Florida Winter Theme Park Adds a Complex Onsite System

18 tanks and thousands of feet of Geoflow dripline are employed to provide improved service for visitors to Snowcat Ridge

May 06, 2024 | by Scottie Dayton |

Florida Winter Theme Park Adds a Complex Onsite System — Snowcat Ridge theme park with the 60-foot tall, 400-foot-long snow tubing hill to the right followed by eight Eskimo Outlet Igloos and the Arctic Igloo. The Crystal Ribbon skating rink is in front of the dome on the left and Alpine Village is on the right. The retention pond is to the left of the onsite system with the Geoflow dripline drainfield in the foreground and tanks behind. (Photos courtesy of Southern Water and Soil)

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Two six-station specialty restroom trailers with low-flow fixtures and 40 portable standard units served 80 employees and an average 1,200 daily visitors to two seasonal theme parks in Dade City, Florida.

Scream-A-Geddon, a cluster of haunted houses, opens September through October, followed by adjoining snow park Snowcat Ridge, which opens from November through March. It has a concession stand with seating for 50 people.

In 2022, Pasco County officials required Benjamin Nagengast, owner of the attractions, to build permanent restrooms including 18 bathroom stalls. He contacted Greg Mayfield, president of Southern Water and Soil in Dade City. Mayfield had designed and installed an onsite system for another of Nagengast’s theme parks.

“Scream-A-Geddon opened in 2015 and Snowcat Ridge in November 2021,” says Mayfield. “Using portable sanitation enabled Ben to open for business and prepare financially for this expansive project.”

Mayfield replaced the existing 2,000 gpd system with 18 tanks and 8,784 square feet of Geoflow dripline. He subcontracted the installation, which spanned two months.

The portable sanitation elements remain in use to augment the permanent facilities.

SITE CONDITIONS

Soils are fine sand with a loading rate of 0.80 gpd per square foot. Depth to limiting factor on the combined 118-acre lot is 17 inches. Snowmelt and stormwater runoff divert through a pipe to a massive 25-foot-deep retention pond.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

Mayfield designed the system to treat 7,000 gpd. Major components include the following:

Snowcat Ridge Existing Tanks

Two 1,090-gallon IM-1060 grease traps. IM-Series tanks from Infiltrator Water Technologies.
1,500-gallon IM-1530 trash tank with two Omnivore 1 hp grinder pumps (Liberty Pumps)

Set in series:

1,500-gallon concrete trash tank. Precast tanks are from Gunter’s Septic Tank Mfg.
525-gallon concrete trash tank
1,050-gallon concrete dose tank

Scream-A-Geddon Existing Tanks

Two 1,090-gallon IM-1060 grease traps

Two series of:

1,500-gallon concrete trash tanks with two Omnivore 1 hp grinder pumps
525-gallon concrete trash tanks
1,050-gallon concrete dose tanks

Two parallel treatment trains each with:

1,090-gallon IM-1060 grease trap
1,500-gallon concrete equalization tank
Six Singular Green 600 gpd ATUs (Norweco)
Two 1,500-gallon IM-1530 dose tanks, each with a PVU57-1819 Biotube pump vault (Orenco) and 1/2 hp HB105 effluent pump (Norweco)
Four 1,098-square-foot zones WaterflowPRO 16-4-24 dripline (Geoflow)
Six ZIW-PLCD1 control panels (Orenco)

SYSTEM OPERATION

Piping is PVC Schedule 40.

Wastewater from the restroom trailers flows through a 4-inch sewer to the pretreatment tanks. Originally, effluent discharged to a 3,600-square-foot drainfield of Septic Stack units (Advanced Drainage Systems). (The standard restroom units reduced flow to the bed and remain in use.)

Now pretreated effluent is time-dosed from the tanks to a 2-inch force main. From Scream-A-Geddon, the force main run 3,300 feet to the first distribution box and 300 feet from Snowcat Ridge to the box, which splits the flow to the equalization tanks. A grease trap was added at the head of the treatment trains to accommodate additional seating at the Alpine Village concession stand.

Effluent from the equalization tank passes through the ATUs to a second distribution box that splits the flow between the dose tanks. Dedicated alternating pumps in the tanks feed eight drainfield zones, each with nine 61-foot-long driplines on 25-inch centers. Every two hours, a pump runs 15 minutes sending 73 gallons to its zone, or 875 gpd. “Florida requires time-dosing for drip irrigation,” explains Mayfield.

INSTALLATION

Mayfield led the team that included Guston Montes, president of Montes Trucking & Septic; Jarrod Chancey, proprietor of Integrated Septic Solutions; and Matt Walker, owner of Skywalker Septic. Chancey and Walker excavated the force main trenches and tank holes using a Bobcat T76 compact track loader, E85 tracked compact excavator, and a Caterpillar 305 excavator. Elevations were shot with a LL400 Laser Level (Spectra Precision/Trimble).

“I used to specify a large dose tank with two large pumps for commercial systems, but algae eventually gummed up the indexing valve and it needed maintenance,” says Mayfield. “I learned that it’s easier for contractors to install smaller pump tanks and more of them. They don’t need a crane company or large excavator to set them up, they’re simpler to maintain, and if one or two go down, the others are still operating. Redundancy works so much better.”

The existing drainfield was decommissioned. Crews discarded the 10-foot-long bundles of nine 4-inch HDPE pipes and excavated 12 inches of absorption bed to remove any biomat, then added 6 inches of septic sand delivered by Gaston and Devin Montes. Reestablishing the 24-inch-deep mound with one side sloping 15 feet required 60 loads of sand. Driplines were laid 18 inches above grade, then covered.