Irrigation is wasteful. Many homes and businesses use water treated to drinkability standards for pouring on the ground to make decorative plants grow. Some forward thinking areas have special plumbing to use reclaimed water for irrigation etc, but this is a minority.

Desert regions are the places with the greatest need for irrigating water. I propose that the nontoilet fixtures in the bathrooms be put on a seperate waste circuit from the toilet. This water is minimally dirtied and would be suitable for irrigation use, especially for landscaping and decorative areas. The conical bottom of the shower water salvage cistern would connect to the sewer via a valve so that sand, hair and such settling to the bottom would periodically be purged.

Such a system would make the most sense for a hotel. Hotels have many showers. Many also maintain large landscaped areas and golf courses for which the reclaimed water would be useful. A large system of this sort might even use a two-step system, with an initial tank to allow the soap scum and floating grease to be removed, and a second reservoir in the form of a decorative pond.
-- bungston, Jun 16 2008

a great idea, and very baked, though not as widespread as it should be (yet). Companies don't want to present consumers with things that require maintenance, so greywater tanks are still almost exclusively aftermarket items.
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 16 2008


My dad has had this system in place for about 50 years. Just have the water pass through a tank with a grease trap on top. The tank doesn't have to be very big, so it's cheap to have pumped out periodically, usually at the same time as the septic system.

If you put a water spray in the pond it will never smell.
-- nomocrow, Jun 16 2008



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