Okay, moving on from grey water to black water, or rather getting
"water" into the cistern.

Does anyone have any practical experience of how much head of water you
need to refill a toilet cistern from a water tank. No Pump.

Looking for head and feed pipe size.

Are there special low pressure float valves?

The standard inlet size to the toilet cistern float valve is about 1/2"
(?metric), however, I figure that if I run the standard 1"/25mm tank
interconnect feed into it, then I will not have to worry about length of
feed and the real question then is what head of water I need.

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.

my plan is to extend the rainwater storage by adding a thin tank on the
side path that can collect (some of) the surplus rainwater from the
overflows. I would also have bottom feed if I can get a suitable
non-return valve.

Given location, it would be feasible to dump the washing machine
greywater into it.

Head would be maintained in dry weather by float value from mains.

I am definitely not moving to electric pump assisted[1]. Maurice the
Lemming has started sending out reassurance letters to pensioners about
the forthcoming changes to NSW electricity, which means bills are going
to sky rocket.


[1] Anyone charging a tank with PV powered pump?

I got one of those letters today :-)

re Grey water, at the moment I fill a bucket at a time of washing machine
water and keep it by the toilet bowl. It isn't doing my back any favours.

Is it possible for the Water Board to put separate piping in for the toilet?

Katherine



I am definitely not moving to electric pump assisted[1]. Maurice the
Lemming has started sending out reassurance letters to pensioners about
the forthcoming changes to NSW electricity, which means bills are going to
sky rocket.

"Terryc" wrote in message
Okay, moving on from grey water to black water, or rather getting "water"
into the cistern.

Does anyone have any practical experience of how much head of water you
need to refill a toilet cistern from a water tank. No Pump.

Sounds to me like a case of simple gravity feed.

All you would need is for outlet from the header tank to be above the point
at which the water comes into the cistern.

But having read the whole of your post, in your case you would need the top
of the water level in your tank to always be above the level of the inlet to
your cistern. Water levels will try to equalise so for as long as the top
of your water is above the top of the inlet to the cistern, the water will
try to keep running into your cistern until the float valve in the cistern
shuts it off so you would need a non return valve if you go this route.

Have you ever seen irrigated land with feeder channels which have a bit of
black polypipe laying over the edge of the mound into the paddock? All the
farmer does to move the water from the irrigation channel to his paddock is
to walk along and shove the pipe into the irrigation channel, allow the pipe
to fill with water, cover the end with his hand (so creating a syphon) and
then drop the pipe into his paddock channel. The water then flows out from
the higher level water channel into his paddock. The cut off is to just
lift the pipe up and drop it back on teh bank of the channel till he next
needs to irrigate.


Looking for head and feed pipe size.

Not hugely critical. If it's a minute pipe (say quarter of an inch) it
would just take a long time to refill the cistern. If it's a 2 inch pipe it
would probably be too big and you might get some splash out of the cistern.
Prolly a half to an inch pipe would be about right.

Are there special low pressure float valves?

Prolly, but we seem to have normal cisterns on our toilets and one pan which
is a proper septic pan (didn't know they existed till the plumber told me
that was what it was when I complained about how bloody ghastly it was)

The standard inlet size to the toilet cistern float valve is about 1/2"
(?metric), however, I figure that if I run the standard 1"/25mm tank
interconnect feed into it, then I will not have to worry about length of
feed and the real question then is what head of water I need.

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.

my plan is to extend the rainwater storage by adding a thin tank on the
side path that can collect (some of) the surplus rainwater from the
overflows. I would also have bottom feed if I can get a suitable
non-return valve.

Given location, it would be feasible to dump the washing machine greywater
into it.

Head would be maintained in dry weather by float value from mains.

I am definitely not moving to electric pump assisted[1]. Maurice the
Lemming has started sending out reassurance letters to pensioners about
the forthcoming changes to NSW electricity, which means bills are going to
sky rocket.


[1] Anyone charging a tank with PV powered pump?

