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| Project Name, Location: |
Crazy D's Truck Stop ( Pilot Travel Center) |
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Onsite Wastewater Treatment & Disposal System Improvements |
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10619 9A Road, Plymouth, Indiana 46563 |
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| System Type: |
Bacpac® Pre-Treatment System |
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| Discharge Type: |
Absorption Field with Flood-Dosed Trench |
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| Installation Date: |
November, 2005 |
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| Design Flow Specs: |
Fow Rate: |
7000 gpd |
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Soil Type: |
Various with loading rate of 0.3 gpd / sf |
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No. of bacpacs: |
7 |
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| Project Description: |
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Crazy D’s Truck Stop (acquired by Pilot Travel Centers in April 2006 after this project was completed) is a 24-hour gas station and includes a restaurant, bathroom, and showers facilities. Three previous onsite wastewater treatment systems were installed at the facility to handle wastewater treatment and disposal and they all failed. The initial system consisted of a field const ructed 12,000 gallon, three compartment concrete septic tank and gravity absorption field. The second project added two 1,500 gallon dosing tanks and a new pressure lateral absorption field. The absorption field failed almost immediately after installation. The third project included installation of a new constructed wetland system and a new pressure lateral field. The constructed wetland system failed within two years after its installation due to the high strength restaurant waste and lack of proper operation and maintenance.
Algaewheel, Inc. designed, permitted, manufactured, and installed a new bacpac® wastewater treatment system to replace the existing failed constructed wetland system. In addition to the new bacpac® system, a new absorption field was installed utilizing chamber technology. The Indiana State Department of Health was the primary regulatory agency to permit the system with the Marshall County Health Department serving as the local permitting and inspection agency. Algaewheel provides operation and maintenance services for the new wastewater system.
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| Reasons for Previous System Failures |
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Conventional septic systems and constructed wetland treatment systems are unable to handle high strength wastes properly and were not suitable for this facility. In addition, the lack of adequate operation and maintenance expedited the inevitable failure of the constructed wetland and absorption fields.
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| What Solutions Were Considered |
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The Owner considered abandoning their existing onsite treatment system altogether and installing new pumping facilities to pump the wastewater to the City of Plymouth’s wastewater collection system. However, due to the high costs associated with this option combined with the fact that the City did not want the wastewater, it was decided to replace the existing failed system.
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| Comments on the Design |
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The facility is a truck stop with a restaurant, restrooms and showers. Based on the anticipated high-strength waste generated by the restaurant, and the fact that three previous systems had failed so quickly after installation, the Algaewheel system incorporated a conservative design approach.
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| Specifications for the New System |
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Design Flow: The system was designed for a peak daily flow of 7,000 gallons per day with the majority of the flow generated by the restaurant.
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Treatment System: Three existing 1,500 gallon grease traps were left in place to intercept grease from the restaurant. The existing 12,000 gallon septic tank was converted to an equalization tank. The existing septic tank effluent pump station was converted to a raw sewage pump station by replacing the existing pumps with new raw sewage pumps and re-directing the force main from the constructed wetland to seven new bacpac® treatment units. Seven new 2,000 gallon septic tanks operating in parallel were added following the bacpac® tanks. Effluent passes from the septic tanks to a dosing tank which pumps effluent to the absorption field.
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Absorption Field: The previously installed disposal fields and other constraints limited the selected disposal field site to a remote location. The benefits of traditional pipe and trench, pressure dosed field, and chamber technology were evaluated. The logistics and costs associated with transporting fill and/or installing a traditional pipe and trench field or a pressure dosed field tipped the scale toward a chamber system. Transporting the gravel alone over the field would cause excessive compaction which reduces the potential life of the field. The lighter weight of the chamber units eliminated the compaction concern.
The soil types varied considerably throughout the absorption field site. The most restrictive soil type required that a 0.3 loading rate be used for sizing the absorption field. Four separate disposal fields were laid out based on regulatory design criteria. Each field consisted of four separate banks of five laterals. Each lateral is 100 feet long. Four main pressure lines from the existing dosing tank dispense the treated effluent to the new fields via four primary concrete d-boxes. Each of the four primary d-boxes then distributes flow to four secondary d-boxes which in turn distribute flow to the laterals in each field. A total of 20, concrete d-boxes were used on this project. The system is designed to dose each field once per day.
This flood dosed system is the largest chamber system permitted in the State of Indiana to date with a total of 8,000 lineal feet of trench.
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| How Does the Tehnology Work ? |
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Seven bacpac® units were installed to handle the high strength waste prior to the new septic tanks. The bacpac® units utilize technology which includes an aerated, rotating media filter component designed to promote algal and bacterial growth. The bacpac® also incorporates a heterogeneous bacterial mixed liquor for a more complete nutrient removal. Effluent from the bacpac® tanks flows into the settling tanks where the algae enhance solids setting. Anaerobic digestion of the algae and bacteria in the settling tanks effectively converts the captured nitrogen into nitrogen gas, and locks phosphorus into the inert sediments at the bottom of the tank. These nutrients are effectively captured at this phase of the system. While total suspended solids in the effluent from the settling tanks are generally low, we included an effluent filter assembly as a precaution to further protect the disposal fields.
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| Results |
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The new onsite wastewater treatment system started operation in January of 2006. Construction took about four weeks with two of those weeks due to weather delays during one of the coldest Decembers on record in Indiana. The Owner was very pleased to see the system come online so quickly since Crazy D’s was being forced to pump and haul wastewater for over six months until the problem was corrected. The Owner was especially happy with the timely installation and overall budget of the project even though extreme weather conditions made construction difficult. Lastly, the footprint of the new system took up less than a quarter of the area of the old constructed wetland system.
The local health department was happy to see the new system operational and that Algaewheel is taking responsibility to operate and maintain the system. Lack of maintenance is a principal reason why many onsite wastewater systems fail.
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