Water Treatment Plant, Colyford, Devon

I'm absolutely fascinated by these sites and having seen this on Google Earth, and seeing how large it is, I decided to go for a walk to check it out. I didn't expect to be able to see much, as it looked quite secure, but the God of Urbex was surely with me that day and lo and behold...the gate was open! So, not wanting to appear rude by turning down an invitation, I strolled in. ;) 
 

I kept mainly to the path as I could see a South West Water Authority van parked up by the site office and wanted to take as many photos as I could before getting rumbled.

It was a gorgeously sunny, frosty and freezing cold, winter afternoon in January 2009, with an almost full moon in the sky. You can just about see the moon in the photo below...albeit very small.

I've tried to find out about the process of water treatment but there are so many different types of plants, and many different processes, that it's hard to find a suitably comprehensive definitive explanation. However, I've managed to get sense of the very basics, which go something like this... 

Water Filtration consists of four processes; Preliminary Treatment - screening out solids, Primary Settlement & Secondary Settlement - sedimentation beds, and Tertiary - includes such things as biological/chemical cleaning, nutrient stripping in filter beds and effluent discharge.

Obviously, there's a lot more to it than that, but I don't want to get bogged down (no pun intended!) with a huge amount of details for every different kind of process...even if I could sort it out from all the information available! ;)

 

 

The circular settling tanks (also known as sedimentation or sand filtration tanks) contain layers of anthracite, sand and gravel. As the name suggests, they are used to filter out sediment from the water.

I was just into my second roll of film when I heard an 'Excuse me, but you're not meant to be here'. I apologised and explained my interest and the bloke was very nice about it, but he did say he had to escort me off. Something he told me about, which surprised me, is that if anyone wants to see a site they just have to ring up South West Water as they're only too happy to give permission and provide an operative to accompany them (for health and safety reasons). I don't know if it applies to all water authorities, but it's worth phoning to find out.

And some half a mile or so downstream from the plant along the River Coly, and at the edge of Colyford village, is this lovely tiny water pumping station.

A lovely afternoon, an excellent explore and an enjoyable walk of a good two miles each way. And to put the cherry on the icing, the late afternoon sun provided lots more photo opportunities on the way home.