Grey Water Tank

[Stuart]

Point is, it is not hard. Mine took an evening to install (once I had worked out what I wanted to do, and bought the supplies that is!)

My sign took longer than the installation..... go figure!

Gumby's is more elaborate, but still, not that much harder (but took a bit longer too I daresay).

PVC is very easy - just need some of that organic solvent they sell as pipe glue (it melts the plastic together, and is a form of cold plstic welding.), the tubes, fittings etc and a hacksaw! (And a weekend or so I guess )

[rsser]

That's it some_one. The cone goes into the hole when you screw off the inspection cover of the PVC pipe outlet on the outer wall and it's supposed to divert the water to a hose attached to the cone. (You don't use the cone directly under your washer outlet pipe.)

Last time we had a drought I tried it and it leaked and p*ssed grey water all over the place. Gave it up as a bad joke. Maybe the current crop are better.

My solution uses an extension hose that you fix to the washer outlet pipe. Bunnings usually stock them; some Safeways/Woolworths and some Mitre 10's stock them too. I wasn't fussed about the look so I ran the now extended hose over the tap behind the washer and then through a hole in the floor and out the side of the house.

Thanks for the pics Stuart.

[Stuart]

Welcome

Just sitting outside at the moment, watching another couple hundred litres of washing machine water spray over the lawn and gardens

[some_one]

Yes this is the tube I was talking about. But as it says in the advert it is ideal for baths and low volume water flow for the laundry I will go with the other option..Also the house is not very high off the ground so storing it in a high sitting tank will not be possible.. Other wise i'll just let it divert straight to the back yard..Thanks guys.

[totoblue]

Someone asked about tanks built on site. Here is some info.
http://groups.google.com.au/group/me...77599533908104

I've got a grey water diversion system set up. It is pretty cheap.

I read a US website which suggested that complicated systems using pumps, drippers, irrigation valves etc are likely to clog up or corrode. I was thinking of doing a fancy grey water system but this site put me off that idea. The only complexity they think is worth it is to have a surge tank (a tank to hold an excess water beyond the flow rate of the pipe to the garden).
See http://greywater.net/

My grey water system consists of one of those rubber funnels stuck through the inspection hatch of the shower outlet. This goes into 19mm irrigation hose down to the front garden where it goes into that corrugated grey water hose. The rubber funnel is a bit of a bugger to get in - in the end I greased it with detergent so I could push it in up to the tab. I have not had any leaks with the funnel. The drain in the shower burbles a bit sometimes but there is no backflow. The end of the hose gets moved (by me) around the garden and I run the end into a 2m piece of black plastic ag drain I had left over (to spread the flow out a bit). This cost about $25 for the corrugated grey water hose and the funnel.

The washing machine goes through the floor using 30m of that corrugated grey water hose. We had a "drain" in our laundry's timber floor which just goes under the house, so I unscrewed the grate and ran the hose through that hole. The 30m of hose I think is too long (might strain the washing machine) so I plan to put in some 50mm drain pipe running from the laundry to the garden and then use the corrugated hose from there. Even though the slope of the ground is approximately downhill, water still collects in any dip in the corrugated hose. Personally I don't think the washing machine is worth the bother (the shower produces much more water with less pollutants) but my wife wants that extra water.

I've seen pumps for sale on ebay which they claim are for grey water as they can handle solids up to such and such size. Two hundred and something dollars. I'd like to know how they handle hairs which could get wrapped around the shaft.

Our back yard is higher than any source of grey water so all our grey water goes into the front yard. It is also higher than our rain water tank so we need a pump.

We've also got a slim line rainwater tank (1200l) and a pump. The tank has only just now got some water in it with the recent rains. The pump is one of those ebay jobs I got for $60 odd and I thought it was dead for a while (just after 6 month warranty ran out) but when I pulled it apart it proved to be blocked with a rust flake (cast iron housing and brass impeller) and it seems to be working now, so I will be able to water the back yard. However the tank with a head of less than 60cm has more than enough pressure to run one of those leaky rubber dripper hoses without a pump (ok for front yard).

