R.W. Kern Center's Water Treatment System
The R.W. Kern Center’s design documents explain that the building’s greywater—water from the bathrooms and kitchen sinks and drinking fountain drains—will be pre-filtered and captured in a greywater storage tank.
From there it will be pumped into an indoor planter system where it will evapotranspire into the atmosphere and undergo an aerobic treatment process. Water that cannot be absorbed by the planter will continue outdoors to a subsurface-flow constructed wetland. Within the treatment wetland, greywater volume will be further reduced through evapotranspiration, and will undergo an anaerobic treatment process.
Water exiting the treatment wetland will enter an outlet/sampling/recirculation chamber. This chamber will simultaneously control the water level of the wetland, pump treated greywater to the disposal leach field, allow for sampling of treated water, and recirculate greywater back to the indoor planter system.