Not A Drop To Waste

By Kevin M. Padden

When you decide to become a stone fabricator, a couple of the first things that become “clear as mud” are:
1. Where is my water going to come from?
2. How much will I have available?
3. How will I keep a cheap supply readily available for my shop to use?
These are three difficult questions to ask yourself … preferably before you commit to a master plan design of shop location, flow rates of work and overall shop layout. In order to establish or expand your current shop operation, you’ll need to consider the water issue as a main part of your overall plan of attack in making your shop operate at its maximum potential, and still be capable of expansion.
There are four basic ways that a shop can utilize its water supply and deal with demand.

METHOD ONE
You can do like a fellow I know in the business. He would just open the values – he’d hook all of his equipment up to fresh-water feeds and pay the water bill, or hope that his well pumps didn’t burn out.
Of course, he needed hip waders before long, and later on he found about fixing the foundations of his fabrication-shop buildings. He forgot one key item: He never thought about where all of the water that he used was going to go.
I suppose he could have dumped everything down his sewer mains, or pumped it out onto the empty property next door; but, before long, he’d have a neighboring landscape that looks like something from a quagmire (not to mention the squadrons of mosquitoes loitering around his shop planning multiple dive-bombing missions on his employees). Or much worse, he’d have to answer to the city regulators giving him a fine for clogging up their sewer lines, and those of his neighboring businesses.
So much for complete irresponsibility and total disregard for your environment and your neighbors.

METHOD TWO
A much more-equitable solution to your water issues will be to use the “R” word: recycling. The amount of water you’ll use is dependent upon the amount available to you (obviously), but what you do with that water is up to you. If you employ any level of recycling, you will see a return on your investment.
The easiest and least-expensive system for recycling is to install catch pans under your saws and polishing machines. Using individual pumps, you can recirculate the water, although there’s no real way to filter the runoffs.
This is very similar to the method used in conventional tile saws, obviously intended for a very small, low-volume shop. It shouldn’t be expected to sustain your shop when the day comes for you to grow along with your demand.

METHOD THREE
Probably the most-popular method of water recycling is for you to plan out drainage flow using trenches in the floor of your shop. It will be of great benefit to you if, during construction of a new facility or remodeling the current one, you pitch the floors of your shop to drain into your main trenches. Just make sure that you pitch your drains to all drain or run to a main collection tank for your system.
The differences in many of the self-designed water recycling systems are how you collect the water; how you remove the solids; and how you return your water supply to your shop. There are a number of excellent pre-fabricated water-recycling systems that utilize a flocculent tower with gravity-fed methods of filtering the water from a tower tank that flows into and through a series of bags to collect the solids contained within the water you’re recycling.
Most of these systems are made of steel, and the majority of these are installed above ground. In climates where winter means more than putting on a long-sleeved T-shirt, you’ll need to consider freeze-thaw procedures that would otherwise shut down the system in the worst parts of the winter months.
The other serious consideration that you will really need to think about is the type of pumps (and, yes that is pumps, as in more than one). Regardless of the system you settle on, you should have a main pump as well as a back up. Murphy ’s Law will always work against you if you think about the granite fabricator’s musings of “One pump will never die, it won’t even fade away – it will just freeze up on you just when you REALLY need it to be working.”
Commercial pool pumps – ones designed for fountains – will work great for any need you’ll encounter. I’ve used 150 gallons-per-minute (GPM) pumps in tandem to push all of the water back into my shop. I installed a third pump as yet another redundant system; this way, I’d never have any downtime if any pump fails for any reason.

METHOD FOUR
The multiple tank-in-ground system yields the highest capacity of pumping the cleanest water per minute. However, it’s also the most-costly and most-technical.
You can do this cheaply by using pre-cast concrete tanks or vaults, steel tanks or (with the biggest price tag) cast-in-place poured concrete. The cast-in-place technique will afford you the highest degree of control in assuring proper pitch for good flow from the dirtiest tank to the cleanest tank. A cast-in-place system will need a tremendous amount of reinforcement bar, and at least a week and a half’s worth of form work, prior to pouring the first yard of cement.
If you plan out your system for current needs, and plan in for future needs, you won’t have to worry about running low on water – especially when you need it most.
Kevin M. Padden is vice president and general manager, Arizona, of IMC Inc. in Phoenix.

This article first appeared in the January 2003 print edition of Stone Business. ©2003 Western Business Media Inc.