DIY Greywater system - Thoughts required

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DIY Greywater system - Thoughts required
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Fee

Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 15922
Location: Earth

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 5:51 pm Post subject:

Bugs wrote:

Fee wrote:

Oh, and we use charcoal in the pond to clear it sometimes in the summer, does the trick for clarity anyhoo.

How do you do that? Please

Not very scientific, sure somebody out will have a more correct method, but we just bunged a few bits of charcoal in the litte pond that feeds the bigger pond (also quite small), didn't weigh them down or anything (as I remember - I will check). The water's moving quite a lot up there, and it's full of plants too, not sure if that has any impact.

Seemed to do the trick, the other was some straw, but I can't remember anything about that right now

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 7:28 pm Post subject:

Fee wrote:

Bugs wrote:

Fee wrote:

Oh, and we use charcoal in the pond to clear it sometimes in the summer, does the trick for clarity anyhoo.

How do you do that? Please

... the other was some straw, but I can't remember anything about that right now

A small bundle of *barley* straw is supposed to help keep ponds clear. Dunno about charcoal...

Nanny

Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 4520
Location: carms in wales

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 7:34 pm Post subject:

barley straw doesn't work, tried that once.....we ended up with a clear pond by just allowing the plants to get to the right level and it cleared itself beautifully

then we moved house and the next guy filled it in...oh well

as we have a septic tank and that has one of those finger things that goes off under the garden, does that count as recycling our waste water even if it is from the bottom up?

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 7:53 pm Post subject:

WRT water filtration etc.

Sand filters can be very effective at removing larger pariculate muck.
There are two problems.
Flowrate - the finer your filter the less easily water will pass through...
The answer is a bigger filter
Backflushing - you need to arrange some scheme to get the trapped gunk out of the sand, otherwise your flowrate will dwindle away as the filter clogs up. And if you have a big filter bed, you don't want to throw it away. A reverse flow (with air bubbles to fluidise the filter bed) is what the pro's would do. Not so easy at home... (convert the Jacuzzi!)

The alternative to filtration is flocculation. Thats whats done with "finings" to clear beer. A few drops of additive and the particles clump together and sink faster (think of the comparitive speed of snowflakes and hailstones).
Dunno what might work for grey water though...
The flocculant would produce fairly clear water and a layer of sludge at the bottom. An arrangement with taps at different levels ought to allow the sludge to be removed.

I think filtration or flocculation would be needed if you were planning to use the grey water for loo-flushing (thinking of valves...) but not for garden use.

All the soapy stuff composts away quite happily. But it does make the water "nutrient rich" - and so inviting for all sorts of microbiology.
I'm sure others would have more guidance than I can offer, but IMHO excluding light from your waterbutt, and so preventing photosynthesis should be seen as a minimum.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 7:58 pm Post subject:

Nanny wrote:

barley straw doesn't work, tried that once.....we ended up with a clear pond by just allowing the plants to get to the right level and it cleared itself beautifully...

If things are well balanced it ought to stay clear.

I think the right straw is supposed to be effective, at least against some algal blooms - but it probably depends on which. And I'd guess it depends on the natural circulation in the pond to spread the acidity or whatever from the straw...

JonO

Joined: 05 Mar 2005
Posts: 119
Location: South Birmingham

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 8:03 pm Post subject:

All sounds good Dougal ! I recently came back from a much poorer country where I seen greywater recyling in use at schools by the children them selves, hence the interest. They built large concrete tank and passed water through differant grades of gravel then charcoal. I was interested to use the same theory on a scaled down version but as was pointed out, cleaning the filter is always a problem ! They also used water dilution technology which is where the idea came to mix my rain water in and dilute any bad stuff.

I am a bit worried that even if I don't filter it will it "go off" if I don't use the water up fast enough which is why I was going to just use bathroom sink water as there wouldn't be too much of it ?

Anybody else done anything similar or have I just got a crazy bee in my bonnet ?

Home on the Hill

Joined: 06 Feb 2005
Posts: 313
Location: Warwickshire

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 8:16 pm Post subject:
The Centre for Alternative Technology have a really useful tipsheet about how to do this - how to make filters etc. I think it costs 50p to download it, but it's well worth it. www.cat.org.uk Beth

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 8:23 pm Post subject:

Might have expressed myself better...
Even after filtering, the *dissolved* soaps (which no *filter* is going to remove) are going to make the water "nutrient rich", and fertile...

I posed the question as to whether anything other than darkness was used to preserve the (it looked like several tonnes of) *spring* water that the TV Strawbridges were storing in their attic... ("Its not easy being Green") I don't know if anything is necessary.

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 8:59 pm Post subject:
If you connected up the bath and had a good overflow* then wouldn't that give you a good rate of refresh in the butts? Perhaps you could have two butts and fill one then switch to fill the other while using up all the water from the first? * e.g. hole drilled 10cm from the top and a connection back to the drain.

mrutty

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 1578

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 10:36 pm Post subject:

Just a word of warning, remember that a hose ban will also ban water from bath in said pipe and some ar$eh0le is bound to call the authorities. If you can get it into an external pipe (only really on old builds as rainwater is no longer allowed in the main sewage system anymore (shame a good rainstorm flushes the system)) then you can legally use a water diverter.

Not sure how a soaker hose from the butt would fare in law so might be worth a quick call to the water board. I know that is I fill a tank in the greenhouse with water from the bath via a bucket then I can run a dripper system with no issue.

With current bans (at least in this area) worth double checking.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu May 04, 06 11:05 pm Post subject:

mrutty wrote:

Just a word of warning, remember that a hose ban will also ban water from bath in said pipe...

Yes, strictly, s76 applies to all water originally supplied by the Water Co.
Discussed here
https://forum.downsizer.net/viewtopic.php?p=174703#174703
although it would seem from the replies that, to encourage recycling of water, the Co's have no interest in pushing that point...

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Fri May 05, 06 5:56 am Post subject:
Doesn't Thames water state you can use a hose for grey water? Certainly worth letting your water company know.

mrutty

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 1578

Posted: Fri May 05, 06 6:23 am Post subject:
Not sure. Southern Water were on the radio yesterday saying no hosepipes means no hosepipes. There was the case a few years ago of the guy that had a pump out of his bath on to a hose. You know how life goes if you don't check you'll get caught out, if you do check then they'll say of course that's ok.

James

Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Posts: 2866
Location: York

Posted: Fri May 05, 06 8:59 am Post subject:

I have a downpipe that carries both grey water (sink & bath/shower) and rain water. I’m going to put a diverter on the downpipe and attach it to a 50 litre plastic bin (the base of a kitchen flip-top bin). The reasons for using only a 10 gallon container: you cannot store grey water (you should use it within a day or it’ll go smelly), the container is cheap (or free if the local skips are productive this weekend), and I can guarantee it’ll be full every day, so there’s no need for it to be bigger. a tap on the base will fill a watering can.

Inside the bin, I’m going to use a float system to draw water only from the very top. A length of hose will have a piece of polystyrene attached to one end and the other end will by rammed into the tap inlet.

Is it safe to water vegetables with grey water?

JonO

Joined: 05 Mar 2005
Posts: 119
Location: South Birmingham

Posted: Fri May 05, 06 9:03 am Post subject:
Certainly is, nutrient rich apparantly ! I downloaded the leaflets from www.cat.org.uk for 50p (as suggested here !) which tells you about using grey water for irrigation

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