Our interest in Graywater is piqued

It’s something that’s sort of piqued our interest of late. When we moved up here, the goal was to be as self-sustaining as possible, while still having access to niceties only found in the wasteful side of society (i.e. Computers, flat-screen TV, sex toys, etc…). We’ve taken to pretty much an all-organic diet, and we consider the impact of the things we do. I think we’re off to a good start. Hell, our monthly utility bill is around $30 during non-Winter months, which is pretty good.

We recently had a drain failure that really got us thinking about water, though. Our washing machine dumps into a wash sink in our utility room, and that had backed up. In trying to fix it (plunge!), we actually made it a bit worse: the length of pipe that connects to the main busted through. After we got that fixed, we realized that that wasn’t all that had busted; the main had actually developed a nice leak at the joint as well. This is not an easy fix, and with 4 dogs – two of which we’re definitely not supposed to have – we were in no hurry to call the Landlord out to inspect.

So we started doing laundry less. After all, we’re shopping for a house, shouldn’t be long, right? Yeah, right. But still, we needed to do laundry, and what we came up with was to stop up the wash sink, and bucket the stuff away. First idea was to bucket it to the tub, bypass the leak and get the water out. This worked, but we were amazed – AMAZED, I tell you – at the actual amount of water that we bucketed out when we did this. We’re talking 6-8 trips with a 5-gallon bucket, per load. Ouch.

So we considered what we were doing. We use all-natural laundry soap, so we figured, it’s not going to hurt the lawn any. Why not bucket it out to the lawn? Saves the drain in the bathroom at least. So we started doing that. And now we don’t hesitate to do laundry. And in fact, we’re happy to bucket the water out, because our lawn is doing fabulous with all the water it has access to. Seeing how wasteful it was, really gives us an idea. What’s wrong with that “greywater?” If it’s not chemical-infused, why can’t we reuse it? It makes sense.

Anyway, that’s what we’re doing now. What we’re planning on doing when we get our house (finally), is to implement something almost house-wide. We don’t use chemical detergents or additives anywhere, so all the drains are a go, save for the toilet. I think it’s a good idea, one that probably everyone should incorporate if able. According to some research I’ve come across, a family of 4 would save 38,000 gallons of water a year doing this.

Wow. Think of that. 38,000 gallons. We should all stop being so wasteful.