Hi all;
I'm not an expert nor am I a plumber but I have a greywater system that
is working fine. I thought that you might want to read about it.

I did a lot of research on the Internet and found that fresh greywater
is pretty benign. Sure, there are some pathogens in it but the count is no
worse than what you're sitting in when you have a bath. In other words, LOW!

The problem occurs if you hold that greywater in a tank. It's a perfect
environment for those pathogens to multiply.

The other concern is grease, fat, food scraps, and soap. It's easy to
see that if they go into a tank, they'll create sludge and feed the
pathogens.

Finally, putting soapy water into the soil can, over time, upset the
soil pH. If I remember correctly, it'll make it alkaline.

I also found that ol' Mother Nature does a really good job in cleaning
up and re-balancing the environment.

If you take few buckets of grey water and throw it on your lawn. In no
time, the water soaks into the soil. The pathogens die or are killed. The
grease, fat, and food scraps decay or get eaten by soil organisms. Finally,
the soap degrades and the pH is re-balanced. Ergo, no problem! Where this
process falls apart is when the soil becomes super-saturated with greywater.

So, the obvious low-tech solution to greywater is to spread a little
bit - all around. That's exactly the process that I am using.

I live in a small country town on an 860 square meter block. My house
is a low-set Queenslander. It has the bathroom and kitchen at the back of
the house. The laundry room is also at the back of the house, at ground
level. The bath tub and bathroom sink used to drain into one ground sump.
The kitchen sink and laundry drain into another ground sump.

Using the standard 50mm plastic plumbing pipe, I connected all the
greywater sources to one common pipe. The common pipe drains into the ground
sump close to the outside laundry room. I have a screw-on plastic piece that
goes from the end of this pipe to the ground sump.

This screw-on pipe is where I connect my greywater hose.

I got a plastic cap that screws onto the afore-mentioned pipe. I
drilled a large hole through it and glued a 25mm hose connector to it. I
purchased about 30 meters of 25mm hose and connected it all up.

That's it - that's my greywater system. The plastic cap plugs the
afore-mentioned pipe and the greywater drains off through the 25mm hose.

Every morning, after feeding my chooks, I move the end of the 25mm hose
to another part of my lot. It doesn't have to be moved much, a few meters
every day.

The 25mm hose doesn't drain as fast as a 50mm pipe. This isn't really a
problem as any excess flow backs up into the laundry tubs and will
eventually drain out. This only occurs when emptying the bathtub.

I don't worry about putting the greywater on our root vegetables. With
the low pathogen count and the natural cleansing of the soil, plus the fact
that we only eat cooked root vegetables that have been washed - how can it
be a problem?

Sometimes, the 25mm pipe plugs up at the plastic cap end - once from a
dead green frog, once from soil from pots that we washed out in the laundry
tubs. The fact that the laundry tub was filling up with water (and not
draining) clued us to the problem. It was easy to disconnect the screw cap
and clean it out.

We've been using this simple system for 4 years now and it's working
just fine. We haven't been sick or anything and our plants are thriving.
There is nothing about this system that has caused a problem.

Norm

good one noem,

go to it mate your system falls well into the K.I.S.S (keep it simple
stupid) system, i'm on you side mate me and phobias created by vested
interests just don't meld.

len

snipped
--
happy gardening
'it works for me it could work for you,'

"in the end ya' gotta do what ya' gotta do" but consider others and the environment
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gardenlen1/

my e/mail addies have spam filters you should know what to delete before you send.

"Norm L" wrote in message
...
Hi all;
I'm not an expert nor am I a plumber but I have a greywater system
that
is working fine. I thought that you might want to read about it.

snip

Thankyou for posting this. I think there should be more of it!

I am currectly in the process of perfecting my greywater system. For several
years now I have used a tank system and waited till it was full ( a few
days) then simply hosed it around the garden (yep allowing the greywater to
go over the foliage). I have even done this on the vege garden! However I
think your idea is better.

I am waiting for my husband to get some free time ( hopefully this weekend!)
so we can organise an irrigation system of poly pipes with holes drilled in
them for the vege garden. I like the idea of water draining straight onto
the soil and I am hoping I can even do away with the pump and just let the
water flow out of the tank using gravity! I used to do a similar thing at my
last house using one of those big flexible drainage pipes. The water just
went straight out of the bath/shower onto the garden.

Everyone in Australia should be reusing their laundry and bath water. Its a
terrible waste if they don't!

Amy

Instead of all the tanks and other longwinded systems, I have my pipes going
straight outside to the areas I want them. The bathtub drains to the roses,
via an old bit of 2" poly pipe, and a piece of motorbike tyre tube to give
me a flex joint at the house end where it comes out the bathroom wall. The
kitchen, bathroom sink and laundry drain straight out similar old bits of
pipe to a series of other areas of the garden. No complicated smelly tanks,
except to hold fresh water that I pump up from my well.

Mind you, on 160 acres, I have the grey water drains away from the house,
and the fresh water overflow when I fill the tanks going to the area close
to the house.

Hope this helps,
Peter

"Norm L" writes:
So, the obvious low-tech solution to greywater is to spread a little
bit - all around. That's exactly the process that I am using.

Bingo! I'd say that's it in a nutshell.
--
John Savage (news address invalid; keep news replies in newsgroup)

Hmmmn, I like the idea of using shower water, but one thing nags me, what
about the soap ?? Does it degrade the soil ? Does it harm the plants?
Would like to know about that
Regards
Graham

"Amy Lou" wrote in message
...

"Norm L" wrote in message
...
Hi all;
I'm not an expert nor am I a plumber but I have a greywater system
that
is working fine. I thought that you might want to read about it.

snip

Thankyou for posting this. I think there should be more of it!

I am currectly in the process of perfecting my greywater system. For
several
years now I have used a tank system and waited till it was full ( a few
days) then simply hosed it around the garden (yep allowing the greywater
to
go over the foliage). I have even done this on the vege garden! However I
think your idea is better.

I am waiting for my husband to get some free time ( hopefully this
weekend!)
so we can organise an irrigation system of poly pipes with holes drilled
in
them for the vege garden. I like the idea of water draining straight onto
the soil and I am hoping I can even do away with the pump and just let the
water flow out of the tank using gravity! I used to do a similar thing at
my
last house using one of those big flexible drainage pipes. The water just
went straight out of the bath/shower onto the garden.

Everyone in Australia should be reusing their laundry and bath water. Its
a
terrible waste if they don't!

Amy