"Terryc" wrote in message
...
0tterbot wrote:
"Terryc" wrote in message
...
Since Sydney seems to have gone back to wettish weather and the tanks are
mostly full, I figure it is now time to get serious about using rainwater
(and grey water?) for toilet flushing.
you don't want to use grey water for toilet flushing unless you make it
so that the excess (which there will be, unless you have a household of
at least 10 incontinents ;-) goes on the garden.
If we go full greywater, we will probably dump the excess down the sewer
unless we have a dry period. It isn't practical to keep flooding
grass/lawns and having to keep mowing it every fortnight. Maybe
occassionally on the front native plant garden in extended dry.
i suppose you would & it depends on your garden. at my dad's place, they
have a g/w system which collects from showers, handbasins & washing machine
(front loader). the garden is largish i suppose, although it's not really
big like mine. there are 2 of them in the household most of the time, & they
have trouble getting enough grey water, it's not the other way around. if
the machine was a top loader, things might be different ;-) friends of ours
(5 people) have a system where the water goes onto the lawns/trees (really
big yard) & again (
afaik) there's no excess water to be had.
so you probably have to try it in order to work out whether you need to ever
dump or not. it's just that you need to have a dumping facility organised in
advance! i would recommend keeping this flexible if you can, so you can
choose according to how you find it is working out. if you have a front
loader machine, they are very stingy on water use (comparitively), so that
will really change things.
at my place, again, there would always be places the greywater can go. the
problem i have is that it's manual, so when it's been raining i'd rather let
it out onto grass or trees rather than bucket it about myself (you have to
make your priorities somewhere!)
If you follow the yellow/mello mantra, you actually use very little toilet
water.
that's right.
I am totally oppossed to grey water on food crops.
mm, people say that. i, too, have been infected with the bug of greywater
paranoia. i use it on non-root plants and generally, non-leafies (i.e. any
situation where the water goes into the ground, not on the plant. cabbages,
tomatoes, etc etc.) however, i doubt that makes any sense, really. to give
one example, jackie french advocates 1: to not use grey water on leafies and
2: to spray your leafies regularly with the noxious, fermenting stew of
animal manure in water (cos it's good for them!) that i call "poo stew". i
DO NOT put poo stew directly on my leafies, i would put it on the root zone.
i would only put it on the leaves of plants in which you don't eat the
leaves, if the plant needed a bit of a boost. i might, however, put a bit of
greywater onto leafies' root zone if they need a bit of water & that is
what's there, but that's very uncommon for me.
i don't think j. french's position is even remotely logical, & tbh i have
not read any articles about greywater on food plants which are particularly
logical. the water goes into the ground, with all the other bacteria etc
that lives in the ground. if i had a system where the water was treated
properly, you bet it would go on food plants. the main reason to take care
with this is that it's not the "best" water you can have, it's got stuff in
it (soap etc) that plants don't need, so it pays to distribute the water
around so that all plants get fresher water, too.
I would not recycle grey water for cloths washing either unless I could
run it through a bio-bed, which is a long term possibility.
ah, your rinse water would be fresh, that's how things work :-)
It probably makes more sense and might be just as cost effective to
convert one toilet to composting.
it would make more sense for sure (particularly if you were getting a new
toilet anyway), but might not be as cost effective as slightly altering what
you already have. tbh, in your situation i'd ditch the whole idea of
involving toilet flushing in your grey water system. the savings aren't
there for the trouble & expense involved, unless you're all chronic flushers
in your house (but it doesn't sound like you are). our loo does a half-litre
flush (i kid you not) because we put bricks in the cistern. it gets flushed
a few times a day. messing with this just wouldn't make any sense at this
point, there are no real savings to be had, iyswim.
kylie