Do you have a grey water system?

[StormAngel]

I've been reading into the dos and do nots og having a system...

At the moment my washing machine runs onto the garden which waters a grape vine and now there are tomato plants growing there, I use a eco friendly detergent but I read a fact sheet that advises against eating edibles raw when grown in this fashion...

anyway..

do you have a set up at home now that the water is running out?

[moo]

Our washing water goes only to the grass. We syphon our bathing water to the food garden. I imagine the chance of getting sick from the food would be very remote, and yes we eat our raw produce all the time.

[mummabare]

Our set up is that the greywater from the washing machine goes into a tub which overflows and goes to our herb patch. The water from the tub I bucket onto my natives.

I also read somewhere that its advised against using this sort of greywater, but the greywater system Ive been looking into uses greywater from the laundry. I would like to install a system which we are thinking of doing after christmas, which would see us using water from our bathroom more effective ( currently Im bucketing water from the bath which is a bit of p.i.t.a. but hey...my arms are looking good!).

The only thing Im am absolutely 100% sure of not to use on the garden is toilet water (obviously...I think they call it black water?). Other wise if you are using eco friendly detergent like us, I cant really see any problem with using greywater on your vegetables. We all need to wash our fruit and veg before eating them anyways...and I doubt there is anything nasty in your laundry that wouldnt be in your soil any way

xx

[Rinelle]

The problem with using bathwater/washing water on vegetables is that it can contain amounts of bacteria (hey, you wash your undies, and yourself in the water first). I've read that it's OK to be used on fruit trees, and probably OK for watering vegies where it won't come into contact with the actual food (so grape vines and tomatoes are probably OK so long as the fruit is off the ground), but not on low lying or root vegetables.

Once we move, all our greywater (and treated blackwater) will be treated by our biolytix, and will go underground to the fruit trees and the grass inbetween.

[spiralgirl]

i know nothing about greywater systems, but i think its something i will look into more to decide what to implement here. I currently use bathwater on trees and plants but try to avoid it on food plants and just use tahleyas soap free bathwater on that........but im wasting lots of laundry water until i get somethign hooked up, so advice would be great - how does it work if the pipes have to run uphill?can the washing machine handle pumping that?

[Jakaluma]

uphill fine if it eventually winds up lower level (eg up over something) but think it would battle if straight uphill.

We had our bathroom hose going onto a grassy/bushy area. Laundry I'd bucket to other plants - but not the veggies. Citrus trees are fine with grey water, but no other fruit or veggies are recommended. And it's because of bacteria, not the detergent/soap. (And the citrus trees have some block so fruit okay).

I just wouldn't risk it myself, but sure it is a fairly low risk. We always had enough other places to put the grey water too. Maybe use a rainwater tank for veggies, and greywater for rest of garden?

[GreenGully]

I use Jack's bath water on the vegies. I don't if he is unwell, but I figure that as long as I am not stoing the water its ok.

[tigersmum]

We have a grey water system that takes the water from the laundry, kitchen and bathroom sinks and showers.The water is pumped up to a holding tank at the top of our garden and then we have a "stinkler" which sprinkles the water as the tank reaches capacity. We don't use the water on the veggie patch at all, only on the grass and "ornamental" gardens..... believe me the smell of the water will be enough to put you off putting it on your eating plants. Having a grey water system is absolutely brilliant though and certainly helps to keep the garden looking good at the moment.

[mummabare]

I would think that stored greywater would be more of a health risk than greywater used right away? We bucket our greywater so its not used on our leafy greens or strawberries or carrots but it used on the tomatoes,eggplants and zuchinis. We are planning on getting a rainwater tank sometime before next winter...Im pretty excited about that!

I dont know what we would use our greywater on if we didnt use it on those veges...our garden is natives and we have no lawn. Has anyone had greywater diverted to use to flush the toilet?

[~sequoia~]

We have a Biolytix system, but we used to have some elaborate and probably illegal greywater storage system at our old house I LOVE that all our water is reused onto the garden, and as we already have a fairly wet block, we will never have to water as such.