The benefits of greywater use are pretty extensive, even beyond enabling me to raise a small vegetable garden. For the home owner, it can reduce your water bill. We have a limited amount of freshwater in almost all areas, and using treated drinking water in situations where slightly dirty or soapy water isn’t the best use of this resource. In some areas, water is already being rationed due to drought, and greywater can allow you to use water more luxuriously than you might otherwise be able to. Are you on board yet? Well, here’s how we’re doing it cheaply and with no modifications to our home.
Water Transport and Storage
I experimented with used gallon milk and drinking water jugs. I was surprised to find that they become rather leaky after just a week or two of hard use – I suppose they weren’t meant to be refilled, stored in hot car trunks, and squashed on a regular basis. Now I use hard plastic 5-gallon jugs like you might find inserted into an office water cooler. These were purchased for $7.00 apeice at the local WalMart, and I’ve kept my eye out for similar jugs on freecycle and the free portion of Craigslist. These work great. They are heavy when filled and bulky, but hey, we’re talking several 5-gallon jugs of water here. There’s no way that’s going to be light.
Reclaiming Water from Work
I work in a laboratory that uses freshwater extensively for cooling equipment and running small water aspirator vacuum pumps. I simply stick the end of the hose into the jug, use the equipment until the jug is full, then replace the jug. This is the main way I get water for my garden because it is the easiest and fastest way to fill my water needs. We use way more water than I can possibly package and transport on a daily basis. You may have similar situations in your place of employment, but this is obviously not an option for all people.
Reclaiming Water from Aquariums
We have two red eared slider snapping turtles in a 40 gallon aquarium. Turtles are dirty little pets, and even with the filter running full time their tank stays much cleaner and healthier if we replace their water and vacuum the waste from the gravel once a week. I used to dump this water in the kitchen sink, but now I siphon it off into the 5-gallon jugs. My plants love this high-nitrogen fertilized water! Fish aquariums need to be cleaned this extensively much less often, but they, too, are chock full of goodies that plants need.
Reclaiming Shower Water
Now we get into greywater like most people think of – the water used for normal household cleaning that is still good for plants, but not good for drinking. I like to plug the drain while I shower, then fill gallon containers with the water and pour it into the 5 gallon jugs. This takes an extra 15 minutes in the morning, and while it has lower levels of shampoo and conditioner in it, it’s still great for the plants.
Reclaiming Kitchen and Bathroom Sink Water
I suppose it would possible to reach under the sink, detach the pumbing, and put a 5 gallon bucket to collect sink water. This would require a couple things from the user: (a) a handiness with tools and a confidence that the plumbing could be taken apart and put back together with no leaks or damage, and (b) diligence in checking the water level in the bucket before and during every use. At this point, we’re just not ready to gamble flooding the downstairs apartment on our abilities to carry out (a) and (b). Because we use very little water in the bathroom sink, we’re not even tackling reclaiming water from it yet. However, I have a nice plastic Tupperware that fits in one half of the kitchen sink. Vegetables, mostly-clean plates, and soapy pots with no oil or meats are rinsed into the Tupperware. Really gross stuff is washed into the other half the sink. When the Tupperware gets dangerously full, I drain it into a 5-gallon jug.
Using your Greywater
- Watering Plants - This is the most obvious and easiest way to use greywater, and the only use we implement. As long as the water is not contaminated with extreme levels of soap or even low levels of herbicides, this is an excellent use.
- Washing Stuff - Your dog probably isn’t too thrilled about getting a bath anyway, so he probably won’t mind too much if you get him wet with grey water for the shampoo part, rinse once with greywater, and do a final short rinse with freshwater. Likewise, your car won’t care if you get it wet with soapy water before you soap it up, and your pots will probably soak even better in water that was already soapy to start with. You get the general picture here – use greywater for soaping up and pre-rinse, freshwater for the final rinse.
- Toilets - If you are hardcore about your water usage, you might be able to turn off the water supply to your toilet (there’s usually a knob near the wall at the base of your toilet) and use greywater to fill the tank of your toilet between flushes. We haven’t tried this yet, because our garden needs the water, and we’re just not quite disciplined enough for this option at this point.
Sometimes baby steps are the best we can take towards our goals of independence. If you've been contemplating greywater use as a step towards yours but aren't ready to invest in permanent systems, I hope some of these ideas give you a place to start. If you have ideas of your own, please post a comment with them!
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