Reusing home grey water in the yard & garden (Part 1)

I first learned about gray water reuse from a documentary over 30 years ago on how NASA developed a natural system that can reuse water on long space travel or on labs on other planets. With many areas in a drought situation the collection of rain water is not enough to sustain a healthy garden or landscape. This is where the harvesting gray water comes in to play.

Gray water is NOT water that has come into contact with feces, either from the toilet or from washing diapers. Gray water comes from showers, bath tubes & sinks. One obvious benefit to using gray water is saving water & money on your water bill. It increases the availability of freshwater for other primary uses. Gray water accounts for about 60% of the water outflow from homes. While grey water may look dirty, it is a safe and even beneficial source of irrigation water in a garden or landscape. Keep in mind that if grey water is released into rivers, lakes, or estuaries. Gray water nutrients become pollutants, but to plants, they are valuable fertilizer. Reusing your grey water keeps it out of the sewer or septic system, thereby reducing the chance that it will pollute local bodies of water. The gray water can contain traces oil, dirt, dead skin & hair. Some filtration should be used.

Where to Start:

The rules and regulations about grey water reuse can vary quite a bit from state to state. So depending on your location, some or all of these ways of reusing grey water may be illegal. Check out your states policies first to see if the use of gray water is allowed in your state. If allowed what are the requirements. This will give you an idea if you want to continue with a gray water collection & disbursement system.

In the meantime you may want to consider building a temporary system catching Warm-up Water. Warn-up water is the water that goes down the drain while you wait for the hot water to arrive for your shower or bath. This is clean water and ready to use, it can be saved it in a bucket. Once you start to collect this water, you will be surprised how much water is wasted.

Disbursement of the water can be as easy as a watering can. This would be a good time to work on gray water disbursement system only using warm-up water and rain water. This will give you a good idea of how much water your garden or landscape will need. Start with a holding tank. This can be as small as a 5 gal bucket or as large as 1000+ gal tanks. (I got 50 gal plastic barrels from a wine company for $5 each. I had to pick them up.) From the tank connect a soaker hose and run it through your garden or landscape. Most municipalities will require the soaker hose should be below the surface. 

In my next blog (Part 2) I will discuss different options on how you can build a gray water system. I will share with you the 2 systems I have constructed.