Grey water on gardens
 

"ant" wrote in message
...
George.com wrote:
"Chookie" wrote in message

They belong at the lower end of your digestive tract, and cause
problems if they get into the upper part.

I will defer to your superior knowledge on this. Best way I think, in
an urban area at least, to use grey water is to use it a second time
around to flush the toilet.

When my tank got very low a few years back, that's exactly what I did. I
put
tubs in the shower to get the water, then put that water into the cistern.

running slap bang in the centre of hamilton is a big river that is never
liable to run dry from which the city draws all its water. The major
constraint on water usage is actually capacity issues of drawing out and
treating drinking water, rather than low flows. Major upgrades of treatment
stations are needed every so many years to keep pace with growing demand.
Given such a scenario, it strikes me the best way to dramatically conserve
water is not to put grey water out on to gardens but to use it twice over
through the house with a low flush bog.

Alternately a compost toilet and rainwater for drinking/watering the garden
with grey water out in to the garden. A closed cycle like that is long term
sustainably desirable. The reflow through the bog idea perhaps more straight
forward and likely to reduce water usage in our city by around 30-40%.

rob

Grey water on gardens
 

"Chookie" wrote in message
...
In article .com,
wrote:


* don't use on your vege garden. That is the official word, although
lots of people do. As long as you are using drippers it is probably
fine, maybe not for root veg

From what I understand, the fear is that some of your intestinal bugs have
made it into the water from the shower, or via your clothes, and will then
give you gastro when you eat the vegies that they have landed on. Given
that
most keen gardeners shovel you-know-what on their gardens anyway, this
seems a
bit hysterical. I wrote to Gardening Australia once asking why a bit of
human
faecal matter was such a worry given Pete's enthusiasm for ordure, and
they
said they were just following what the water/health authorities said.
They
carefully refrained from comment on the realities of gardening!

Simon Toze (CSIRO) has looked at some of the issues involved with grey-water
recycling and health issues. http://tinyurl.com/f2wgq

I think treatment is the key

Grey water on gardens
 

"Chookie" wrote in message
...
In article , "George.com"

wrote:

accepting this may in fact be true, what I wonder is if the greebies
eminated from me in the first place, how would eating food soaked in
these
greebies further harm me? If they are inside me, surely the effect would
be
the same once they re-enter me in food?

They belong at the lower end of your digestive tract, and cause problems
if
they get into the upper part.

I will defer to your superior knowledge on this. Best way I think, in an
urban area at least, to use grey water is to use it a second time around to
flush the toilet.

rob

Grey water on gardens
 

George.com wrote:
"Chookie" wrote in message

They belong at the lower end of your digestive tract, and cause
problems if they get into the upper part.

I will defer to your superior knowledge on this. Best way I think, in
an urban area at least, to use grey water is to use it a second time
around to flush the toilet.

When my tank got very low a few years back, that's exactly what I did. I put
tubs in the shower to get the water, then put that water into the cistern.


--
ant
Don't try to email me;
I'm borrowing the spammer du jour's addy

Grey water on gardens
 

George.com wrote:
"ant" wrote in message
...
George.com wrote:
"Chookie" wrote in message

They belong at the lower end of your digestive tract, and cause
problems if they get into the upper part.

I will defer to your superior knowledge on this. Best way I
think, in an urban area at least, to use grey water is to use it
a second time around to flush the toilet.

When my tank got very low a few years back, that's exactly what I
did. I put tubs in the shower to get the water, then put that water
into the cistern.

running slap bang in the centre of hamilton is a big river that is
never liable to run dry from which the city draws all its water. The
major constraint on water usage is actually capacity issues of
drawing out and treating drinking water, rather than low flows. Major
upgrades of treatment stations are needed every so many years to keep
pace with growing demand. Given such a scenario, it strikes me the
best way to dramatically conserve water is not to put grey water out
on to gardens but to use it twice over through the house with a low
flush bog.

Alternately a compost toilet and rainwater for drinking/watering the
garden with grey water out in to the garden. A closed cycle like that
is long term sustainably desirable. The reflow through the bog idea
perhaps more straight forward and likely to reduce water usage in our
city by around 30-40%.

My water got used 3 times actually. The fresh stuff was my shower, then that
went into the toilet cistern. Which all goes into a bio-cycle-type system,
which then comes out as garden irrigation water.

--
ant
Don't try to email me;
I'm borrowing the spammer du jour's addy

Grey water on gardens
 

George.com wrote:
running slap bang in the centre of hamilton is a big river that is never
liable to run dry from which the city draws all its water. The major
constraint on water usage is actually capacity issues of drawing out and
treating drinking water, rather than low flows. Major upgrades of treatment
stations are needed every so many years to keep pace with growing demand.
Given such a scenario, it strikes me the best way to dramatically conserve
water is not to put grey water out on to gardens but to use it twice over
through the house with a low flush bog.

With such abundant water your outlook is no doubt somewhat different
from many of us. Here in Perth we are looking at building a desalinator
to extract drinking water from cockburn sound. There is talk of
complete bans on watering gardens. Using greywater to flush the loo
is great, but wouldn't use more than a fraction of our greywater.

On the subject of using greywater for flushing, I saw a neat little
trick in Tokyo. The sink in the toilet drains to the cistern, so as
you wash your hands the water helps refill the tank for the next flush.

Grey water on gardens
 

Not sure what has already been said, but I would not use grey water on any
natives.

Soap detergents have phosphates in them, phosphates harm a lot of our native
plants, therefore if you have natives (which we should all have over those
crappy foreign "exotic" things) you may find they kark it.

Cheers,
Clint

"Staycalm" wrote in message
u...
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote in message
...
"George.com" wrote in message
"Chookie" wrote in message

From what I understand, the fear is that some of your intestinal
bugs have
made it into the water from the shower, or via your clothes, and
will then
give you gastro when you eat the vegies that they have landed on.

accepting this may in fact be true, what I wonder is if the greebies
eminated from me in the first place, how would eating food soaked in
these
greebies further harm me? If they are inside me, surely the effect
would be
the same once they re-enter me in food?

Are you the only one who washes their hands in your house or uses the
shower? Are you the only one who eats the veg from your garden?

I don't think I'd like to have a salad at a house where they were
using untreated grey water on their veg.

Grey water would be suitable for citrus and other fruit trees wouldn't it?

Liz

Grey water on gardens
 

Clinton M James wrote:
Not sure what has already been said, but I would not use grey water on any
natives.

Soap detergents have phosphates in them, phosphates harm a lot of our native
plants, therefore if you have natives (which we should all have over those
crappy foreign "exotic" things) you may find they kark it.

Almost all the plants in our garden are either edible, scented or
decidous. Ideally a combination of the above :-) Itis very hard to
meet these criteria with a native garden, and I don't suffer any
major guilt episodes over our terraformed backyard.

But no, natives won't like the phosphates. The banksias that
are native to our area are particularly prone to fertiliser poisoning.