saltwater + septic system

M

maaltan

AC Members
Sep 11, 2004
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I am researching various waste treatment options in the pursuit of buying a house.

It seems that dumping brine into septic systems is very bad for them. Also there are a few places around here that prohibit dumping brine into town sewer.

My question is how do you dispose of the 20% brine water a week that you change in saltwater systems? I had some crazy ideas of making some sort of elaborate evaporation field where that I could then collect the salt and dump it. Then i got to thinking that there are millions of saltwater aquariums and I've never seen any such products available. if this was really a problem then there would be commercial products trying to solve it.

I hope to have a 300g or so tank (hard to find houses with family rooms with concrete floors). i was considering saltwater, but knowing this i'm not sure.
 
why not get one of those wading pools, leave it outside, and dump the saltwater there, let it evaporate, and dump the salt like you said.
 
brine water is pretty much just saltwater
 
musho3210 said:
why not get one of those wading pools, leave it outside, and dump the saltwater there, let it evaporate, and dump the salt like you said.
Click to expand...

I considered something like that. it would probably work great in the spring/early summer here. In the late summer averages 90% humidity and in the winter its usually very wet.

As for killing the plants where you dump, thats just one indicator of the problem. the problem i read with septic systems is that not only does it inhibit waste breakdown, the salts accumulate in the drainage field eventually burning the land so nothing will grow again.

Salt doesn't disappear, it stays in the environment until it can be swept back to the ocean. a small tank probably has a minimal/no effect on the environment, but my "dream tank" will have enough waste water that a freshwater will stress a septic system (but hopefully there will be a ditch, etc near by i can use)

Then again they dump more salt in 10 seconds on the roads that i would dump into the ditch in a year. but thats another controversy. http://www.newyorkwater.org/downloadedArticles/ENVIRONMENTANIMPACT.cfm
 
I don't think that 60 gallons of saltwater a week would be enough to cause too much harm. I drain my brackish and sw tanks into our dirt driveway, so I don't really care if the salt builds up there, nothing grows there anyway and when it rains it gets diluted and washed away. I would look at maybe syphoning it down the road into a sewer or something...it would probably get diluted enough that no one would notice. And, as you mentioned, it would be a lot less salty than the first few spring rains/melting that washes all the built up salt off the road.
 
Mine drains under the decks. Nothing grows there and that makes me happy.
 
i only change about 5 gallosn a week, so no big deal for me. but occationaly i actualy dump mine on my driveway. it is a stone driveway, so in the winter, it prevents ice buildup, and in the summer, it prevents from weeds growing there.... ugh... weeding... how i loath it....
i find it hard to believe that towns dont let you dump saltwater anywhere on the ground after all the salt they add to the roads in the winter. of course, you arent necessarily in a place that gets snow....
 
good point fishieness, i might do that since chicago is a snowy city.
 
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