Replies

1. 
   AaronRosenthal | Apr 21, 2003 07:36am | #1

   Welcome to the forum, Miss Bonnie.

   When I lived in South Africa, it became common for the gardners to use bath & shower water for the plants.

   They cut into the waste pipe and put in a diverter that would either take it to a barrel or directly in a hose to the plants. I have a feeling you may find parts for this at http://www.leevalley.com, I seem to remember it in their catalogue.

   Not really hard to do.

   Cats & dogs don't like the water.

   Quality repairs for your home.

   Aaron the Handyman
   Vancouver, Canada

2. 
   toast953 | Apr 21, 2003 08:41am | #2

   Miss Bonnie, is your project going to be inspected, by the building Dept.?, Here in Yavapai County , AZ ,some graywater systems are legal. Or is your House already complete? Either way, just ask your Plumber, though, I would reccomend keeping the exiting drain line tall/ high, it will give you more options in moving the Gray water , in case your needs change

1. 
   BonnieBb | Apr 21, 2003 11:36pm | #5

   I am currently building my own (new) house.  And yes, the building dept. will inspect the plumbing.

1. 
   toast953 | Apr 22, 2003 08:05am | #7

   Miss Bonnie, a question, before the plumber/inspectors show up, will the Inspector accept the use of gray water?? Some agencies do, some don't. One more thought, while in the construction process, keep all those pipes plugged, to keep the critters out, and something to think about are far as your finished gray water design goes. Be Safe out there Jim J

1. 
   BonnieBb | Apr 25, 2003 07:14am | #11

   I don't know if the inspectors will accept a gray water system to water the yard or not.  I have to provide them with a plan first.  Despite years of increasing drought conditions, no one talks about recycling water! 

3. 
   Ethos | Apr 21, 2003 02:08pm | #3

   Hi-

   Where do you live?

   Here in New Mexico, new graywater use regulations were approved at the state level within the last 2 months.  These allow for use of up to 250 gal./day of water from several sources. 

   These include:

   -the clothes washer but not if you're laundering diapers and not if someone in the home is ill with a communicable disease.

   -the bathroom sinks and showers/tubs.

   -the kitchen sink is EXCLUDED here but many people probably use it. 

    We are in the process of building a whole-house graywater drip-irrigation system.  What we're doing is collecting all the abovementioned + roof water and filtering it  down to 1/16" using a septic tank efffluent filter.  This will happen by gravity in a garbage can sized plastic container designed to be buried and walked, or for that matter, driven on.  From this container, the water will flow into a second identical chamber that houses a pump that's controlled by floats.  From here, the water will enter a standard drip irrigation filter and from there, any of the zones of the system.  It could also from there, be pumped into a large tank for later use.

   This type of approach, allows use from a variety of points and to a variety of points.  It does require electicity to power the pump, but if that was of concern, a grid-tied PV system could be installed to spin your elec. meter backwards during the day, effectively banking juice for later use.  This too is legal here.

   A simple system like you describe amounts to digging a hole, running a pipe from the source to the hole, filling the hole with compost- including some sort of access box with a lid that can be used for inspection and cleanout-  making sure it all works and then planting a tree.

   Lance

1. 
   BonnieBb | Apr 21, 2003 11:39pm | #6

   Well, we are neighbors because I live in El Paso.  Despite increasing water restrictions, no one here talks about diverting gray water to the garden.  However, since outdoor watering has become so restrictive, I would like to try this idea. 

4. 
   Catskinner | Apr 21, 2003 05:47pm | #4

   Hi Bonnie,

   Welcome to Breaktime.

   There are any number of good ways to construct a grey water system as long as they incorporate three important principles.

   1)Be careful what you send down the drain, as it is no longer being treated. I thought this was obvious until I had a client ask me about sending drain cleaner into a composting on-site waste system I'd installed. Also be careful what you grow in this water. Food for human consumption is highly inadvisable. Again, seems obvious, but I've run into this.

   2) You must have some sort of device that 100% reliably prevents backflow in the event that your domestic water system loses pressure. Fortunately, something as simple as an air gap works fine. If all you are hooking up is a shower, you're in luck. The air gap is already in place.

   Backflow can be caused by something as random as the fire department operating down the street from your house on a municipal system or losing water pressure for any reason at your well on a private system.

   If the discharge opening of the grey water system is in the effluent when you lose pressure, you have the potential for siphoning and subsequent contamination of the domestic supply. On a municipal system that means your neighbors can get it, too, which has happened.

   3) Grey water is not suitable for surface discharge. Discharge into a pond with enough gravel to keep the water below the flood rim of the pond will probably work fine, especially if plants are there too.

