Valve and Sump for Gray Water System

"I dont know what kind of valve opens after being clossed for 48hour automaticaly? Any ideas??"

A solenoid valve coupled to a timer.

"Also the pump to send the greywater upto systern I was planning to use a sump with a bilge type pump. Is there a way not to have a sump??"

Use a tank instead.

Thanks DV,

The solenoid valve will just reset everytime its used back to 48hrs.

Next stop RS components

Cheers and may the force go with you!

Hello,

Vader has it right about using a solenoid valve on a timer.

Use a small inexpensive submersible pump like what you'd use in a pool of basement...you only need a few inches of dirty water in the bottom of the basin or tank.

Have a great sunny day!

I highly recommend that you do a cost analysis on the system before you start.

I am a director of a small [1,900 customers] in the Sierra Foothills of CA. We sell water for about $1.00 per 1,000 gallons.

The average 4 person home uses about 250 gallons of in-house water a day, of that about 200 is gray water. So if you save 200 gallons a day you are saving about $0.20 per day +/-. Use that to calc the payback period of the grey water system. Don't forget to add in some costs for operation and maintenance.

I would recommend that you put your money in water conservation fixtures and get your in-house consumption down to 125 gpd or less. It can be done, I do it at my house. Eliminate the garbage grinder if you have one, big waste of water, compostable material and they add solids to the wastewater stream that shouldn't be there.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that grey water systems are bad. There are some instances where cost isn't an issue i.e. where water is scarce etc.

Grey water has about half as many Coli, etc as black water so be careful with it, it should be treated to some level, say at least Secondary Treatment before reuse.

This comes from a Civil Engineer with 30 years in the sewage business.

I agree with this guest, Grey water can become dangerous when stored. I tried some storage to recuperate heat from shower water and didn't like the look of what was floating in the reservoir after a few days.

Also, once the water is in the reservoir, a lot of organic matter settles down at the bottom. You need to drain the sludge regularly. You need a reservoir with a funnel bottom where the outlet is located to remove the sediments.

Even with this, hairs and soap will be a problem. You will need to use large diameters pipes to avoid plugging and flush the system with chemicals on a regular basis. This might end up being worse for the environment than just using the fresh water.

One must realize that most cities use surface water (lake, river) that gets treated, used and return to the same body of water a few meters from the potable water intake. In this case (and most other cases), using water does not waste it. It doesn't get destroyed! There is only the cost of treatment to consider. The only limited water resources are ground water that are slow to recharge.

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that using the heat from the grey water to warm up the cold water going to the heater is about as good as it gets as far as the home owner is concerned unless you pay a lot for each litre of water you use. Even with the simple energy recovery system, I doubt that I will get a payback lower than 5 to 10 years.

Have fun experimenting but make sure that you don't expose your family to biological dangers. Don't forget that clean water (thanks to the invisible engineers) saves more lives than doctors...