One thing about rain tanks is that it seems to take 1mm of rain to wet our tiled roof enough to get any run off. We are going to put another tank on the garage which has a tin roof and I think it will take a lot less to wet that roof.

If you lookup ferrocement on wikipedia there is a link to how to build your own ferrocement tank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrocement

[some_one]

I heard that you can get subsidy of upto $1000 if you have a grey water tank installed that goes into your flushing system or something like that, but it has to be installed by a licensed plumber, I guess how much will a plumber charge to do that changeover?

[rsser]

In Vic there are some rebates for rainwater tanks that vary acc to tank size and whether connected to the laundry. They end the end of June.

Something like $150 for tank, and between 500 and 1000 depending on tank size if connected to the laundry/toilet.

[Gumby]

In Vic there are some rebates for rainwater tanks that vary acc to tank size and whether connected to the laundry. They end the end of June.

Something like $150 for tank, and between 500 and 1000 depending on tank size if connected to the laundry/toilet.

Which are a complete waste of time because you have to have a plumber install the tank before you get the reabte. It's cheaper and better to do it yourself, save the plumber's fees and forget the rebate (and that way, they don't know you have a tank either)

[rsser]

Yeah, well I'd plumb mine myself, but if you wanted to stay legal you need a certificate.

[Gumby]

Yeah, well I'd plumb mine myself, but if you wanted to stay legal you need a certificate.

Staying legal would probably mean a council permit as well. After my last experience with such an inefficient, over bloated, red tape crazy bureaucratic bunch of tossers, forget it.

[zathras]

Staying legal would probably mean a council permit as well. After my last experience with such an inefficient, over bloated, red tape crazy bureaucratic bunch of tossers, forget it.

Yeah, like a $440 standard building permit fee irrespective of project's cost.

Tossers most certainly.

[rsser]

If you're building a stand I think you need a permit; not if you're putting the tank on packed sand.

[rhancock]

I've only just found this thread so my post is a little late. I installed 3 x 1000l ex vanilla flavouring tanks as rainwater tanks about 2 years ago and they've proved to be fantastic. They cost about $200 each and I put in 3 to get the council rebate, by the time I paid for delivery I got back the $750 which was the max the council would do at the time. Because they're 3 units I was able to reconfigure them when I renovated under our Queenslander. I wasn't going to post photos until I've built my first workbench, but I'll take photos of the tanks and associated plumbing asap. The best thing about 1k tanks is that you can store stuff on top of them - currently a toilet and pedestal basin, xmas decorations etc! I have had a bit of fun linking them up - I'm a carpenter not a plumber! -but they work ok now. Torrential rain on Thursday night harvested about 2,200 litres - and thats after losing some down the overflow as the linking pipes couldn't keep up. I plan to add an extra inlet to fix that, when I have a spare hour or two.

I'll be working on grey water systems this winter so I'll keep you informed of progress there too.

[rhancock]

Oh.. an extra note on council regs - I had to submit photos of the connection to the storm water to get the rebate so I dutifully connected it all up and took the photos. First big storm and the storm water connections gushing water all over the place - must have been blocked up for years! So I disconnected it again, and it's currently just spread around in some spare slotted ag pipe spread out along the fence - one day I'll pipe it out to a bog / sump in the front yard.

Of course 3000 litres doesn't last long when we don't get any rain between Easter and October, hence the need for a grey water system. If I'd realised that 2 years ago I'd have done grey water first.

[rsser]

Good point rhancock.

Heard a guy on ABC radio say the min tank size should be 5000 l. Clearly it depends also these days on rain intervals as well as annual averages and usage intervals and rates.

As for permits, I expect they're going to vary by shire or municipality as well as state. Down here you can't even replace your gutters or downpipes unless you're a licensed plumber.