“China has a special affinity for rainwater,”
“Chinese people have long highly valued the utilisation of water resources, it is deeply embedded in our DNA,”
Could have done a little less weird racism and more info about alternatives to the “sad tree in island of pavement” model which is very popular in north america.
Collecting greywater is no joke. My household gave up on saving shower water to flush the toilet after a couple of weeks. At scale, I guess it’s a much more complex engineering project to have 2 different plumbing systems. As opposed to just making all the water potable. But you’d still have to do some amount of cleaning and treatment. I wonder how to establish the threshold for lower standards.
it is deeply embedded in our DNA,
It’s in our blood!
My household gave up on saving shower water to flush the toilet after a couple of weeks.
That’s cool. When you say you gave up, I assume this wasn’t a whole redo of the house’s plumbing, you just had a bucket in the shower or something that you then poured into the toilet’s tank?
Would be neat to design a house to divert shower and sink grey water to toilets in an off-grid permaculture way.
Yes it was a real DIY attempt at implementing some conservation at the household level. Put a bucket/bin into the shower to try to catch splashed water. Total failure but gave some appreciation as to the challenges even at the smallest scale. I think rainwater is probably more viable if you aren’t going to do much processing. (Assuming there is rain.)
showers on second floor, toilets on ground floor lol
That’s honestly pretty clever lol.
One of the endorsements on my plumbing license is greywater/rainwater collection and reuse. Here in the US, rain isn’t really considered greywater but can absolutely be part of a greywater system if you live in a place with significant rainfall.
I have a gray water collection and reuse system at my home, that I installed. I takes all the water from showering and laundry and stores it for reuse to flush toilets and water my non-edible plants like trees n shrubberys. It paid for itself in about four or five years by saving thousands of gallons a year I otherwise would have used fresh drinkable water for. There is routine maintenance involved along w the occasional outlay for a new jockey pump when the very expensive pump powering the system goes tits up.
Greaywater systems aren’t cheap in the US, and typically need plumbed in at new construction unless you have the wherewithal to dig under the slab chasing plumbing. Also they aren’t very prevalent here where I live. I think I am one of three guys in my area with the endorsement. I get to do one of these systems new every year or two, but you can’t legally work on one without the endorsement so I get the odd call for purple pipes (signifies reclaimed water) on occasion.
These systems should be mandatory on new builds, especially in multi-family dwellings of any sort.
Do you need to purify the water to remove soap and other crud? So it doesn’t make your plants angry, or build up grime in all the hardware? Maybe it’s dilute enough not to matter. And what about infectious disease? Can you just add some bleach or something to kill whatever might be in there?
You have to use compatible soaps, glycerine based stuff. I also have a sand/water separator to remove beach sand/mud/dirt then it goes into the storage tank and leaves thru a pre-sediment filter, then a 5 micron and carbon filter to further pull floating stuff like lint out so it doesn’t clog the jockey pump or the plumbing inside the walls. If you fill a bucket and stick your head over it smells the tiniest bit like soap, but that’s it. The only hardware it really goes thru that I have to worry about is the jockey pump and pressure tank similar to a drilled well setup but much smaller. I have to change filters every couple months.
In theory, risk of infection is low because it is not in contact w humans, nor used for water consumables. It only comes from laundry and shower, so no shower pissing.
The greywater my house produces is not commercially treated so it’s considered ‘level 3’. By law, I can’t spray irrigate w it because it’s residential, but I can drip irrigate and hand water. I can’t water edibles w it, so I only use it on two trees in my back yard and the front grass/trees. I have a very small square-foot-garden in my back yard so I don’t use it near my garden. Inside it can only be used to flush toilets, and a couple other very limited applications.
It’s handy, but I don’t use a lot of water for one, so my tank is never really full and I don’t water plants a lot as I don’t have much of a flower garden so it’s sort of useless for me. I mostly just did it because I have the licensure, the ability, and a whole bunch of liberated parts/materials.
OK so it somewhat relies on controlling the inputs. How realistic do you think this tech is for use at scale? It’s one thing in your home where you are both a skilled worker and the end user. Discipline is assured. But can the same expectations be put upon random people? What kind of soaps you can use and such. People are serious about that stuff.
I am curious if infection risk is low due to how uncommon such a system is. As fecal-oral type pathogens are not too much in circulation. But if suddenly everyone was watering the lawn with grey water, there would be more opportunities for transmission. Like herd immunity with vaccines. An occasional abstainer is OK because everyone else protects them by using the regular mass water system but if it catches on, the chance of problem could increase.
I mostly just did it because I have the licensure, the ability, and a whole bunch of liberated parts/materials.
My friend’s partner is a semi retired engineer who took up gardening mostly as an excuse to develop a rainwater irrigation system for the yard. Last year it required zero extra water. So you aren’t the only one to be doing it just because he can.
It absolutely relies on controlling inputs. It is also technically an extra point of failure in the system, it’s also something that requires extra regular maintenance to work properly. It isn’t for everyone, because frankly not everyone cares enough to be willing to go the extra steps.
If it were to be used at scale it would work best in multi family dwellings I would think. Single family homes work, but it’s a lot of extra shit to deal with and some folks just don’t want the extra hassle frankly.
Idk why it needs to be painted as some unheard of mystical Chinese contraption. Been going on more and more - even in less technologically developed nations like the US - as long as they can convince the present regime that it’s not “woke”
https://www.pentair.com/en-us/water-solutions/partnerships/twins/rain-water-reuse.html
Yes, they can flush
BUT AT WHAT COST???
