Does anyone have plans or know any websites that show how to divert, store and reuse grey water? Our household has three showers as well as teeth cleaning every day which is probably nearly enough to keep the loo going. Having just moved into an area already trialling a de-sal plant and suffering a serious water shortage (as well as now being on a meter) I'm thinking this could make quite a saving. Any advise please as it needs to be completely automatic, I dont have a problem intervening but I know other half and daughter wont bother if it means extra effort.
If your shower bases are higher than the toilet cistern it would be easy. Otherwise you'd have to have an electric pump. In both cases, run the waste water into a large container and have an overflow pipe from that (in case it gets full) into your normal waste system. Then run a pipe to the toilet cistern, using a pump if necessary. The pump should turn on when there is low pressure in the pipe to the cistern.
Perhaps somebody else has brilliant ideas of what to do if you run out of waste water and need to top up the cistern from the mains. Personally I would have two float valves in the cistern, one for the waste water and one for the mains water, and usually have the mains turned off. But you could have another float in the wastewater reservoir that controls the mains water to the cistern float valve. I will do this myself one day using rainwater rather than wastewater.
I have installed a system purpose made for this but harvesting rainwater into a 3500 litre tank buried under patio. Overflows into main sewer. The tank houses a pump which pressurises seperate pipework within the house which in turn feeds toilets and the washing machine, Pump energises on drop in pressure. Also will do the outside taps when the plumbing is finished. Approx =A32000 pounds and zero rated as new build. I chose freerain but there are other specialist supply companies out there. Not sure if the savings will justify the expense, but at least I have done my little bit. Legin
Shower together? (in socially acceptable combinations). Teeth cleaning should not use any significant water. You do not leave the tap running. Wetting yourself with the shower, soaping, then rinsing uses very little water. You need to do a water audit - and work out where the water is going. For a week or so, for example, run shower, measure flow rate, and ask everyone to keep a record of how much time they use. For only a week, this shouldn't be a problem hopefully. Dishwashers can use less water than handwashing. Do you have a lawn?
They recon toilet flusing accounts for 1/3rd of an average households water useage, so considerable savings are indeed possible.
If each flush uses 8 litres of water, say, and the loo gets flushed 30 times a day, that equates to 240 litres of water per day.
A bath uses roughly 80 litres so save the water from 3 baths and you have enough to flush the loo for the day.
I recon the optimum would be a 200-300 litre storage tank per toilet.It'd need to be below the level of the bath/shower. Into this tank would run all your grey water.
The tank would be fitted with an overflow into the sewer should it become too full. It would also be fitted with a float valve connected to the water main so that the tank fills should the level drop too low. The float valve would be set quite low so as not to fill the tank inneccesarily.
You'd need a pump and a pipe going to the toilet cistern, either fitted with a pressure valve that actuates the pump when the pressure drops, or the cistern could be fitted with a float switch to actuate the pump.
I've been mentally sketching plans for this but considering heat recovery as well - only bothering with bath/shower water and a coil or microbore assembly in the tank to warm the water on the way to the cylinder. Havn't done the calcs yet though.
We have had a split flush in our only toilet for the last 15 years (I fitted it in spite of the local plumbing shop not seeing the point at the time) and I really can't understand why everyone doesn't have one (well I can, *most* ordinary people couldn't give a s**t about wasting anything and only think of No1 ). That and only flushing sensibly has probably saved (not squandered) loads of water over the years? Not having a lawn, or fancy cars that we are obliged to keep showroom clean every day and a simple electric shower that does the job without the indulgance of being under a hot waterfall must also help? ;-)
And have I missed something here in that most of our waste water is needed *in* the system to keep all the pipes moving / clean and it get's re-cycled anyway (7 times or summat)? Hoarding rain / grey water simply delays the time it takes before get's back into the system (but I agree it's a good idea to re-use it where possible).
What we don't want is loosing water out of the immediate system with lawn watering, car washing etc (where the water doesn't go down the drain)?
My Mums neighbours often leave the lawn sprinkler on overnight resulting in Mums concrete pad (where she keeps an array of potted plants) being flooded by the morning .. ;-(
All the best ..
T i m
p.s. I'm going to make a *big* sign to put on the wall at the local mini re-cycling point reminding all the stupid bast**ds to break down their cardboard boxes before they put them in the bin? They can't be nasty people because they bother to put their cardboard in the re-cycling point so they *must* just be stupid (or selfish) ?
They were pushed for a while, until research showed they consume more water because people don't understand them and end up flushing several times to wash away No. 2's.
You'll probably find that the full 6 litre flush in a current WC model is a similar volume to the No 1 flush in your 15 year old (10 litre?) split flush WC anyway.
The message from snipped-for-privacy@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) contains these words:
As I understand the research I saw they lead to increased consumption only in some situations - in the samples they chose it was a house where they had a high turn over of residents as they fostered a lot of kids. Most of the rest of the samples showed savings varying from small to considerable.
We have a split flush which is set to 2 and 4 litres. Works fine and never fails to shift a turd.
As it is a new build the only alternative available was to drain the rain water into a soakaway, so it would not have helped the sewers at all. I accept that it would however have drained to the natural water table and eventually the rivers/ sea. They say that we are losing coastline due to the rising water levels, so by hoarding it I might be doing some good :-) Legin
Just the natural erosion process going on apace. Why someone doesnt decide to start dumping hardcore etc next to eroding areas to stop it I dont know, would reduce landill use and stop expensive land loss.
This goes to show just how much a class system still endures in England. The majority of the population lives in council housig and private flats, or housing that just doesn't have any room for recycling of any sort.
In ther words 8 or 12 homebrew containers, or 1 or 2 industrial drums - the sort they use to block science laboratory corridors in B movies. Corridors on council estates aren't quite so exotic. Mind you there is plenty of room for the things in coridors of council flats.
Can you imagine any tenant agreeing to the idea? Being run by a council? Attracting the neighbourhood louts?
Meanwhile still in fairyland:
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hosepipe bans being imposed ... ...the problem is going to be particularly acute for landscapers.. The regulations on hosepipe bans form part of the 'Water (b) washing private Industry Act 1991', and allows the water provider to impose either a restriction or a prohibition... Therefore the ban does not apply to commercial landscape hosepipe or similar apparatus.
However, companies [may be] applying for drought permits to restrict 'non essential' uses of water such as watering sports fields and commercial landscapes.
Where the water company imposes a 'restriction' rather than a 'prohibition', then it is up to the water provider themselves to define what is restricted and what is not. Gardeners ..can account for up to 70% of water demand.
If the water companies banned sprinklers and hand held hoses, but actively encouraged people to water using efficient drip irrigation systems, then the problem of high demand from hoses would be solved.
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