05061 Greywater
I was living in a big home with seven other people, and we were starting to garden. My housemate Cleo and I realized that our household was using an incredible amount of water. The average American uses 50 to 70 gallons of water per day, just inside the home. If you include the yard and lawn, it's almost double. It seems crazy how much we waste. So I wondered if there was a way to reuse our sink water to irrigate. Through trial and error, we figured out how to create a gray-water system, which means taking the water from your sinks, showers, or washing machine and directing it into your yard. I took a plumbing class, and we set up a little wetland in a bathtub in the yard to filter the water. We were able to cut our water use in half. Some people have the misconception that gray-water systems are dangerous or unhealthy. There has never been a documented case of anyone getting sick from them, as long as you don't drink the water or spray it on food crops that will be eaten raw. They're easy to set up and only cost around $100 for a basic system, not including labor. — Laura Allen, co-founder of Greywater Guerrillas, in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of Sierra
About greywater, Wikipedia has this to say —
Greywater is wastewater generated from domestic activities such as laundry, dishwashing, and bathing, which can be recycled on-site for uses such as landscape irrigation and constructed wetlands. Greywater differs from water from the toilets which is designated sewage or blackwater to indicate it contains human waste.
There are important reasons for reusing greywater —
- Use less water.
- Use less energy.
- Helps your plants.
- Recharges groundwater.
- Less strain on sewage treatment plants.
- Reclamation of nutrients.
Greywater design is an integral aspect of designing a whole systems approach to your life. Because we take a whole systems approach, context is everything. Indeed, you could summarize the process as “do what’s appropriate for the context,” within the three ethics of permaculture.
Given the present situations of your life, you may have little or no ability to use grey water. If you live in a college dormitory, you probably can't use their grey water. In those situations, you are better off working with your school administration to incorporate greywater systems into their existing landscapes.
But if you own or rent your home, and have some yard, you can take advantage of this resource that most people just simply let run down the drain.
The Most Basic Grey Water System:
One: A tote that fits into your shower stall or tub in which you can stand while you shower. The tote catches most of the water.
Two: Two basins that fit into your sinks or sit on your counter — one for washing dishes, one for rinsing.
Operating Instructions for the Most Basic Grey Water System.
When you want a shower, put the tote into the shower.
Stand in the tote while enjoying your shower. The tote catches most of the water.
After you finish, take the tote outside and pour it somewhere on the landscape. Pick a different place each time.
When you wash dishes, use one of your basins for the dish washing and one for the dish rinsing. When you finish, take the basins outside and pour onto the landscape.
It’s a minor amount of manual labor. Your plants will love it. Yes, you can water container garden plants with grey water. Every week or so give them a good dose of clean water to leach out any salts that might accumulate in the potting soil from the shower and dish water.
If it is freezing cold outside, suspend your greywater system until the weather warms up and the snow or ice melts.
If you get beyond this Most Basic Grey Water System, careful design is important. It must be designed to handle the expected amounts of grey water produced by your household. The go-to place on the internet for information about grey water system design is Oasis Design, online at http://oasisdesign.net/. Properly designed grey water systems are simple to use and are safe when operated as designed. They are not expensive.
Never store greywater. While a surge tank that empties rapidly is OK, storing greywater to use a few days later is never a good idea. It will get fetid and begin to smell badly very rapidly.
Keep it simple. Don’t install something that costs hundreds of dollars to flush your toilet with shower water. Use a bucket to flush the toilet by pouring it into the bowl (never pour grey water into the tank of a toilet).
Don’t try to design a greywater system without reading the Oasis Design books on the subject. They are pretty much the first and last word on the subject.
Besides grey water, most households produce a certain amount of clear water. This is water used to rinse or wash vegetables, or water that runs from a water faucet while you wait for the hot water. It includes condensation from air conditioner units. This can be caught in basins and bowls and used to water container plants, vegetables, flush toilets, whatever you want to do with it.
Living Machines
One of the leading-edge future of waste-water treatment is the Living Machine concept, which treats waste water via a system of plants, pools, and micro-organisms. The goal is to mimic natural water purification processes as much as possible. Wikipedia on Living Machines.
These will be useful for institutions, apartment buildings, and even neighborhoods.