, a German based, family owned business founded in 1962, has been synonymous with high-quality plastic products; developing, manufacturing, and marketing an extensive range of products for water resource
management.
GRAF products are environmentally friendly solutions, with over 70% recycled raw materials used in manufacturing. GRAF Ireland opened its doors in 2015 with its head office in County Galway, offering the full range of GRAF products with bespoke solutions for the Irish market.
Wastewater Treatment Systems
On site treatment systems suitable for most soil types.
A house that cannot connect to the public sewer network needs to have an onsite system to collect, treat and discharge wastewater coming from the property.
There are three levels of wastewater treatment: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary treatment (septic tank) is when the wastewater is temporarily held in a 2-chamber tank. This is to allow sufficient time for the solids to settle at the bottom forming a sludge and the remaining liquid will pass to the second chamber where it will discharge into percolation trenches.
Secondary treatment (on site wastewater treatment plants) is when the wastewater is treated using oxygen which encourages the growth of bacteria to break down the solids.
The GRAF One 2 Clean is an SBR (sequential batch reactor system) which carries out treatment in batches to ensure consistent treatment and to conserve power usage. Discharge is gravity feed or pumped depending on site requirements or percolation needs.
Tertiary treatment is required when additional treatment to the effluent is needed prior to disposal Secondary treatment such as soil or sand polishing filters, packaged tertiary filters and percolation trenches are widely used but each site is unique and as such should be designed to your needs.
In the Republic this is determined by a Site Characterisation report completed by a site assessor prior to the application for planning permission and will determine what type of system is needed. In Northern Ireland a Consent to Discharge from the authorities is required before any wastewater system can be installed.
Rainwater Harvesting Systems
Rainwater collection to save on mains water usage.
Rainwater is abundant in Ireland and your roof area could allow you to conserve 50% of your water usage by harvesting the rain and re using it for toilet flushing, for washing machines, for general housekeeping and also for outside use via an external tap or irrigation system.
Did you know?
For both wastewater and rainwater treatment systems, GRAF supplies standard off-the-shelf packages suitable for most homes and commercial applications but can also design site-specific bespoke systems to suit individual requirements.
Water can be stored in suitable underground or over ground tanks, then filtered to remove leaves and other heavy debris, and pumped back into the property for reuse or as a garden only package which is a system designed for irrigation and outside cleaning purposes.
Tanks and filter packages range in size to suit any type of building, from the 1,500 litre Platin tank, right up to the 52,000 litre Carat XXL tank, there is a solution for all applications.
This post is sponsored content and first appeared in the Winter 2020 edition of Selfbuild magazine.
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