Be Careful With Your Greywater
I have posted a few times on water conservation. It is time to take it a step further.
In many areas of the country you are not only being charged with your incomming water use, but also for your waste water discharge. This has just started in my area and my water bill has tripled. So my first thought was to reduce my water usage by collecting rainwater off the house.
At first it seemed a simple matter of collecting the water and porting ot over to where I needed it.
There are several companies that sell food grade containers that can be used for the collection of rainwater for re-use.
The Rainbarrel Guide has some great information about rainbarrels and how to use them. The only issue I had with them is they tell you that a 2000 square foot roof can collect 24,000 gallons of water. Then they have links where you can buy a 55 gallon rainbarrel.
Something was not quite right.
Here in Northern California we have a rainy season and a dry season. It makes sense to collect rainwater during the rainy season for use during the dry season. But 55 gallons is not going to make much of a difference. I don’t think the wife would let me dig up the backyard to put in the 75,000 gallon tank I saw on an Australian site.
The next step beyond rainwater is re-using greywater.
Greywater is the wastewater from sinks, dishwashers, showers, and laundry. This is different from waste from the toilet, commonly called blackwater.
The problem with greywater is, as much as you may think different, you can’t just dump water from your laundry onto your tomato plants. Even bio-degradable detergents will pollute your groundwater and poison your plants without proper treatment. There are sites out there that will tell you how to set up a greywater treatment system and use gravity flow so no electricity is involved. Then you run into the next problem.
Many municipalities do not allow this kind of system to be installed. I found one city that did not allow the handwatering of plants with water from the city pipes.
So if you want to look into a greywater conservation system, look first to your towns regulations.
So here is my idea. Use greywater to fill your toilet tank.
There should be no regulation against it. You might not want your dog to drink from the toilet however, just to be perfectly safe. Then you could flush all you want without worrying too much about wasting water.
So now I just have to think of the easiest way to get greywater to the toilet tank without any additional cost.
