Filterra Stormwater Treatment

[Wes Arola, RLA]

Anyone familiar with this product…or used it before…? I was thinking it would be quite easy to design/detail a home made dumbed down version that might be cheaper and have a higher capacity…thoughts?

http://www.filterra.com/

 

Are the benefits of this that it is a prefab catalog item and its more of a plug and play type deal?

Is this for applications where the bio filtration needs to be covered/contained?

What type of plant material would you suggest using, and other alternatives for a similar system?

[Tosh K]

Used them a fair amount in VA.  Everything comes engineered, so liability wise is nice.  The units were installed in urban/tight environments where there wasn’t enough area for above ground systems.  They can help with potentially larger units as well.  The maintenance schedule comes from the manufacturer and is a heck of a lot easier than a full bioswale (though the reps have told us that their follow-ups have indicated that plant root expansion seems to be making up for silting in many sites).

 

We always spec’d drought tolerant hardy shrubs/grasses.

 

I’ve seen Flo-gard used as an alternative (it’s more mechanical and has no planting).

 

[Boilerplater]

Its too bad they don’t have any photos of installations with more mature trees on their website…well, there is one, but in all the others the trees look pretty pathetic.  I’d like to see how well they do over time in a regularly saturated soil in a concrete box.  The one with the larger tree appears to be in a more arid environment.  For plant material, you’d want to go with floodplain and facultative wetland plants.  Something about the asymmetry of the installation bothers me.  You have probably $2K in concrete, tree grate and inlet, and then you have a $20 plant stuck in it.  It just doesn’t look right!  Looks like something an engineer designed, like when you have a square detention basin with 2 or 3 little trees planted around it.

[Wes Arola, RLA]

very good stuff, thank you henry!

[Author]

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