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Old 12-08-09, 03:29 PM   #51
wyatt
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I see, you were worried if you went reverse order the cloth/sand at the bottom might clog the holes. An advantage of your type of setup is there is only one place to collect gunk... not at every layer.

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Old 02-15-10, 10:57 AM   #52
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I had the holding tank emptied today.

I left the tank alarm on "Silent" from last time it was emptied. The other day, I was thinking it's been a while since the last time. I looked on the holding tank alarm (which is hidden in the back of our tiny utility room!) and saw the light was on, indicating the tank is full - or in this case, really really full.

Anyways, it's been ten weeks, less a day - 69 days since last time the tank was emptied. A new record, but I attribute that more to the tank being maximum full than to water conservation.

That averages out to 29 gallons of waste-water per day. Or 14.5 gallons per person in my two-person home.

According to the American Water Works, daily indoor per capita water use in the typical single family (American) home is 69.3 gallons.

That means my wife and I are using one-quarter as much water as the typical American does.

The AWA also lists the toilet as the biggest water user, followed by the laundry washing machine, and then the shower.

Making the toilet re-use water from the laundry seems to save a considerable amount of household water.

Next up may just have to be working on conserving water in the shower.
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Old 02-15-10, 10:11 PM   #53
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Gal-dern-it.

I really have myself worked up over this whole water thing.

I had to go out to the home-improvement store today anyways, so I looked through shower heads while I was there.

They had dozens of fancy expensive showerheads, but only ONE water-saving one!

The water-saving head uses 1.5 gallons-per-minute. All the other heads are 2.5gpm, which I believe may be the maximum rate by law.

Well, my existing showerhead was just a cheap one, but still 2.5gpm. I picked up the "Eco" shower head and installed it this evening.

I will now enjoy using only 6/10ths the rate of water I was using before in my shower.
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Old 02-16-10, 05:05 AM   #54
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I too have found what you have. The local stores don't have any selection in low flow heads. Ordering online may be the only other option.
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Old 04-02-10, 09:07 AM   #55
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Hey Guys. I never really did much with that 5-gallon bucket filter. It was just an odd shape, and not quite big enough. Instead, I have decided to build a similar filter system in my laundry tub.
The below is from my post on EcoProjecteer.


For sometime, I have been using laundry water to flush the toilet.

Seriously.

My wastewater bill comes to about 4.5 cents per gallon, and toilets can use up to half the water in a house. Also, think about all that goes into getting water so pure that you can drink it, yet we flush our human waste with it!

By using wash water to flush the toilet, water gets used twice, instead of once, and saves money to boot. (Between this and other water-saving measures, I save about $45 on my water bill)

However, I had been running my laundry into a black plastic drum right next to my washer. It didn't look great, and wasn't an ideal use of space. Also, I no longer had a faucet there (which I had on the laundry sink I removed to make way for the drum.) The other issue was that I was using NON-filtered water. That really wasn't a big deal, but I do want to keep lint out of the system, and if I had a way of doing some biological filtration on the way, I would like too.

The two problems with filtration are space and cost/complexity. I have very limited space in my laundry room (which also holds my dryer, furnace, water heater, conditioner, pressure tank,etc...) Unless the system was gravity-powered, there is the addition of pumps, which add noise, electric use, and cost to purchase.

So, here's my idea. Put the laundry tub back. Plumb the drain straight down to a small greywater holding tank. Install a bio-filter system IN the laundry tub.



Here's the space next to the washer where I had the black barrel. You can see the dirt ring on the floor of exactly where it was. Behind it are the hot and cold water lines and drain for the utility tub that was there. I removed that to make space for the barrel originally.



This whole time that I have been using the black barrel for my greywater, the laundry tub had been stored on my covered back porch. This is a very generic laundry sink. I think half the families in American have one of these things.



A view of the tub from behind shows where the drain and water lines to the faucet are. Also, near the back-top of the tub is an inlet for the output hose from the washer. This lets the washer use the drain of the tub without a big hooked hose taking up space going up over the top of the sink. Measured on the floor where the drain would come to if it went straight down, instead of going sideways into the wall. I then used a 2" hole saw to drill a hole through the floor right there. Next, I reinstalled the laundry tub, and reconnected the water lines. Instead of hooking the drain back up, I connected the sink drain to 2" waste pipe, going straight through the floor.



Now why haven't I done all of this right from the start and made this whole system easier on myself? Well, the main reason is that I don't have a basement. Rather, my house is over a cement floor and concrete-block wall crawlspace, which is 20 inches deep. That is not even deep enough for me to crawl on my hands and knees. I actually keep a mechanics creeper down there just for getting around....