"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.

the law says grey water should only be stored for 24 hours. i believe some
systems with uv treatment & filtering & whatnot can be stored longer, but i
assure you that without any treatment you cannot keep it more than 24 hours,
& you won't want to, either ;-). we put shower water into the washing
machine, & on those days when i just don't get to the washing when i wanted
to, it starts to smell in warm weather. if no washing is going to be
happening within a day, i don't put it in the machine cos it's just a bad
idea :-) (how shower water or indeed washing machine water gets germy to the
point you can smell it, i can't really work out, but there you have it - and
that is reflected in the guidelines).

some spanky modern systems will incorporate all the grey water together for
the garden and the toilets, in which case you need to release it (or have it
on an automatic setting) to go through before it's too old, however, i
gather you wanted to rig up a system yourself. you could do so i'm sure, i'm
just emphasising that you need to be very aware of how long you're storing
grey water, & that it needs to be released (onto the garden) in time to
avoid problems. some systems release it into the wastewater, but that seems
an odd choice when you could put it on the garden instead.
good luck!
kylie

FarmI wrote:
"Terryc" wrote in message

Okay, moving on from grey water to black water, or rather getting "water"
into the cistern.

Does anyone have any practical experience of how much head of water you
need to refill a toilet cistern from a water tank. No Pump.


Sounds to me like a case of simple gravity feed.

Yes. Looking for ideas on refill times and how far above the top of the
toilet cistern I need to place the mains top up float valve.

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.

If you follow the yellow/mello mantra, you actually use very little
toilet water.

I am totally oppossed to grey water on food crops.

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.

It probably makes more sense and might be just as cost effective to
convert one toilet to composting.

"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

"Terryc" wrote in message
FarmI wrote:
"Terryc" wrote in message

Okay, moving on from grey water to black water, or rather getting "water"
into the cistern.

Does anyone have any practical experience of how much head of water you
need to refill a toilet cistern from a water tank. No Pump.


Sounds to me like a case of simple gravity feed.

Yes. Looking for ideas on refill times and how far above the top of the
toilet cistern I need to place the mains top up float valve.

??? You asked about filling the cistern from your tank.

FarmI wrote:

Yes. Looking for ideas on refill times and how far above the top of the
toilet cistern I need to place the mains top up float valve.

??? You asked about filling the cistern from your tank.

Correct, but when the tank level gets too low, I'll need to add water to
the tank to keep the toilet flushing until the tank it is topped up with
the next rain.

Having the mains top up float as low as possible means that I use as
little as possible mains water.

Do not confuse it with my greywater discussions.

Sydney Water has a campaign for people to connect their rainwater tanks
to their toilets, but they want you to buy and install an electric water
pressure pump to do this. Under their plan, you still have a mains top
up float value for when the tank gets low.

While I am happy to consider this, I realise that the cost of
electricty, pump, etc is far more than I will ever save in reduced mains
water cost, so forget it.

So I am looking at gravity feed version. It just means there is less of
the tank available and the mains top off float valve is installed higher.

In practice, unless we had a run of dry weather, the tap for the mains
top off would only be turned on when needed.

What I am trying to avoid is finding that 1' above cistern head allows
for one flush a day by the time it reflls.

If someone comes back and says that you really need 3', then it is a no
goer as not worth the effort with the existing tanks, unless I somehow
hit upon a very cheap supply of tall, thin water tanks that will fit up
the side path. (which has lost is effectiveness as a second side path
when the new "better insulated" water heater had to go outside).

In article ,
Terryc wrote:

I am totally oppossed to grey water on food crops.

I'm the opposite. First I have a garden bed covered with fresh chook poo. I
plant lots of seeds in it. Whenever it rains, the chook poo and soil
particles splash up on the veg, along with assorted microbes. I harvest my
vegies, rinse them under cold water, and eat them (OK -- I do cook some of
them, but not all). For the life of me I can't see grey water causing me any
more problems than fresh manure! I think the chances of a Bad Bug surviving
warm water and soap and time in the garden, then rising to strike again from a
fresh lettuce leaf, are pretty small.

Unless someone in the house has cholera or polio or typhoid, I don't think
it's likely to cause major problems. If we *were* suffering from the squirts,
I would refrain from directing greywater onto the veg, but not otherwise. And
let us not forget there are parts of the world where nightsoil is about the
only fertiliser available.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

Chookie wrote:
In article ,
Terryc wrote:


I am totally oppossed to grey water on food crops.

