Grey Water reed bed and toilet flush system?

[DirtyDave]

I'm a plumber by trade and by no means a Horticulturalist, In south Oz most trades get sent out important notices re issues in the work place and a hot topic is grey water, I tend to agree with the authorities, Dishwater has detergent in it, your laundry water has what ever you have come into contact with on them, and blue collar worker are exposed to all sorts of nasties, Laundry waste and detergents and bleaches, this is one of the main reason septic tanks stop braking down organic material. Shower water has Human waste and if stored at the right temperature bacteria will multiply fast in a grey water catchment system, A good water treatment system would have pumps aerator's UV sterilisation which uses electricity, which means your not saving much..
The point i was making is in most cases grey water is harder to install and it seems to be trendy to have a grey water system at the moment, I've been asked to convert houses over to grey water and they don't even have rainwater tanks, WTF?
Then there's the neighbour putting there grey water in the garden, they don't care what goes down the drain because they don't grow veggies, unfortunately Billy Bunter next door is coping his neighbour's run off or ground seepage into his daily bread.......

I know the people on this website are aware of whats the right and wrong thing to put down the sink but you are a minority, I advertised for months green plumbing options and water saving ideas, and never got one call,

I've heard out side of my trade that hepatitis can be spread thru human waste on veggies, and as far as I'm concerned Grey and Black are the same thing, the chances of infections is very minimal i agree, But why go to the trouble, as most times it is much easier to harvest rain water, If you want to use grey water on veggies fine, I personally wouldn't do it,

[gardenlen]

dave,

ok they are sending out information that has no solid foundations in practise, it is all still someones hype to turn the tide in their favour, there are still no known cases world wide of anyone using grey water sensibly being affected in any negative health way, no is there any to support the theory of causing problems in some elses property, yes septic tanks do a very good job of polluting the sub-aquafa as they put that water underground, but feeding well managed grey water onto a lawn or garden in a responsible manner has no likelyhood of doing anything but being a very sound way to manage water resources.

"Then there's the neighbour putting there grey water in the garden, they don't care what goes down the drain because they don't grow veggies, unfortunately Billy Bunter next door is coping his neighbour's run off or ground seepage into his daily bread....... "

is there some hard eveidence to support any of the above??

the water tnak issue has been created byt eh gov' simply wanting to be seen to be doing something and for the main the lowest common denominator is in play that is people who do buy tanks aren't encouraged to prioritise water and make sapce availabel instead they are encouraged by rebates to squeeze in the minimum factor to win the rebate.

retro-fitting expensive grey water treatment systems to homes especially the modern poorly designed macmansion is a money consuming exercise, so i would be thinking if someone sets up as being green and sustainable they would be thinking outside the square and very lateraly to come up with workable simple solutions.

ask those other plumbers for hard evidence to support their hype theory about passing on 'hepatitis A, B, C or D", cutting your foot on a rusty tin or broken glass at the beach can do that as well. again sounds like a throw away line.

there is no way to make any process fool proof as the fool will circumvent all efforts to make everything totally safe. case in point lawn mowers in the USofA have set ups where as soon as you let go the handles the motor is stopped by a brake that activates and they have clutches so you can run into rocks and not damage the engine, well guess what they are still cutting off toes and fingers and still damaging engines by running into things and mowers are heavier and more expensive in the process.

so in the mean time we need to encourage good water mangement in the homes etc.,. and encourage people to buy water tanks of substantial capacity not just for the rebate carrot on offer.

len

[Ojo]

grey water stuff
http://www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebook/Greywater.html
http://www.sgaonline.org.au/info_greywater.html
http://www.ecosherpa.com/directory/Wate ... rey_Water/
images
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... ages&gbv=2

[IntensiveGardener]

Yeah!,
Good post Len. The information available from the mainstream stinks of hype and paranoia.
There is a mythbusters episode (i'm not usually a big fan) in which they test contaminants on toothbrushes.
They keep a toothbrush in the open in a fairly normal bathroom (which contains a toilet), also one in another room and one in an airtight chamber.
If my memery serves me right all three toothbrushes had small quantities of faecal matter preasent on them.
No one gets sick from this and most of us still brush our teeth.

Authorities usually make a pretty big mess of the regulations they pass regarding agriculture, food and health. This is often the result of relying on fragmented advice from scientists rather than practical experience. Although the scientific factoids they bombard us with are technically correct they are viewed in isolation and not in context or within the workings of a system.

