1000L later...
Whew! It's good to be home after a few days in the middle of nowhere!
Ok, so Collie was quite nice - there's about 7000 people there, and it's a 2.5 hour drive away from Perth. It's a coal mining town, and there's a huge jarrah forest there too. It's actually a really pretty place. The motel we stayed at was lovely. Sure, it was right next to the main road so you could hear all the roadtrains and trucks day and night, and the train tracks were there so you got the carrier trains day and night too - but omg the food was great! The restaurant (Henri's it was called) was brilliant - big TV to watch the news, and the food was surprisingly fantastic. Mick and I spent the days waiting for dinner lol. The lady who was in charge was absolutely lovely.
The place I was sampling from is Harris Dam. Harris is only a 10 minute drive out of Collie, but the water treatment plant is literally in the middle of nowhere and there is no reception for phones or anything out there at all. What's more - it's bloody hot! At the moment the state is experiencing the hottest summer in 30 years. Not fun when you need to wear steelcap boots, long sleave shirt and long pants! Luckly we managed to get a key from the WTP guy Mario, so we were able to set up our equipment and drive back to the airconditioning comfort of our motel rooms. We'd then periodically drive to check it. I tried to get a lot of work done in my room, but they had discovery channel! And it was shark month - lots of shark attacks and docs on sharks, I just had to watch them! So very interesting. I did get quite a bit of work done - just not as much as I'd thought I would.
I collected 1000L of water and used reverse osmosis to concentrate it down for easier transport and storage. I can 'concentrate' it because I'm looking at the natural organic matter found in the raw water - so I was pretty much separating the NOM from the pure water. Everything was going great - we collected the water on the first day, filtered it to get rid of large solid particles like sand etc., and then set up the RO to run. It took the RO two days and two nights to get that 1000L down to less than 100L. We were going really well - no hiccups whatsoever. Until the last 1/2 hour that is...
We'd checked it, and all was fine - so we decided that after 1/2 an hour we'd turn it off and full up the 50L sample containers. So we sat in the shade to wait - which was on the other side of the main WTP building. Half an hour passed, and we went to turn it off. As we walk, Mick suddenly shouts 'Where the f*ck is that water coming from?!' and we run towards it. The generator is flicking water everywhere, and the ground is soaked. Somehow the taped pipe had flipped out of the container, and my sample was going all over the equipment and onto the ground!
Luckily we didn't lose too much - about 10L - which is unfortunately a large proportion of concentrated sample. In the end I collected about 75L. Mick and I were right p*ssed off about it though. We have no idea how that pipe managed to get loose. However, it could've been so much worse - it could've happened during the night or something, so I could've lost everything. Or the lost water could've f*cked up the generator - and then we couldn't pump the sample from the main container into the sample canisters. We joked about what my supervior's (and Mick's boss) face would've looked like if we went back with broken equipment and no sample after four days!
So, it's not too bad - instead of 1000L, I probably have about 850L. Hopefully it won't make a difference.
So yes - that's about it for my week! I've collected my first sample!
*huggles all*
Ok, so Collie was quite nice - there's about 7000 people there, and it's a 2.5 hour drive away from Perth. It's a coal mining town, and there's a huge jarrah forest there too. It's actually a really pretty place. The motel we stayed at was lovely. Sure, it was right next to the main road so you could hear all the roadtrains and trucks day and night, and the train tracks were there so you got the carrier trains day and night too - but omg the food was great! The restaurant (Henri's it was called) was brilliant - big TV to watch the news, and the food was surprisingly fantastic. Mick and I spent the days waiting for dinner lol. The lady who was in charge was absolutely lovely.
The place I was sampling from is Harris Dam. Harris is only a 10 minute drive out of Collie, but the water treatment plant is literally in the middle of nowhere and there is no reception for phones or anything out there at all. What's more - it's bloody hot! At the moment the state is experiencing the hottest summer in 30 years. Not fun when you need to wear steelcap boots, long sleave shirt and long pants! Luckly we managed to get a key from the WTP guy Mario, so we were able to set up our equipment and drive back to the airconditioning comfort of our motel rooms. We'd then periodically drive to check it. I tried to get a lot of work done in my room, but they had discovery channel! And it was shark month - lots of shark attacks and docs on sharks, I just had to watch them! So very interesting. I did get quite a bit of work done - just not as much as I'd thought I would.
I collected 1000L of water and used reverse osmosis to concentrate it down for easier transport and storage. I can 'concentrate' it because I'm looking at the natural organic matter found in the raw water - so I was pretty much separating the NOM from the pure water. Everything was going great - we collected the water on the first day, filtered it to get rid of large solid particles like sand etc., and then set up the RO to run. It took the RO two days and two nights to get that 1000L down to less than 100L. We were going really well - no hiccups whatsoever. Until the last 1/2 hour that is...
We'd checked it, and all was fine - so we decided that after 1/2 an hour we'd turn it off and full up the 50L sample containers. So we sat in the shade to wait - which was on the other side of the main WTP building. Half an hour passed, and we went to turn it off. As we walk, Mick suddenly shouts 'Where the f*ck is that water coming from?!' and we run towards it. The generator is flicking water everywhere, and the ground is soaked. Somehow the taped pipe had flipped out of the container, and my sample was going all over the equipment and onto the ground!
Luckily we didn't lose too much - about 10L - which is unfortunately a large proportion of concentrated sample. In the end I collected about 75L. Mick and I were right p*ssed off about it though. We have no idea how that pipe managed to get loose. However, it could've been so much worse - it could've happened during the night or something, so I could've lost everything. Or the lost water could've f*cked up the generator - and then we couldn't pump the sample from the main container into the sample canisters. We joked about what my supervior's (and Mick's boss) face would've looked like if we went back with broken equipment and no sample after four days!
So, it's not too bad - instead of 1000L, I probably have about 850L. Hopefully it won't make a difference.
So yes - that's about it for my week! I've collected my first sample!
*huggles all*