Grey Water

[Mansfieldman]

I want to recycle my Grey water from the bath tub and washing machine into garden beds.

I can connect all the pipes nesacary to get to the beds easily.

What is the best way to infuse the water into the bed below the soil as too avoid runoff - AGPIPE?

Mike

[ozwinner]

Welcome.
What about leaky hose, its like a rubber hose, that well leaks.

Al

[snowyskiesau]

'leaky hose' or trickle irrigation works best. You might need to check the rules as some states require gray water work to be done by a licensed plumber [and we all obey these rules don't we? ]

Be sure to keep it away from the vegies and herbs.

[OBBob]

Just for my own interest, what are doing in between the bath and the trickle irrigation? Is the norm to put in a storage tank in between ... or will the bath just drain really slowly? Maybe there is another meathod you have thought of?

[Clinton1]

You can not, legally, store greywater due to health and stinkyness concerns. Just run it straight out to a distribution system.

[woodsprite]

Have only last Friday spoken with an agricultural engineer about this very situation. He is only on tank water and is about to fit an 'illegal' grey water system - simply putting a 44 gal drum in a hole in the ground, letting the septic outlet flow into it, and using a float switch to turn on a pump to circulate the water around the garden.

This is probably not what you are after though! About a month ago he and I were talking about how best to distribute my own grey water - his suggestion (which I have today started installing) was to run the water into a 1 inch polypipe around the garden beds and where there are plants and shrubs to be watered, fit a smaller flexible dripper tube - these are about 6 ml outisde diameter. He said to put longer tubes in at the beginning of the flow (closest to the water source) and as you get further away from the water source, use shorter dripper tubes. This helps to regulate the flow and contributes to all plants getting their fair share of water. This is what he will be hooking up to his pumped system - I am using the same setup for my gravity feed system.

He said the benefit of this over the agi pipe is that you can move the ends of the dripper tubes around and reduce the chances of one area getting water-logged.

And yes, grey water needs to be used immediately - it becomes very toxic very quickly, especially in the warmer weather. Storage in a tank (eg a 44 gal drum in the ground) should never be more than 24 hours.

Hope this helps.

Started out with nothing - still got most of it left.

[Cliff Rogers]

... 'illegal' grey water system - simply putting a 44 gal drum in a hole in the ground, letting the septic outlet flow into it, ......

septic outlet is not grey water....

[snowyskiesau]

Glad I'm not his neighbour!

[silentC]

You mean I paid $7000 for a septic/effluent treatment system when I could've just used a 44 gallon drum :eek:

[Audrie]

There is a terrific new greywater system on the market developed in Western Australia called the Greyflow system which you might be interested in. You can find it on a website called http://www.yourwatersaver.com.au/

Audrie
Green Vision Architecture

[OBBob]

Any idea what the Grey Flow is worth? Does look like an interesting system.

[Audrie]

Under $2000 I think, with a government rebate of $500 which covers the installation.

Audrie

[OBBob]

Wow, that's more expensive than what I expected ... I guess the 44Gal drum would be looking good again!

I guess it depends what it comes with really? Also there appears to be a simpler gravity fed version that would be less expensive I expect.

[Audrie]

It looks like you might have been looking at the G-Flow. Bit confusing that they are named so closely.

Look on the other page
http://www.yourwatersaver.com.au/?grey-flow

[Audrie]

GFlow is a smaller unit about $600 and is for preconstructed buildings where you cannot get at the plumbing.