Bathwater Recyling System

Hi Martin,

I've asked a few chums if they can provide some feedback. For the sake of sanity, you might not want to read the entire thread, but the people still posting are fairly spread around the world and helpful. I'm sure they'll enjoy checking their plugs.

Kudos to you for promoting recycling. Hope you can get the info you need. I see you've been registered a while - have you looked around some of CR4's threads on grey water for anything that might be related and of use ? Ah, I see you have. If you've not seen them, there's more.

Hi Kris

Thanks for your positive and prompt response,I must say that right from the development stage through to manufacture I have found both government and 'professional' reaction to this stuff luke warm to say the least.I am aware that this is not ground breaking or wondrous,but it is uplifting to realise that ther are some of us making a bit of an effort.

Had some good news today The Sunday Times are running a very small and I mean small article in the 'Green Ideas' section,watch this space...

Thanks again

Martin

You're very welcome, Martin.

I suspect that a lot of people here, like myself, would be into devising and building their own systems. However, that's not to say people wouldn't want to help you out, it's just that people like to build home stuff a lot. See if you can Find Del ther cat's Solar heating system for a good example. Marketing a system for those without the knowledge/skill/time is a great idea.

Make sure you give a mention to us here if you get a plug in the papers. I don't read the Sunday Times, but the Saturday edition are very enthusiastic about energy saving/eco-friendly stuff. The format changed recently (), and I'm not up to speed on how they've altered it. "Eco-worrier" is a good read, and might be a nifty way of getting extra product promotion. I'm guessing you might know the column, but I've posted it for non-Brits who may be interested. She's given coverage to those bags you put in toilet cisterns before ('Elephant Bag', I think, though a brick works for me !), so your product is worthy of coverage.

I shall chastise people I know if they don't give feedback. Because of the rate at which new posts appear, it's easy for people to miss some. My posting another reply may help 'bump' your thread up the list and help get it noticed.

It's a shame that the government etc only appear to be interested in 'sexy' radical ideas. Simple ones are often the best. Hopefully the increasing use of water meters will push people into thinking what they do with grey-water. I'll keep my ear out for anything that may be of use.

Meantime, all the best with your venture. It's a very cool one to pursue. Keep on battering at the various bureaucrats, eventually they're going to have to see sense. A metered water bill is pretty good for focusing peoples minds.

Has anyone got a squirrel exterminator?

OO! OO! Mememememememe!

Good luck on the recycling, by the way, and if you do get help from the gov.com, let us all know, 'cos I for one will be astonished. They can talk the talk, etcetcetcetc.

I have been using my bath water for about three years now to temper the water going in from the city supply as well as flushing the toilet. Why not get as much out of the waste as you can ?

Here is something to consider, how much of an impact does concentrating the wastewater stream have on sewage conveyance and treatment facilities? We are kind of dependant upon water to convey the waste and you need a stable consistent fluid for biological degradation, also high solids can be a problem in pretreatemnt and primary treatment, which must be considered in new designs. So if you want a huge market, this could lead to redesign of entire infrastructures for Cities (which would cost about half a billion dollars in a city of 100,000 ppl).

exactly, however, the bath water is "brown water" and can be safely used for irrigation but the kitchen sink water containing food wastes and toilet water is "black water" and must be sanitized prior to re-using, even for irrigation. One way to treat black water is to put it through a sealed septic tank, saving the off-gases for use as water heating, cooking fuel, or producing electric power, and then putting the effluent into the waste water sewer system for further treatment.

Thanks chtank

Droughtplug is purely for 'Grey Water' only I am really not too clued up on other types.

Thanks for your interest.

Martin

Martin,

Potable water is a main concern world wide and is actually in crisis just as is the economy, energy, green house gases, and poverty. In fact, all are tied together and all need our immediate attention. The attention being given by the APIX PROJECT is a part of the attention but the responsibility falls on all our shoulders, the whole of all mankind. After all, we are the steward of our earth.

Hi Martin,

In India they are the same size and there is a problem with water shortages in lots of areas.

Good luck with your recycling business

Kudos to you, for being the first person overseas to answer the question !

No worries,

Malaysian plugs are also the same.

We will put a bath in our Indonesia house soon so I will let you know! We are installing solar water heating first.

Is the plug fitting a standard fitting? or is that your own design?

I have been thinking how to re use our grey water in Indonesia and that would be a starting point.

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The question is from Martin Clack (see at the top), I'm just interested because I like environmentally-friendly ideas. Hopefully Martin will see your post and can answer the question. It would be great if you two can share some knowledge/ideas on the topic.

I see you are fairly new to CR4, the following may or may not help : You can set the page to display in either of 2 modes. Look to the top left of screen - it can either show posts in chronological order of posting, or 'indented' so that in longer threads (where the discussion can branch in various diredctions) it's easier to see who is replying to who. The post number, and who it's in reply to, is shown on each post but personally I find 'indented' viewing easier to read. If you look at a few discussions and toggle the indented/chronolgical feature, you'll see it better than I can explain (!).

