im presently trying to set up a grey water system and have not found much info on here nor the net. my idea is to put it through 2 enclosed ponds acting as filters filled with sand and river pebbles.then irrigated through into waterfall for aeration . into a pond with reeds i would really like some ideas.
Re: greay water systems i made a direct system. The first bit was an extended outlet hose from the washing machine, through the laundry window and onto some trees. Next one was two 55 litre plastic storage containers, one lower than the other so the first can flow into it, from the outlet of the shower drain. (I just pulled the bottom of it out of the concrete drain) Then there's the kitchen buckets - only stuff fit for the garden goes into them. I keep them in the kitchen in front of the sink. The water the veggies have been steamed in is particularly good for the garden, I think. I have an old plastic sieve on top. Cost: $26 for the two laundry hoses. $18 for the two plastic containers. $1.60 for the buckets $0.50c for the sieve from a charity shop. Total cost $46.10 Of course, we don't use nasty stuff in the shower and laundry. And greasy or soapy kitchen waste goes straight down the drain.
Re: greay water systems As far as I can tell, Art Ludwig offers the most informative book currently available on the subject, "The New Create an Oasis With Greywater: Choosing, Building and Using Greywater Systms". He explains simple, inexpensive & proven designs. Well worth the money. You can also find a fair bit of info on Art's site: https://www.oasisdesign.net/ Good luck, rusty
Re: greay water systems Agreed. I've seen a lot of grey water topics here that could be answered with reference to this book. Perhaps a sticky thread?
Re: grey water systems Ask Grant Harper in Melbourne. He is a soil scientist and Permaculture designer, and very clever with getting greywater cheaply, safely where we want it to be. If you draw up your system roughly and send it, he will critique it nicely for you. Attached is his critique of a balcony garden tank system I drew. https://www.harperconsults.com. all the best, Cecilia
Re: greay water systems It's my understanding that in several states that allow grey water systems in the USA that there is concern about the water being held for more than 24 hours since it has nutrients in it. I've mostly seen and installed these system by just letting it spill to a mulch basin around trees or garden spaces but the key is to spill the water under ground and not to the surface. Again the reason to avoid watering from the surface is mostly due to the laws preventing exposure to the water since it can harbor all kinds of nasty stuff once life gets in there and gets bacteria going. Here's a group here that has some interesting information. I took a brief class with them and we installed a grey water system from a community laundry system: https://www.greywaterguerrillas.com/ The idea about using ponds is interesting. Either way you'll want to be looking at the ingredient that your laundry soaps use. Salts are the worst. Powder soaps are full of metallic salts. Boron is common in these as well and it is toxic to plants. The kitchen sink does have allot of grease and will need a grease trap. It's basically a box with baffles in it to separate the floating grease. Also take a look at John Todd's Living Machine work. These are multi unit bio-filters. https://www.rps.psu.edu/0009/machine.html Great move though. We should put good potable water to work on more than one task.
Re: greay water systems Speaking of water reuse I wanted to share this with everyone just incase you haven't seen it yet: This is from Sink Positive. It's a great idea. https://www.sinkpositive.com/ cheers
Re: greay water systems g'day missf, how about keeping it simple as? we sue our bath/laundry water to flush toilets this frees up good clean tank water fro the gardens. whatever of that water that we don't need for the foilet gets used to water potted plants and gardens. we wash our dishes in absin and that water gets bucketed to the gardens. this way we lose none of this resource along the way, as surely must ahppen if reed beds whatever are employed and to get usable amounts of wet land filtered water back out of that system how much needs to be generated on the in side?? we manage water well and generate app 100 litres give or take a day, and some of that goest to toilet flushing, as well as my wee water gets added to kitchen rinse water value added) or dishwater then to vege' patch. len