Learning your Grey, B, C
Planting water-wise gardens, putting bricks in cisterns, and going 23 days
without a shower have all been talked about to death. But for many, grey
water remains largely misunderstood.
By Nick Dall
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A diagram showing a simple greywater subsurface reuse
method, where a handbasin pipe leads outside.
W
hether you live in Bloemfontein
or Bellville, water restrictions
and shortages are likely to be
part of your future. Find out how recycling
grey water can drastically reduce your
monthly consumption of H 2 0.
The basics
Grey water comes from baths, showers,
handbasins, and washing machines.
Water from toilets and the kitchen is
referred to as black water and should
not be reused. Depending on how much
you are prepared to spend, grey water
can be used to water your garden, to
flush your loos, and even to fill your pool
or do your laundry.
Cheap and cheerful
home hacks
If you use buckets of shower or laundry
water to flush the loo, you are already
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recycling grey water. Lugging buckets
soon wears thin though, and you can
never catch every drop either. For less
than R100, you can buy fittings that
attach to the outlet of your bath, shower,
or basin and then connect to a regular
garden hose (be prepared to wait 10
minutes for your bath to empty) or some
40mm of irrigation pipe (faster drainage
but not as easy to manoeuvre).
Diversion systems 101
Sooner or later you will want something
a bit more permanent. Diversion
systems rely on gravity to transport
all grey water to a single sump before
filtering out large objects like hair and
skin particles and pumping this water
onto your garden as soon as it has
been filtered.
• As the name suggests, diversion
systems never store grey water, as
this can be a serious health hazard.
Water Sewage & Effluent May/June 2018
Depending on the system you
choose and the layout of your
house, you may not be able to
recycle all of your home’s grey
water.
Because
the
water
flows
whenever you bath, shower, or do
laundry, you have to move your
hose around the garden every day
or so (and make sure no grey water
gets in the pool).
Don’t use Jik and Domestos to
clean your bath or shower (but go
wild on Handy Andy). Likewise,
choose your detergent wisely:
Surf, Omo, and Ariel are all great,
but Skip is a no-no in this instance.
Never hook a diversion system up
to a pressurised irrigation system.
About once a month, you will need
to empty the filter basket and brush
down the inside of the sump with a
toilet brush (shotgun not!).
Garden ResQ Maxi Pro
DIY diversion kit
Garden ResQ is an above-ground
diversion system about the same size as
a cooler box that can be installed by an
Average Joe in under two hours. Most
folks connect it to one bathroom only,
but if the whole family uses the same
bathroom, this can still save loads of
water. Because it is above the ground,
you won’t have to dig a single hole in
your garden.
R5 820 — hose, sprinkler, and postage
not included.
www.gardenresq.co.za
Garden Rhapsody
Leave it to the pros
If you’ve got a bigger home and/or
want to harvest every drop of grey
water produced in your household,
a professionally installed diversion
system is your best bet. Water Rhapsody
in Cape Town is the pioneer of grey
water recycling in South Africa, but
plenty of other folks are now doing it.
The pump and the sump are larger than
the Garden ResQ and the entire drum is
buried so the lid is at ground level. All