It's Not Easy Being Green

Did anyone just see the BBC2 programme above just now? (8pm Tuesday) There was a guy who was diverting his rainwater into a storage tank and then using it for flushing his toilet. Does anyone know what building control would think about this? Are there regulations covering this sort of thing? And do the regulations actually make any sense anyway (unlike partP!)?

I was thinking the tricky part would be soem sort of filtration to ensure your 15mm pipes to the toilet aren't being continually bunged up. I guess you'd need an overflow and also a connection to the storage tank to the mains supply in case there isn't much rain.

How would you prevent the water stagnating?

Also, the tank would need to be below roof height but above toilet cistern height which does limit the options somewhat.

Anyway, any thoughts anyone?

Jon.

Reply to
Tournifreak
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I suppose it could just as easily be sold to us with direct delivery from the sky. :-)

Eat lots of hot currys?

Reply to
Mike Halmarack

I was wondering how long it will take to environmentally repay the materials and other resources used in making the water wheel by producing about 60 watts. Likewise with wind turbines. need to consider the resources used in producing it.

Reply to
John

Yes - interesting programme. I've always wanted to generate electricity with a waterwheel. Fascinating place on the old A30 @ Sticklepath which is a restored Forge (NT) - run entirely by water power. Great stuff !

anyway.....

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to have some info - apparently the regulations aren't bothered by it - though this particular page does talk about possible financial constraints on the project. All depends on how much you pay for your water (ours is from a well and is pretty much free !)

Keep flushing the loo ? Seriously - sizing the system seems to be the major part of the challenge...

Various other diagrams & things linked from the page above

Looks as if it might be an interesting TV series - be keen to see how much power they manage to get from that waterwheel....

Regards Adrian Suffolk UK ======return email munged================= take out the papers and the trash to reply

Reply to
Adrian Brentnall

It's done in other countries more civilised than ours. In 1990 I was surprised to see grey water used forflushing lavatories in hotels in Canada. When I came home I asked Yorkshire Water about prospects for it happening here, I was told that it was being investigated - I believed it then and still believe it but these things don't happen overnight.

Well, our roof water drains to butts - I don't think we have a mesh of any kind and up to now nothing solid has got into it. But it wouldn't be difficult to strain the water at the top of a feed pipe. The first butt overflows to the second and so on, if they all getfull (which they are at the moment) the water drains away, to our chagrin!.

Because our butts are dark and covered the water stays sweet - in the case of being used for w.c. flushing it would be changed frequently.

That could be a problem but not an intractable one. Spouse is thinking about it.

Here are mine. You'll have lots of opinions about why it would be impossible or energy inefficient or whatever. If anyone mentions pay back time on hardware ask them if they consider that when they buy a new television :-)

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Indeed, and the cost payback would probably be enormous. I imagine the whole lot will rot and fall apart before it's paid for itself. But the engineer in me thinks it would be wonderful, regardless of such economic realities!

Jon.

Reply to
Tournifreak

Don't tell them.

Do you think it's possible there *aren't*?

Mains supply yes - how to manage this, though? A simple tee with two valves is out of the question from the water Co's. point of view.

Keep the inside of the tank dark and well covered.

He might be better using it for watering the garden or washing his car (if he bothers).

Getting and mounting a suitably large tank is an issue.

Reply to
Chris Bacon

not really considering most cisterns are already below gutter height, what about a system that has two feeds, one from mains and one from gutter, the gutter system could utilise a *header* tank situated above the cistern height with an overflow to maybe the sink waste/bath waste pipes or even the soil pipe with a water trap linked! all you need to do is link the mains to the header so that there is only one flush available in the header and one in the cistern before the mains ballcock kicks in to refill. then if it rains, set it up so that there are 10 flushes available from rain water by setting the height of the overflow!

not 100% rain flush system but it beats waiting for rain for a number2!

Reply to
Gav

The message from "Tournifreak" contains these words:

Depends how much you buy and how much you make/steal/reuse/adapt.

Reply to
Guy King

There was a programme on the box some years ago about grey water storage. One novel idea was a chap that had copied the roman hypercaust idea in a walled garden outside his house.

