Flo Tanks: Recycled, Modular and Versatile
Flo Tanks: Recycled, Modular and Versatile
Here at Eco Sustainable House, we love multipurpose products; and the modular plastic Flo Tanks from Atlantis Corporation are a great example of that. Made from recycled and chemically stable plastic, these deceptively simple crates last for decades in just about any application.
This flat packed product is perfect for projects of any size, eliminates the need for cranes and other heavy machinery, and can get into tight access sites. That alone makes them a much better choice than gravel pits and concrete tanks.
Each tank only takes a few minutes to put together, with only a rubber mallet required for tools, as the video below demonstrates.
The simple pin-and-hole system allows you to customise the number of internal plates to suit the loading requirements. Furthermore you can stack these units vertically to create a deeper system.
But what really makes the Flo Tanks a great product, is their versatility. As you'll see below, they have a huge range of uses, many beyond what you'd expect!
1. Passive Irrigation in Planter Boxes
In Australia, water retention and efficiency is so important. We can go from droughts to flash floods so quickly that it is important to retain what rainwater we can. With the addition of a few small units to each of your planter boxes which fill during rainstorms. Then the geofabric wrapped tanks slowly release their retained water into the surrounding soil as it dries out. The result is your plants can enjoy passive irrigation over a longer period of time.
Ensure there is a decent buffer of sand (or other non-growing media) before the tank so that roots do not break through the geofabric barrier. If not in a planter box you can use impermeable plastic liner to create a '3 sided box' for retaining water.
This particular application is more suited to Mini and Single Flo tanks, as you don't want to create too much of an air gap as the water dries up between instances of rainfall.
2. Aquascaping & Pond Filtration
Maintaining a full water feature - whether its a pondless waterfall, fountain, steam or wildlife pond - in the hot Australian conditions can be difficult. Utilising Atlantis Flo Tanks to maximise water storage capacity (more than 3-times what gravel will provide!) while reducing the reservoir footprint, is a good way to avoid that evaporation issue. Add, on top of that, all the benefits of easy installation and reduced labour costs and its easy to see why these are an essential aquascaping material.
Atlantis Flo tanks are fully tested for water potability as well as chemical leeching, so you can be sure the eco system of your pond will be safe and healthy. They're also far more space efficient and easier to clean that basins made using gravel, which means less time maintaining your waterscape and more time enjoying it.
3. Void Fill
At Eco Sustainable House, a lot of our regular landscaper clients are dealing with dense urban projects. This means high rise buildings and rooftop gardens, and the big problem with those is the weight of the soil. Now the Flo tanks, along with being easy to transport, provide excellent horizontal and vertical compressive strength for a fraction of the weight of traditional soil/rock. A single tank (685x408x450mm) weighs only a few kilos (check our PDFs at the end for all the technical specifications).
Simply wrap your tanks in hydrophilic geofabric (individually if they are separate from each other, or in one large cube) and place at the base of your concrete structure. You can scale void fill to suit any project size by using Double, Triple and Quad sized Flo Tanks.
4. Rainwater Harvesting
If you imagine the same principles as the passive irrigation application, but on a much larger scale, rainwater harvesting involves burying a large bundles of Flo Tanks on your property. These are often connected (with a filtration unit at the end) to your roof downpipes. It can then be pumped out via motorised pump, or structurally piped to flow into the sewer or council drainage. Alternatively, it may enter a discharge control pit.
Clean water is retained within the storage area away from harmful U.V. light and heat remaining cool underground readily available for re-use. Typical applications include flushing toilets, in washing machines, watering gardens and washing cars.
Installation takes only a few minutes for each tank and can be modified to suit your specific requirements by varying the number of internal plates and stacking modules on top of each other. With more than 95% void surface area, Matrix units can hold 950 litres of water per cubic metre of tank.
5. Stormwater Detention or Infiltration
This is one of the main applications the matrix units are designed for originally, especially here in Queensland where flash flooding is a big problem. Typically they are submerged in a large grassy area (or anywhere prone to flooding) to create a infiltration tank that is long lasting, and environmentally stable.
Atlantis Flo Tanks can also be used for detention applications, simply by adding a impermeable plastic liner around the tank, as seen in the photo below. The great thing is, once it's installed, you can leave it there for decades, with very minimal maintenance or inspection required.
There are a whole lot more applications you'd never expect too; and our clients are always coming up with creative ways of using them, including for art installations!
And if for some reason you need to take the tanks out from your installation, you can just take them apart and reassemble somewhere else, in a brand new project!
ESH provides support only, and does not take responsibility for commercial estimating or specifying.
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