In victoria the EPA claims that compost heaps "must" be made on concrete or wooden floors, as they can contaminate groundwater if made on open ground. They still alow septics though!!
Sounds to me like the poor people in the local (air conditioned) EPA office have either never made a compost heap or have never made one properly.
The fedeal health authorities have indicated a desire to ban all animal manures from the production of food from time to time. Although this will never happen it shows how abismally alienated from the realities of life these people are.

By the way Len what do you make your home made laundry detergent from? Id like to give that a try sometime. How effective is it? I'm a full time gardener so my clothes often take the word dirty to a whole new level :-)
cheers,
IG

[gardenlen]

g'day i.g,

yes the administrator can only ever pander to the lowest common denominator, and scientific opinion is just that opinion it is not fact, i used to watch a show something like about 'what is good for you', what a furphy it was promoting sponsor products using scientific evaluation to do it. had a reckon they know better than any otehr agrdener, organic certified gardener/farmer do some tests to prove that grey water was bad!!?? guess waht she got the results she wanted but then her testing was done using the methods (just like science) most gardeners would use to distribute grey water around their thirsty gardens.

lol what a laugh composting has to be on cement what happens then when that product is put into the garden as it keeps breaking down?? no common sense hey like why doesn't the contamination occure once the product is in the garden??? too silly for words.

that home made detergent can be used as general cleaner as well as hand wash, we have used it for dishes but me lovely likes to see a bit of suds in that department, but very many people are now using it many are ladies and like my lovely they absolutley like it, the recipe is on our <remedies> page using all the ingredient measures we only make 10 litre batches (concentrate) takes less storage that way. we also substiuted the essential oil (lavender) for the prefference to use more eucalypt oil (t-treee can also be used) as uec'y oil is a good antiseptic.

we sue el-cheapo vinegar in the rinse water to soften clothes also acts as antiseptic, and for absolute efficienecy or as efficient as we can be we use a twin tub washing machine, again like scientific evaluation industry standard ratings of supposed efficiencies are there to benefit the industry not the environment. so for us we generate app' 90 litres of laundry water a week (that is the combination of rinse and wash) and that 90 litres does 3 loads of washing so for the main we often don't get as much grey water as waht we would like or could use.

we hand wash our dishes in a basin every second day (i'm sure science could say that was unhealthy to hey chuckle) takes 2 days to generate enough dishes to warrant using the water, and that 10litres goes to the garden.

len

[Ojo]

http://www.biosandfilter.org/biosandfilter/
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Sand-Filters-for-Greywater.htm
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... ages&gbv=2
living machine
http://www.rps.psu.edu/0009/machine.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_machines
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... ages&gbv=2
http://www.watercone.com/product.html
http://www.edc-cu.org/filtron.htm

[equinewhine]

Have a look at Charles Sturt University Thurgoona Campus. They have an environmentally friendly design campus which utilises water recycling system in place similar to what you are seeking information on.

Check it out here: http://www.csu.edu.au/division/marketing/thur/water.htm

[Ojo]

Two reed beds were constructed using different plant
macrophytes for comparison. The two reed species used were Phragmytes karka and
Phragmytes australis.
excerpt
http://www.adb.org/Documents/Events/200 ... anzler.pdf

Almost without exception, reed beds in the UK and Europe have been planted with Phragmites, and species of Phragmites, Iris and Typha have been demonstrated to remove heavy metals, such as lead, copper, zinc, nickel and cadmium, but less effectively than that of soil/substrate. However, Typha and Phragmites should not be used in domestic wastewater treatment systems in Australia because of the massive seasonal release of wind-blown seeds.

Relatively few native Australian species have been studied in detail and, therefore, many would be suitable for future research. Examples include the emergent macrophytes Phragmites karka and Triglochin spp, and submergents such as Vallisneria.
excerpt
http://www.greywaterreuse.com.au/treatment.html
a good read
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol1/iss1/art2/
some good links
http://www.limnology.org/links.html

[Ojo]

free files
* Constructed wetlands for farm effluent – a review of literature
(http://www.afsni.ac.uk/gru/PDFs/CW%20Report%20Final.pdf)
* Constructed treatment wetlands
(http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/pdf/ConstructedW.pdf)
* Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment
(http://www.fujitaresearch.com/reports/wetlands.html)
* Constructed reedbed wetlands
(http://www.arches.uga.edu/~pgoforth/index.html)
from
http://www.euwfd.com/html/wetlands_-_overview.html
forums
http://forum.sws.org/eve/forums/a/frm/f/2756008642
http://www.wef.org/TechnicalDiscussions/Default.aspx

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[soc]

gday i am just a newie here but here is my 2 bobs worth i am 55 years young and when i was a lad ihad to pump out the septic onto the old mans tomatoes and the rest of the garden we never got sick there were 6 of us and the tomatoes were huge