You may already know all that, in which case, sorry for the needless info. It just confused me for a second when you posted the question to my post, rather than by using the reply' button on one of Martin's post's. Not a problem at all, but I thought elaborating may help. If in doubt, experiment - my explanations are sometimes less than clear. I shall duplicate this post above, so that the effect is easier to see when you toggle between viewing modes - Comments : Flat/Comments : Nested

Hi Team

42mm diameter at the broadest point tapering smaller,this is a standard UK fit but addapted and patented to accept a ´hoselock type fittiing to allow the water to be syphoned out.Please check www,droughtplug.co.uk

Thx Martin

Nice web-site, Martin.

I wonder if it would be worth adding a bit about where you can use grey water ? As far as I know, lawns and aesthetic plants is fine. On some forums I've viewed, people appear to have uncertainties, and it might be worth clarifying it a bit.

Soapy water is good for getting aphids/black fly off plants. My gardening neighbour reckons that apart from the direct effect, the plants take up the chemicals in the water and this in itself deters such pests. I don't know if that's true, but it may be worth checking. In tandem, it might be helpful to clarify the suitability of untreated grey water for crops plants.

The plug is a nice design. Am I right in thinking it twists so as to lock onto the spoked metal grill in the plug hole ?

Another point I'm curious about is getting the syphon running ; The hand pump pushes water up to highest level of the pipe (window opening height). The length of pipe beyond highest level, down to standing water level need to be full before an effective syphon is formed. In between compressions of the hand pump, does water trickle away on the downward length of pipe ? If the pipe used is too big, water is initially pumped slower than it can freely flow. In other words, that first downward flow section of pipe might not get full, and no syphon established. I'll try and draw this if it's not clear - let me know.

The easiest solution is the one you suggest - backfilling the pipe from the lower end, initially forcing water up to the bath. Garden hose is fairly rigid - could it tolerate a suction pump at the other end, used to draw bath water up to the highest point ? Short of experimenting, I'm not sure, but a foot operated pump might be an answer to creating the syphon. If the pipe doesn't collapse, it only need to raise the bath water up by maybe 4ft. If the suggestion sucks, feel free to say !

It's a nice product on a lot of counts. I hope you get the success you deserve. One last thought; if you could add some sort of demo video to the site, it would probably help. When people see things in action it make a big difference to interest. I'll certainly mention your site to anyone I know who has an interest in recycling.

Hi Kris

Absolutely twist and lock and it seems to work in over 80% of applications where people have bothered to read the lable!

The pipework supplied with the kit is to enable you to connect to your own pipework (garden pipe).

I have used commercial grade 3/8" reinforced pipe which connects nicely to the syphon bulb,but the ends have been flared to accept hoselock and then 1/2 " fittings.

The strength of my pipe means that it does not collapse even with hot water going through it.

I have sourced the syphon bulb carefully and the flow rates even with only a slight height difference are encouraging.

I take your comment about the grey water info. and am addressing that this weekend.

Thanks for your thoughts,

Hi Kris what about this?

www.peaceful-portugal.com/Images/Greywater.pdf

I'm not sure how it went fromthe RHS to HTA to Portugal, but it's a useful link !

Thanks

G'day Martin,

As far as I know there is no specific standard for the diameter of bath drains other than it has to be large enough to drain the bath. There are also a whole host of high tech drain systems in use that have inbuilt plugs that would preclude the use of your adaptor/plug.

However, Australia is the second driest continent on earth and water conservation and recycling technologies and concepts are always being developed and considered.

The first thing that needs to be considered when trying to efficiently use water is to find out what, where, when and how water is used. The pie chart on the right shows that in Australia at least the amount of water used in baths (red segment) comes in at a relatively inconsequential 7^th after outdoor or garden, toilets, showers, washing machines or laundering and wash basins or sinks.

Clearly the real sink is outdoor use in things like gardens and swimming pools. You can't use grey water in swimming pools but you can use it for irrigation so there is definite potential here except that better targets for recycling would be showers and washing machines. From the chart on the right the proper use of grey water in irrigation could reduce the total consumption by over 25% without too much trouble.

However, my personal belief would be the use of a fixed instillation that used something like the Nylex Greywater Diverta that is hardwired into the system and then used for subsurface irrigation.

There is also an extensive range of plumbing fittings that are specially coloured lilac like those in the image below that designates that the are utilizing grey water rather than potable water.

I do however like the concept of your plug as it can't get any easier to install, but it looses out in the use department to the more complex permeant installations. It definitely has a market when these are impractical and while there is a market for it in Australia I see it as more of an adjunct to fixed installations rather than the primary recycling system.

It might also be worth either creating different sized units or redesigning it so that it could accommodate different plug sizes. This would open up new markets as it would enable the use of it in places like laundries where the plug sizes vary dramatically.

Regards, masu

Thanks Masu

It's the tooling costs which are the killer for different plug sizes until we get a decent response and can afford further investment.

I appreciate that this one size fits all approach is not the best and it was really designed with the UK in mind,but I was kind of interested to see whether anyone else could make good use of it.Drought problems in the UK are only a recent issue which people feel they need to address,so Droughplug is a retro fix,one would hope that new build like where you are would incorporate grey water saving devices this does not seem the case at present,I think the sceptics feel that the 2006 drought was a one off......

Thanks for your thoughts