Burning Man Skills

Step 8 Greywater Evaporator Pond

Here's the simplest kind of greywater evaporator. It's some sticks laid on the ground to hold up the edges of a black tarp. The used wash water gets dumped here, and evaporates away, leaving some crusty crud behind. That gets bundled up with the tarp and thrown away somewhere away from the playa.

To the left is a geodesic dome made from electrical conduit.

Comments

[naught101]

Why use an open air evaporator? You're in a desert - you need water. the more you evaporate, the more you have to carry in. There are two reasons to evaporate water in a desert: for cooling, as you've pointed out in previous images, and for drinking/washing. the latter is obviously more important. This (and most other Burning man evaporators, apparently), simply waste the water. Why not use an evaporative solar still? You're in the perfect place for it, and in the end, you get pure water, that you can re-use again. They aren't hard to set up... all you need is a water reservoir covered with a clear plastic sheet, with a small rock in the middle, and a bucket under it. Armies do it to purify urine. I'm sure burning man people could do even better than that.

[ruviwije]

Speaking for my camp, we generate way too much greywater for a solar still. We have 40+ people taking one or more showers a day... Even being careful with water use, it adds up to quite a lot of grey water. The evap pond we set up is about 3X the size of this one and we make sure to spread the water out so that it evaporates faster. Last year I took a 2 gallon garden sprayer and that was excellent for a washing your body with minimal amounts of water wasted. The mister thingy worked really well for dishes too. We still used solar shower water bags for washing hair. The pump method in the link below is one of the best ways to do it, but we have had problems with pumps getting clogged or failing. Last: Remember to save water and bathe with a friend :)

[technomorph]

This works WAY better than the standard black plastic in a wood frame:

http://eplaya.burningman.com/viewtopic.php?t=12911