Settling Tank Cleaning

Part of my water catchment system is a settling tank.  The water runs off my roof, down through the internal gutters, across the leaf filter and into the settling tank.  Then when the level in the cistern drops, it's pumped from the settling tank through the various filters, and into the cistern.

Settling Tank

One of my yearly duties is cleaning out the settling tank.  It's really not that bad of a job anymore, now that I've figured out a good routine.  Normally I'd do this in October, but we got some rain in Nov so the settling tank was full.  I finally pumped the water out of it yesterday to top off the cistern.

~150 gallons of water and some mud at the bottom.

When it's pumped out, there is about 150 gallons of water left in the tank, with a thin layer of silty mud on the bottom of the tank.  I borrowed Valda's electric submersible pump, ran the hose back up through the leaf filter and pumped out the rest of the water.

Pump ready to be lowered into the tank.

Pump working away.

Water exiting through the overflow pipe.

Once that's all done, I got the shop vac out, removed the filter and vac'd up the rest of the water and the mud.  The hard part here is reaching through the opening to maneuver the shop vac attachments.  The overflow return pipe runs in front of the opening.  It's hard to reach across it with the vac.  I always end up with big bruises on my arms.  I may have to break down and get that pipe re-routed.

Leaf Filter Cleaned and replaced.

Small Pump is done.  The mud needs to be wet vac'd.

Wet Vac set up.

Mopped out and clean.

Anyway, once the wet vacing is done, I wipe it out with a mop, and then leave the top off so it dries out. Sometime this spring, or early summer, I'll get low of potable water in my cistern and turn the collection system back on. I like to wait until we've had a couple of hard rains to wash off most of the dust, etc. that collects on my roof. No sense in adding more mud to the settling tank than I have too.