Gimmicks and Gadgets winner: The ReCircuClean Bucket
September 18, 2025
AWWA Articles
Gimmicks and Gadgets winner: The ReCircuClean Bucket
Even as a kid, Joshua Gregor was always good with his hands.
“There wasn’t much that broke at the house that we didn’t fix ourselves,” he said.
He’s carried that into his current role as an instrumentation and control technician with Chester Water Authority in southeastern Pennsylvania, and it helped him win the 2025 Opflow Gimmicks and Gadgets award for what he calls a ReCircuClean Bucket.
The bucket, which cleans chlorine analyzers, was born out of happenstance. When an older chlorine analyzer at the Chester Water plant got a crack in its diaphragm — a repair costing hundreds of dollars — Gregor went searching for alternative solutions.
“That analyzer was only going to be in service for two more months,” he said. “We had a bunch of parts in the storeroom. [I thought] if I could pump calcium, lime and rust remover through that system, we wouldn’t have to pull the diaphragm apart. We’ll get the life we need out of this without spending the money.”
Using parts that were on hand, Gregor built the ReCircuClean Bucket for $171.
The bucket has an inlet and an outlet, making a continuous loop. “That’s how it got the name ‘ReCircuClean Bucket’ because that’s what it is doing,” he said. “It’s pumping out of the bucket, straight back into the bucket, flushing that analyzer out.”
Gregor explains how to create in the bucket in the most recent edition of OpFlow. (A subscription is required for access.)
Chlorine analyzers measure the amount of chlorine in water, helping to ensure safe and clean drinking water and wastewater. They require regular cleaning to ensure accurate measurements, and this process can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. The ReCircuClean Bucket not only saved Chester Water in that instance; it also provides a simplified, safe and effective solution for cleaning analyzers.
Gregor credits his managers for being open to the experiment.
“If it wasn’t for the support I had from my team, these things wouldn’t be possible,” he said. “We are a private water utility, non-profit, so everything we do is for our ratepayers.”
Gregor received his award this week at the AWWA Water Infrastructure Conference in Orlando. The Gimmicks and Gadgets Awards are given annually to operators who dream up innovative solutions to everyday problems, and this year, two inventions tied for first. The next edition of Connections (Oct. 3) will feature the other invention.
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