Gray water and irrigation.

[Royall]

Cathie and I were at the Makuu market yesterday and were talking to a man selling banana starts. During the conversation he mentioned using gray water from the washer to water the plants. I thought how our plumbing is laid out and feel it would be easy enough to make a bypass to fill a small storage barrel for watering the bananas and other fruit trees we bought at Plant it Hawaii this weekend. My concern is the detergent and bleach use in cleaning the cloths; will it cause any problems with the taste of the fruit? Are there other possible problems recycling the water this way?

Royall

What goes around comes around!

[Robin C]

Hi, Royall.

I have a friend in CA who uses grey water to water her veggie garden. She makes sure to use biodegradable detergents (Ecover, Seventh Generation, etc) and has had no problems.

Robin

[Kapohocat]

In Honomu, we ran our gray like out onto a jasmine bush. it made it into what we called the "man-eater" - grew 3-4 feet in height and width in about 6 weeks..... this was just reg old wash water / bleach & detergent... at first we didnt even know the gray line ran out on it.

[malolo]

Do it! You won't regret it, Royall.
I've done it for ages with nothing but great results.

(...of course y'might start talkin' crazy after a time, but that's a whole 'nuther issue!)

[Carey]

Royall, unless your grey water sytems is very closed, bleach does tend to dissipate over time in the air. Detergent is not all that bad for plants (some insecticides are detergent based) as long as it is dilute, and washer water is fairly dilute (1 wash cycle 2-3 rinse cycles). The biggest concern is the detergents gettiing into streams & standing water, as the older phosphate detergents caused the plant like algaes in the water to over produce & 'bloom'. A well thought out grey water irrigation system is actually a good way to reuse resources, and should not effect the food quality.
Aloha, Carey

[Scott_S]

I read somewhere not to include the kitchen sink, no pun intended, and washing machine water if washing cloth diapers into your grey water recyling system.

Scott

[holahan]

aloha royall,

i use our grey water from our laundry washing machine, to water a planter in our backyard. it works dy-no-mite, and the plants have grown like crazy. we do use a biodegradeable detergent in our wash to keep things as "clean," as possible. the hose basically just runs into the planter, and i've created some troughs in the planter, to direct and divert the water. i highly recommend it. just use a bio-friendly detergent.

:?)

holahan

[Hotzcatz]

Aloha Royall,

Scott is right about the washing water used for diapers, you are not supposed to have any "fecal matter" in your greywater. Although, technically, if it has the aforementioned FM in it, it is by default then "black water".

A hui hou,
Cathy

[Kapohocat]

Wouldnt that be brown water then??? hahahahaha

[sansei]

I have been using greywater on some of my fruit trees here in California for about 4 years now and they are doing great. I gw the washer, bathroom sinks and shower/tub. The water drains into a 30 gal tank with a pump controlled by a float valve. This way, any load of wash with bleach in it (I use a lot since I have hard water) is diluted. One benefit of greywatering I have not seen mentioned is that clorine does a great job of killing the bacteria in your septic tank. The bacteria in your septic breaks down solid waste before it gets out to your leach lines so it does not plug it up. Too much bleach in the septic will mean pumping the holding tank out frequently or leach field failure.

By the way, you should check with your health department before greywatering. I looked on the county WWW site and it was no help. The county I live in has a liberal policy toward gw so my system is permitted. California state rules are so strict you almost have to put in a second septic system.