Thread: Grey Water Tank

We're not on town sewerage, so all of our grey water and every colour in between goes into an onsite sewerage treatment plant. The effluent, which is more or less clear, is pumped out into a small poly tank. We have the tank plumbed up via a pump to all of our toilets. The tank also has a diver pump in it. We allow the effluent to build up to a certain level in the tank before it is them pumped out onto the garden. The diver pump cuts off when it gets to a level that we have determined is enough to flush the bogs for a day.

All that cost quite a bit to set up (thousands) but aside from the fact that we had to do the onsite sewerage anyway, the toilet set up means we are not using fresh water to tip down the bogs. In fact, much of the same water effectively goes round and round and round.

SilentC, that sounds like the perfect system! We looked at doing the same here, to try and escape connection to the new sewerage scheme in our little town - the health authorities would not allow it because we had a sewerage connection available!

Was going to be $8000 for the system, installed and operating, plus about an extra $200.00 for quarterly maintenance (has to be done and signed off by a plumber) plus electricity costs for pumping. AND we would have still have to have pay about $300.00 for the sewerage connection - regardless if we hooked into it or not!

So best of luck with your excellent recycler - pity that some local governments were not a bit more flexible with regard to these systems. We would have been able to re-use tens of thousands of litres of water had we been allowed to install a decent system!

Jeff

I wouldn't want it to reflect too kindly on our council though. The reason we are not on town sewerage is because there was no capacity in the existing system to connect in any more households. Same with the water supply. By allowing people to install these systems, they put the full cost onto the householder and don't need to raise funds for the infrastructure. They also collect a fee to 'commission' the system (which means they come out and look at it and say "OK, you can switch it on") plus they do a site inspection every couple of years, for which they charge about $80.

We paid cost price for ours because my old man is a plumber and he does the servicing of the systems in our area. It was still in the vicinity of $6000. Naturally he does the services but I suppose one day we will have to retire him and probably start paying someone to do it. You also have to get the septic tank pumped out periodically. If I had known more about them, I would have installed a composting toilet.

The guy who attempted to subdivide the land where our block is was foiled at every turn by the council because of the lack of services. He gave up in the end and sold the lot to another guy who persisted a bit longer. He managed to get the zoning changed to Rural 1a, which meant that 2 acre blocks could be sold with no services. There is nothing to stop them from demanding that we connect at some future date if they ever upgrade the system. If that happens, we will fight it but ultimately if we are forced to pay for it, we will use the system we have now to handle grey water only. It would be a shame and let's hope they have enough sense to see the benefits.

There is a precedent here. A mate of my Dad's had an on site system. When the sewer main was run past his house, he was advised he would have to connect to it. He refused and so far they have not pushed the issue. He is an ex-health inspector with the same council, so maybe it's a case of looking after your own. Maybe he knows too much for them to make an enemy of him

so all of our grey water and every colour in between

What colour goes in between grey?

Well, on the RGB scale, R=1, G=1 and B=1 is grey, so is R=254, G=254 and B=254. So if you want to be clever about it, every colour other than white and black is between grey

Dear Woodsprite
Be a bit careful with washing machine water. A lot of washing detergents have a lot of salt in them and can really mess up your soil and plants. I think CHOICE may have done a review of washing powders, might be worth a look.
Cheers
Mcblurter

You know when you put a stick in water and it looks bent? That's why I never take baths.

Thanks Mcblurter - we have been pumping the machine water onto the garden for a couple of months now, but have been careful about the contents of the detergent. The most recent setup - as in this thread - is for shower/bath water only, and I wil lcertainly look at the Choice pages to see about the soap/shampoo contents so that we don't muck the plants around. Have to say that at the moment the garden smells BEAUTIFUL!! all that sweet soapy water - who needs flowers!!

