Liquid purification or separation – With repair or assembling means – Hoist or handle means
Reexamination Certificate
2001-10-29
2003-10-21
Prince, Fred G. (Department: 1724)
Liquid purification or separation
With repair or assembling means
Hoist or handle means
C210S416100, C210S459000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06635176
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to water conservation and, more particularly, to water recycling for use in residential urban settings, even more particularly, to an apparatus for recapturing and reusing water lost from runoff brought about by inefficient usage, such as recovering water runoff brought about by excessive or inefficient lawn irrigation.
2. Description of the Related Invention
No one doubts the need for water conservation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently issued “zero discharge” mandates designed to encourage domestic water conservation by regulating “gray water” recycling in domestic and industrial applications. The U.S. Congress has promulgated regulations that require for newly manufactured toilets to have reduced flush volumes from 5 gallons to 1.6 gallons. Water conservation, especially in more arid climates, has become a major concern for various townships and principalities so that they can assure that there are sufficient supplies of water. For instance, in Mar. 20, 1995, Tucson, Ariz. has promulgating a rather draconian “Emergency Water Conservation Ordinance” to assure that it has adequate water supplies to provide for “life safety, and for fire protection” forts citizens. This particular ordinance grants the power to disconnect the residential water supply, as well as, to fine violators up to $250.00 who waste water by allowing their residential lawn irrigation water to runoff onto sidewalks and into street curbs. Clearly, this need to conserve and recycle water will become even more urgent and widespread in the future as water supplies continue to dwindle. Consequently, various strategies have been employed to reduce the amount of wasted water in residential settings.
The garden hose attached to a sprinkler has long been the most common lawn irrigation system found in the residential urban setting. Unfortunately, this hose/sprinkler combination suffers the serious drawback in water conservation efforts by creating a significant risk of wastewater runoff when the user simply forgets to turn off the water. By automatically timing the irrigation system, this problem of forgetting to turn off the water problem has been solved. However, automatic timed controlled irrigation systems continue to suffers the disadvantage of creating excessive water runoff when the user improperly sets the timing mechanisms to supply amounts of water well beyond what is required for the lawn. Furthermore, even if the timed settings are correctly set, these automatic timed irrigation systems can still create excessive wastewater runoff when the residential lawn is already saturated or does not require any additional irrigation, such as, in the event when the automatic irrigation system irrigate the lawn during a rain storm. Furthermore, these automatic timed lawn irrigation systems still suffer the disadvantage of being prone to creating excessive wastewater runoff even when the timing is properly set. That is, waste water runoff can still occur from automatically timed lawn irrigation systems when the sprinklers have been improperly aimed and as a result these improperly aimed sprinklers can spray water directly onto the sidewalks and into the streets. Another strategy has been to couple a moisture detector to an automatic controlled irrigation system so that the automatic irrigation system doesn't irrigate the lawn when there are adequate moisture levels within the soil. Unfortunately, these moisture detector automatic irrigation systems still do not address the problem of improperly aimed sprinklers and as a consequence can suffer the same disadvantage of causing waste water runoff into the street gutters brought about by misaligned sprinklers. Furthermore, these moisture automatic irrigation systems suffer the additional disadvantage of being relatively expensive. An alternate strategy in residential water conservation has been to use drip irrigation systems. However, water drip irrigation systems remain prone to the disadvantage of allowing wastewater runoff to occur when the user forgets to turn off the water. In addition, these drip irrigation systems suffer the added disadvantage of requiring an extensive network of drip hoses to irrigate a lawn and as a consequence are either relatively expensive and/or physically burdensome to arrange in the lawn each time the lawn must be irrigated. Thus, all of the commonly available residential lawn irrigation systems seem to suffer the same disadvantage, in that, all of these irrigations systems will suffer the problem of causing the inevitable loss of some irrigation water onto the residential sidewalks and into the street gutters.
Kubo's (U.S. Pat. No. 5,761,762) describes a cleaning device having a power source, a vacuum generator, a waste liquid tank and a wipe-nozzle unit where liquids and/or contaminants may be removed by slid ably moving a wiper on a flat surface to collect a mass of liquid and inserting a small sized nozzle at the collection liquid to suck it through the nozzle when the interior of the cleaner is drawn into vacuum. As a consequence, Kudo's device requires the spill zone to contain the gathered up liquid because Kudo's device envisions only a wiping blade absent a bottom element. Therefore, one could not actively scoop up a liquid into a zone within the scoop and subsequently allow the liquid to be sucked out of the trap zone within the scoop. Furthermore, Kubo's device is limited to having a waste liquid tank associated with the device, which would require the operator to periodically drain the collected water from thewaste liquid tank and thus making Kubo's device cumbersome for recycling large volumes of liquids. In addition, Kubo's device does not have a filtering element and therefore Kubo's device is likely to fail if used to recycle water in street gutters due to the possibility that leaves, rocks and other debris could clog the intake device. Therefore, these and other reasons make the cleaner and bowling maintenance machine of Kubo undesirable for use as a water conservation device for recycling wastewater runoff from residential urban environments such as on sidewalks and in runoff in street gutters.
DeCosa and Spector (U.S. Pat. No. 4,360,947) describe a dust collector device which has a bucket into which ashes and dust from a wood stove or fireplace is shoveled by a vacuum cleaner so as to prevent the ashes from dispersing into the breathing space of the user cleaning up the ashes. This device includes a removable cover having a connection to a vacuum cleaner hose, for transferring the dust an ash from the bucket to the vacuum cleaner and in one embodiment includes a shovel connected to the bucket so that the dust and ash is directly sucked into the bucket by the vacuum. This dust collector device would likely prove inadequate for removing waste water from urban environments because water drawn into the bucket would likely cause a serious electrical shock hazard, as well as the bucket would require that the bucket be drained during the operation and thus making it inconvenient to use. Furthermore, the dust collection system is explicitly designed to accept large solid debris particles which is contrary to recycling water because it would likely result in producing the undesirable result in transferring rocks, leaves and other debris along with the recycled water onto a well tended lawn or garden. Therefore, these and other reasons make the dust collector device of De Cosa and Spector undesirable for use as a water conservation device for recycling wastewater runoff from residential urban environments such as on sidewalks and in runoff in street gutters.
Shibata et al., (U.S. Pat. No. 3,808,631) describe a device for removing sludge from a surface that is adapted to be moved along the sludge with its opened mouth positioned to receive the sludge. The construction of this device requires a connection for directing a high velocity liquid jet into the shovel in the vicinity of the mouth
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