Greywater

There is a significant drought in this region, as in several other areas of our great country. One solution to this problem is to
re-use drain water; the term for this is grey water. Grey water systems are in significant use in places like Australia. However,
in the U.S. there is little to choose from, in the way of equipment or systems.

After much research, I was able to locate a diverter valve from a company called Jandy, a pool supply company. Diverter valves
act like a switch to send the drain water either to the city or out to the yard, for watering plants. It is important to use a valve
instead of permanently routing all drain water to the garden because you don't want to flush solvents into the yard (during
cleaning) or send the water to the yard during periods of heavy rains or hard freezes.

My first effort was to hook a grey water system to take my kitchen sink and dishwasher water out to my garden. The garbage
disposal output always goes down the drain to the city. Of course, there are no instructions for hooking up a system like this. To
make matters worse, I found that 1 ½ pipes on one isle of the hardware store did not match up with 1 ½ inch pipes on another
isle. So, I spent a good deal of time at the local home improvement store.

The next effort will be to send the shower drain to the garden. In this case I will use actuators with the diverter valves so that
I can control the valves remotely.

Important points:
* Grey water should NEVER drain into a watershed.
* Grey water should NEVER be used on grass or other places that may contact bare feet.
* It is not good practice to store grey water because of bacteria and disease.

This picture shows the Jandy
diverter valve. The top of the valve
is where the sink & dishwasher
drain feeds into the valve. The left
side of the valve is the output to
the city drain and the right side
sends the greywater to the garden.
A (two part) PVC cement was used
to connect fittings on the left and
top of the valve. On the right side I
used a flexible rubber connection
that would have worked on the left
side, too.