   These points are crucial from a public health, safety, and legal perspective. Failure to do this can make your family or your neighbors sick and get you successfully sued.

   Your local state environment department office may be very helpful with this, also.

   From first-hand experience, grey water works great. Just design it right, get help if you need to, and do it safely.

   DRC

5. 
   TomT226 | Apr 22, 2003 02:16pm | #8

   Miss Bonnie,

   We live in Texas, and we've been using gray water for over 20 years.

   Both our bathtubs/showers and washing machine are connected to the system.

   I cut into the feed lines for all these locations, and plugged the main line at the junctions.

   These lines run to a common line, which runs to a partially buried 55 gallon plastic drum with a poured concrete base inside. The drum is located under our back deck with an access hatch.

   A sump pump is inside the drum, with the outfall running to a distribution system, which can be used to water various plantings, or grass.

   The sump pump will give you enough pressure to pump the water wherever you need it. You probably won't generate enough water with one shower to justify the complexity and maintainance of a drip system.

   This is a simple and inexpensive system and works well.

1. 
   IronHelix | Apr 22, 2003 02:51pm | #9

   Please consider an overflow pipe that reconnects the gray water storage to the septic or to a leach field.  This allows excess GW to flow away without having to switch the shower back to the house hold sewers.

   Most codes prohibit the flow of graywater on ground surface. Gray water on garden vegatables has some serious health concerns attached, although use on fruit trees is considerd okay as long as the system emits underground.

   Filtering the GW is important to remove hair, sludge, and soap gel  before it would enter drip/distrubution systems.   Typical lawn sprinklers have a tendency to quickly clog.  Removing and replacing filters and screens is pretty nasty at times.

   GW does not store well as the bacteria from the bathed bodies grows at an exponential rate with replication times set in minutes, not days.  GW goes "funky" in one or two days. If the system will have periods of low usage then a bypass valve at the shower back to the sewer will be good.

   Go to your search engine or Google....type in Waste WAter Management.....and in the top ten will be several organizations that have discussions and articles on graywater......some very good one from the EPA. 

   Check out the local codes and also see how strident the inspectors are.  Where I live there are some codes and very few inspectors.....easy to do what you wish as long as it does not disturb the neighbors.

   .............Iron Helix

1. 
   Justus | Apr 23, 2003 06:24pm | #10

   I've recently replumbed my entire house and added a switchable grey water system. We are on a well and septic system, and even here in mostly wet North Carolina I can't stand to see perfectly good water go in to the septic tank. (I'm also a bit of a water ####) Our system is pretty complex to install but easy to use, by turning two ball valves I can divert all the grey water back into the septic system. I'll post a diagram sometime, but I got all my ideas from a book I read called "Living with a well and Septic" I'll try and find the author. If you go to Borders or equivalent them will have similar books in the home section. 

    I truly cannot stand how wasteful we have become with our fresh water. If people would try bringing all of tier water home in buckets for a month they might change tier mind about conservation. As a quick anecdote, I used to work maintance for an apartment complex, when I first got there, water was included with your rent, and we used an enormous amount of water, then they changed the policy to  pay as you use, the water consumption dropped by 40%  Maybe we should raise the price of city water a bit and see if people conserve a bit.

   I'll get off my soap box now.

   Justus Justus Koshiol

   Running Pug Construction

2. 
   BonnieBb | Apr 25, 2003 07:17am | #12

   Interesting system. I live in a big city (El Paso). Does your system require a lot of space? 

1. 
   TomT226 | Apr 25, 2003 02:15pm | #13

   Miss Bonnie,

   Nope. Like I said, it's under our back deck. The drum is buried about 2/3 of it's length in the ground. The deck is about 2.5' above ground and the top of the drum is about 6" below the bottom of the floor joists. The outfall runs out of the side of the drum. I have a cover over the top of the drum to keep out critters that may want a drink. Leave a small hole in the drum for drainage in case your pump fails.

   The compact sump pumps seem to work better than the tall ones with the sliding floats. We've replaced 1 pump in 20 years. Put a GFI outlet where you plug your pump in.

   With your situation of only using the water from on shower/bath, you could get away with using a smaller sump (drum), coupled with a smaller sump pump. I say this because one post indicated that the water could sit and become bacteria laden. We have never had this problem. We used to irrigate our vegetable garden with this water. The UV and soil organisms will take care of any bugs.

   If you decide to hook your washer into the system, I'd go with a 55 gallon drum, as washers discharge quite a bit.

   You can set up a manifold using regular garden hose to water several shrubs with this system as the pump will put out quite a bit of pressure.