I'm the opposite. First I have a garden bed covered with fresh chook poo.

It isn't the bugs that worry me. It is all the dissolved
chemicals/hormones. As I understand it, the whole world is starting to
go through another "Silent Spring", but instead of it being the birds,
we are poisoning ourselves. The science articles on the problems have
been around for a few decades.

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:17:06 +1100, Terryc
wrote in aus.gardens:


While I am happy to consider this, I realise that the cost of
electricty, pump, etc is far more than I will ever save in reduced mains
water cost, so forget it.

With mains water at about $1 per kiloliitre you will NEVER save money
on your water bill by putting in a tank water system of any
description pump or no pump.

Lets face it we are using something like a $1000 tank to store $5
worth of water it makes no sense economically for any city dweller.
You have to do it because you think it is the right thing to do and
with an eye to the future.

Anyway a reasonable pump with an auto cutout can be bought for between
$160 and $250 so it doesn't add that much to the total cost. and the
electricity it uses to fill your toilet over a day is probably less
than your TV.


Regards
Harold

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum - Lucretius

Dinsdale Pirana wrote:

You have to do it because you think it is the right thing to do and
with an eye to the future.

Well, actually, it means I can water my veges whenever they need it.

Anyway a reasonable pump with an auto cutout can be bought for between
$160 and $250 so it doesn't add that much to the total cost. and the
electricity it uses to fill your toilet over a day is probably less
than your TV.

You are forgetting all the other costs involved in setup, like plumber
and electrician, especially f you want the piddling rebate.

I am also suspiscious about the cheap pressure pumps around and their
longevity (sp?).

In article ,
Terryc wrote:

Chookie wrote:
In article ,
Terryc wrote:


I am totally oppossed to grey water on food crops.

I'm the opposite. First I have a garden bed covered with fresh chook poo.

It isn't the bugs that worry me. It is all the dissolved
chemicals/hormones.

I'm presupposing the people aren't using anything too unhealthy in the house,
of course. And I would not drain my kitchen waste-water onto the garden; too
much fat.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

"Terryc" wrote in message
FarmI wrote:

Yes. Looking for ideas on refill times and how far above the top of the
toilet cistern I need to place the mains top up float valve.

??? You asked about filling the cistern from your tank.

Correct, but when the tank level gets too low, I'll need to add water to
the tank to keep the toilet flushing until the tank it is topped up with
the next rain.

Having the mains top up float as low as possible means that I use as
little as possible mains water.

Do not confuse it with my greywater discussions.

I wasn't. I was responding directly and only to your water tank question.

So I am looking at gravity feed version. It just means there is less of
the tank available and the mains top off float valve is installed higher.

In practice, unless we had a run of dry weather, the tap for the mains top
off would only be turned on when needed.

What I am trying to avoid is finding that 1' above cistern head allows for
one flush a day by the time it reflls.

???? The time to refill will depend on the size off the pipe. As I wrote
earlier, if you use a quarter inch drip line it would take a long time. If
you use a half or one inch pipe it will take minutes.

The bigger concern for only 1' of water above the cistern would be the size
of your water tank. If you have one of those minute tanks that seem to be
popular in the city then only 1' of water will mean tuening on the mains
again pdq. If you have a 2,000 gall tank then 1' of water will flush for a
long time.

If someone comes back and says that you really need 3', then it is a no
goer as not worth the effort with the existing tanks, unless I somehow hit
upon a very cheap supply of tall, thin water tanks that will fit up the
side path. (which has lost is effectiveness as a second side path when the
new "better insulated" water heater had to go outside).

As I explained earlier, you only need the level of the water in your tank to
be above the inlet to your cistern. That is why I wrote about how farmers
use the plastic pipe to move water from the irrigation channel which is only
a few inches higher into their paddocks.

Water will always flow to a lower level and try to equalise it's level.
Just think of this as a very simple but effective devise used to build - a
hose with water and 2 clear plastic ends added to the tube - the water in
each clear plastic end gives a level that is true and accurate.