So the view from below will be interesting.



In this photo, you see a grey tub and my steam-punk collection of assorted plumbing. The white drain pipe goes straight from the laundry sink, into this grey tub. The red/orange colored PEX tubing goes into that tub. The pump pulls water through that to a small pressure tank, and then through another PEX line up to the toilet. The pump has a pressure switch built in to it. When the toilet flushes, the pressure drops, and the pump turns on. When the toilet is done running, pressure builds up until it kicks the pump off. This is exactly how standard home plumbing systems work. This is a "shadow plumbing system" which duplicates what would normally be done, except that it doesn't tie in at all to the freshwater system (so there is no possible issue with cross contamination.) The original freshwater line to the toilet is simply turned off with the shut-off right behind the toilet, and the tube is disconnected from the tank. If I ever have a problem with the greywater system, want to sell the house, etc, it would take just a minute to hook freshwater up again.

Since I have the sink and faucet hooked up again, I can now ADD water to the greywater tub (in addition to the water from the laundry) just by turning on the faucet. I still need to add the overflow from the grey tub to a traditional drain.

I would like to line the bottom of the sink with layers of stone, landscaping fabric, gravel, sand, and soil to form a biological filtering system. The top layer would be transplanted with diverse, local, wetland plants.

I still have a few more tweaks to work out on this system, but overall, it seems to work very well.
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Last edited by bennelson; 04-02-10 at 09:08 AM.. Reason: typos
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Old 04-02-10, 06:40 PM   #56
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I now have a constructed wetland in my laundry room!

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Old 04-03-10, 11:17 AM   #57
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To add a little more info on what I did to make a filter.....



First, I drove over to the landscaping supply place and picked up a bucket of sand, one of pebbles, and one of stone, along with a piece of landscaping fabric.

Then I laid a few of the bigger stones down around the drain, to allow space by preventing anything else from sticking in there.



Put down a layer of stone over the top of that. One or two stones thick is fine. This is mostly a drainage layer.

http://gallery.me.com/benhdvideoguy/...12703098960001

Over that, pour in a layer of pebbles. They should fill in fairly solid, but not disappear between the spaces in the larger stones.

http://gallery.me.com/benhdvideoguy/...12703099010001

Next, push in a sheet of landscaping fabric. The piece that I used was about 36 inches by 48 inches. Fold the corners as best you can to make the sides flat. Imagine folding a Chinese take-out container. It is still floppy, so just push it up and out of the way as you add the next few layers.


Now, lay down an inch or two of sand.


Over that, I added a little more of the pebbles, just to help keep the sand in place.


Time for a layer of dirt!!!


Time to head outside and dig up (literally) some local wetland plants. On my tiny property, I have water oozing out of the ground in both the front and side yard. I dug up some cattail and marsh-grass, including some of the dirt that came with them. Hopefully the dirt includes "good bacteria" that's coming with it.


Then "plant" the plants in the tub. Once they were in, I filled in the edges with a little more dirt, and added some assorted smaller plants around the edges. The wider the variety of plants, the more likely one or more will do well in this particular environment.


It goes without saying to use an eco-friendly soap, and no chemicals such as bleach. But, you were doing that already, weren't you?


Make sure your plants get enough sunlight. My tub isn't in an ideal place, so I may add an LED grow-light as well. Snip off the extra landscaping fabric, stick the hose in the tub from the washer, and you are almost done!


One last thing, I glued a specialty connector onto the end of the new drain pipe, which will then thread directly to the sink drain hole.
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Old 08-26-10, 07:10 PM   #58
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something you could look into would be a new gas tank for your automobile to fit in your crawlspace for storage. of course new not used. they make rubber ones, plastic ones etc. just an idea. thanks
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Old 08-27-10, 09:07 AM   #59
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Quote:
Originally Posted by greenbean View Post
something you could look into would be a new gas tank...
Not a bad idea, in that it would be the right shape.

The tub I am using right now holds 50 gallons and I can see how much water I have just by looking down into it.

I would imagine that a new gas tank that holds that much would be rather expensive. Although they are already designed for a pump anyways..... at 12V... Hmm might be the right thing for some sort of off-grid graywater system?
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Old 08-29-10, 11:02 PM   #60
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gas tank was first thing that come to mind, being the crawl space u have. yes they can be expensive. well it has you thinking in another direction anyhow lol. good luck and enjoy reading how it is coming along for you. if i think of anything else besides a gas tank i will let ya know...lol

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