Where his walled garden appeared a normal paved area, it was in fact hollow underneath the flags and had a fair depth of water under them.

It was a large tank with blocks every few feet to support the flags over the water, and sealed to keep the water clean.

It was filled by gutters and garden collection, and used for garden watering and toilets.

Reply to
EricP

How about this:

To gutter

| | ______| |_________________ | | | | | | | | | | | |_______ | _________|________ 15mm + check valve to water main | / | | **/** :__|_______ | ***** ::__________ 15mm to toilets | : | |____________________________|

Tank is fed from gutter. Outlet with filter at the bottom. A ball-c*ck with check-valve a bit higher up fed from main. Then if it doesn't rain, you've always got enough water in the tank for flushing. I'm most concerned about keeping the filter clean though. Water from my roof often has bits of moss, dirt all sorts in it. How to make a low/no mantainance system that can cope with that?

I would think a large-ish cold water tank would be OK. Location and mounting will certainly be a problem though. On the TV program, he appeared to have a bit of flat roof just below his main roof which looked ideal. I may be mistabken though - it was only a brief camera shot (aren't they always!)

Jon.

Reply to
Tournifreak

Here's one we made earlier :-)

http://82.21.72.246/~john/River/river.htmlNB I never met Stephen Rodgers. I was so taken by what he'd done I asked him for (and got) permission to mirror these web pages of his and carried them for a while on my own web site. I haven't had a valid email address or any communication with him for years now. I haven't changed anything since the edits I acknowledged in the text from over 10 years ago, except to excise email addresses.

Reply to
John Stumbles

That's pretty impresssive - I admire his determination and stamina! My motivation is to use recycled water to flush toilets though. I'm not too bothered about our garden. I suppose you could pump water on emand from your reed bed to a header tank in the house. But the electricity cost would seriosuly undermine any attempt at saving money on water bills. And I guess a reed bed in the loft isn't really workable :-)

Jon.

Reply to
Tournifreak

The only regulations I can think of relate to water supplied by a water undertaker and are mainly concerned with not contaminating water used for domestic or food production purposes.

I was discusing this with a plumber who is putting in a rainwater collection system to provide drinking water for a cottage in a remote part of Scotland. We concluded that a coarse mesh screen at the top of the pipe leading from the gutter and an insect screen just before the cistern (required anyway for drinking water) would stop most things getting to the sand filter.

I think that would require a double check valve in the mains feed.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
nightjar

On 28 Mar 2006 12:12:57 -0800, a particular chimpanzee named "Tournifreak" randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

It's not covered by the Building Regulations, but by Water Supply Regulations. AFAIK there's no problems with it in principle provided there's no siphonage between the greywater and the clean water. Indeed, I have seen it installed as a proprietary system on a couple of houses I inspected. The only proviso was that the storage tank had to have an overflow to the storm drain.

Reply to
Hugo Nebula

Fit the loo with an old-fashioned pull-chain connected to a hand pump? :-)

Reply to
John Stumbles

The message from "Tournifreak" contains these words:

Unless he has a very unusual house layout the water butt in question was not above toilet cistern height. I was disappointed that it was only a throw-away remark without the slightest attempt to explain how the rain water was transferred to the toilet but perhaps the green guru thought it wouldn't look look particularly good for his image if he had to explain that he used an electric pump to fill the cistern. In monetary terms at least that would probably cost more than he saved.

Reply to
Roger

Grey water would be a fluid category 3 (slight health hazard due to substances of low toxicity). I think rainwater would also be cat 3, simply because cats 1 and 2 are "wholesome water supplied by a water undertaker" which Nature (or God depending on your POV :-)) is not classed as.

A double check would give acceptable protection against back pressure and backsiphonage, though as I recall on a system at the AT Centre in Machynlleth they had a tundish arrangement (i.e. air gap) for supplying mains water to their system where necessary.

Reply to
John Stumbles

Building regs would in principle object to you using 'storm water' to go down the 'sewage system'

:-) :-)

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

The message from Hugo Nebula contains these words:

I get a £25 discount off my already low water rates because I can confirm that I don't discharge rain or surface water down the main drain. Recycling the rain water would mean I would lose that discount.

Reply to
Roger

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