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Wastewater Gardens®
A beautiful and natural wastewater
recycling system
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Wastewater Gardens® for the Lutowiska Commune
Wastewater Garden for the Lutowiska Commune is a pilot, demonstration project. The system treats part of the total amount of sewage produced in 300 households located in the commune. They are treated in existing conventional biological wastewater treatment plant, which is not fully effective. The wastewater garden has been located in the vicinity of this treatment plant.
Wastewater Garden compartment of the area of 36m2 is filled with gravel and planted with diverse composition of plant species. It has been designed to treat about 0,7m3 of sewage, what is average amount produced by a family of 4-5 people.
Preparing the site designated as system location was the first step of the construction phase. Excavation works has been made in the places where compartment, septic tank, control box, pipe system, and water pond collecting treated wastewater had been planned. All excavation and most of construction works have been made using local resources. The unemployed local citizens found the job at the construction of the wastewater garden.
Next, the compartment has been sealed with watertight liner and pipe system has been installed. Then leaking test has been performed. The compartment has been filled with water to the certain level and left for 16 hours to check if there is no uncontrolled leakage.
After the leaking test had successfully been passed the compartment was filled with gravel and then with water again. Afterwards the plants were planted. Some of the plants came from the Botanical Garden in Krakow, others were bought in forest nursery in Orelec or collected from the nearby meadows. Altogether around 140 plants representing 25 species were planted. All installations works took 3 days.
The last construction works.
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Settling of the control box.
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Installation of filter and wastewater
flow control devices.
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Watertight liner.
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The leaking test - filling the compartment
with water.
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The wastewater garden directly after
end of work - 11th of June 2003.
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Diverse plant composition treats the wastewater
more effectively.
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Plants in wastewater garden are beautiful
and adopted to local conditions.
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The wastewater garden after one month of operation.
The wastewater garden survived severe winter time and works great!
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