Thanks for the tip

not sure if this adds anything new

similar to you in that we have a bit of slope to work with and we're thinking of running shower water into the garden via a switch mechanism which i'll still have to work out and install

a builder girl i was speaking to said you can run it into the garden via a retic system but regs (in NSW) require it to be a certain depth (from memory i think she said around a couple of hundred mm's - i was talking to her whilst a wee bit drunk so don't remember too much) -

she has seen a few simple switches in different houses so that every number of showers people have their shower water head off to the garden and then inbetween back into the sewer system (means you lose the water for inbetween showers)

guess that means cost for extra piping and also making sure hair, soap, etc.. doesn't clog the small pipes of a retic system or else can be easily cleaned

G'day Joister, An interesting comment there. I think by rights the grey water pipe in the garden does need to be a bit buried - but who is going to check? We have found that simply running all grey water (showers and bath) into the big drums works well, even though we have to bucket it out onto the garden. But by bucleting we can spread the water around to where it is needed - our garden (what's left) is pretty extensive and it is not worth my while to put in pipes all over the place. However I may rig up a small washing machine pump to help squirt a bit around within reach of the drums, but so far we haven't got tired of carting the buckets.

If you need to filter, a simple filter as used in the home atering systems with drippers/sprays will do the job. At least with the drums we don;t need to filter.

Washing machine water goes out to a different pipe which we direct to different points of the garden. Once a week I shoot a load of wash water down the sewer line to make sure it gets a decent flush. We have about 115 metres of pipe between the house and the sewer line in the street, so it needs a decent flush.

I want to drown in dihydrogen monoxide.
Jeff

Hi Woodsprite and All.

I do not know the chemistry involved in putting soaps and detergents on the garden, but if they are sufficiently diluted it probably will not make much difference.

Woodsprite, have you looked at putting a small pump on your drum then you can hose the grey stuff all over the garden. Those buckets will get heavy.

Now if you were to re-direct your roof water, and if it ever rains, then you would have a lot more water, need a bigger drum, a bigger pump and hose,.... and your little project just turned into a big project!

Amazing how that happens.

Cheers

Graeme

Originally Posted by Mcblurter

Dear Woodsprite
Be a bit careful with washing machine water. A lot of washing detergents have a lot of salt in them and can really mess up your soil and plants. I think CHOICE may have done a review of washing powders, might be worth a look.

More on that at these links. You have to be careful of salinity, sodium, phosphorus, pH, and sulphur.

http://www.lanfaxlabs.com.au/laundry.htm
http://203.147.191.184/Uploads/3/Pro...ucts-Feb06.pdf

It looks pretty dire for your garden if you are using the worst of the detergents.

Choice tested laundry detergents in May 05 which you can get at www.choiceextra.com.au if you are a subscriber (or from www.choice.com.au summary here http://tinyurl.com/ybqz7h).

According to Choice there are not many detergents that get an NP tick (low phosphorus) and don't have enzymes (the 2nd link above says enzymes are bad for your garden). None of the detergents in the Choice table that are NP and no enzymes are specifically formulated for front loaders but some are ok for front loaders.

I have an old plastic olive barrel, about 250 litres and I'm thinking of putting it on the side of the house, next to the laundry and running the washing machine into it. I was thinking of adding a small pump so i can water the lawn and the garden with a hose.

I noticed you said grey water can be toxic and should be used quickly. Given that do you think my propsed setup would be ok ?

cheers
Moray

Gday Moray,

I know that post is a couple of weeks old, but I am about to experiment doing exactly the same thing (200L drum with cheap pump etc to re use washing machine and shower water on lawn and garden).

From what I understand you just need to use the grey water within 24hrs (before any nasties have a chance to grow) and you should be fine.

Joel

It's not just nasties. Grey water typically produces sulphur dioxide as it breaks down, which is deadly to breath in relatively small quantities. Smells like rotten eggs (same gas), but it quickly overwhelmes the olfactory system, so you don't know if it means the gas is gone, or too high a concentration to smell.

The navy has lost a number of personnel to this gas (people going into collection tanks without adequate protection), so it is treated very seriously. Ok, not necessarily a problem for most home collection systems, but it is worth knowing there are other risks, other than just the biological ones.

Not trying to put anyone off - am definitely considering to start using grey water around the garden myself.