Fifty shades of grey.

No, no, we are not talking about those shades, oh heavens no! Rather we are talking about grey water.

Grey water? What is that? 

Well grey water is what you create when washing either yourself, your clothes and of course your vegetables etc right down to the water you cook your vegetables in, in short any and all water that comes out of your house other than that which comes out of a toilet flush, that is black water and although this is in theory reuseable once filtered is not something we are interested in reusing, heavens no!

But back to the stuff we are interested in reusing, grey water.  Now some of you might be wondering why on earth we would want to reuse it.  After all it isn't clean anymore so what could you possibly use it for.  Well how about watering the flower beds? If filtered properly grey water is perfectly useable for this purpose, saving both the rainwater (in our balsa/swimming pool) for the trees and vegetables as well as saving us money.  Now that has to be what you call a win, win situation, don't you agree?

But here is something you may or may not agree on.

The average "first worlder" rarely gives a moments thought as to where the water they use comes from.  We know we didn't before we started to live 'off grid'.  Like most folk we would simply turn on the tap and expect it to be there, without restriction, without thought as to what it cost to get it to us.  We simply expected it and for the most part got it. 

Then we came here, to live 'off grid' ARGH! What an eye opener.

When we first came to live here we made what we called our ' water trips' down to the village where we would fill as many containers as we could fit in the car and transport it up our mountain and watch in dismay how quickly it was used.  Obviously this was not the best way of doing things.  So we looked into drilling a 'pozo'  or borehole, WOW! was that going to be expensive, in fact too expensive, so we looked into getting water delivered.  Luckily we found a man that would deliver water to us, we just had to have somewhere where we could store 13,000 litres at a time.  So we built the house balsa. Boy was this a really good decision. No more lifting and transporting heavy water containers, no more frustration as we realised that within a couple of days we would have to do it all again and again and again......

Now up until quite recently we were also collecting water from the village in order to do whatever building projects we had on the go.  And fact is we didn't have the time or the inclination to have a flower garden, but as time went by and the building of our home reached a point where we could take a breather we decided we would like nothing more than to sit out on an evening and to look out on a pretty flower garden.  

Cue the need for a water solution that wouldn't involve tubs or using the house or tree water.

This is when we hit upon the idea of creating a grey water recycling system.

But before I tell you about it perhaps you would be interested to see what we learnt both through research and personal experience (thanks to our having to collect water in containers from the village) regards a family of 3's water consumption.

Now whilst we have a bath, fact is we as a family rarely use it, especially when you consider that a full bath uses roughly 80 litres of water.  No, we prefer to shower and even then for a limited time as a 5-minute normal shower uses about 35 litres. This figure is not something we nor the experts have just conjured up, rather they have been proven as in our case we put the plug into the bath and measured the water we used courtesy of a measuring jug and found it to be pretty close if not spot on regards the amount used.  Which means when you multiply this figure by a minumum of 3 persons showering once a day and you can see that, that amounts to some pretty hefty water usage especially over the month.

Speaking of hefty usage.  Would you be surprised to hear that on average the amount of water you use to brush your teeth (tap running) is a staggering 3.to 3.5 litres? Unbelievable isn't it, well you had better believe it because again I have actually sat and measured what was used and it blew my mind I can tell you at how much water we were wasting.

But brushing ones teeth is essential to both our oral hygiene and well being I hear you say, we can't simply not do it just to save water.

We are not saying anyone should, however, by experience we discovered that you can save so much water if you only use sufficient water to wet your brush after which you then turn off the tap until it is time to rinse your mouth.  By doing this you could save around 75 % of the water you use each time you brush your teeth.
But we went just that little bit further.  By filling a small glass with water, using it to wet your brush and then rinse your mouth out you can actually save around 90 % of the water you would have used had you just simply run the tap. 

Now that is something to chew on.

And once we embarked on our water saving journey we soon discovered that there were further water savings to be made when washing your hands and/or face.  By putting the plug into the sink instead of simply letting the tap run you could end up saving around about 2 litres of water each time you wash your hands and /or face which when you consider we wash our hands whenever we go to the toilet, prepare food and or sit down to eat amounts to quite a large saving.

And what about when you wash the dishes. How many people do you think wash them under a running tap, putting as you go a little dish washing liquid on their sponge and with the tap running wash the dishes till they are sparkling clean.  I know I used too.
Well if you use a bowl when washing up instead of a running tap, we discovered you can save about 5 litres of water per wash.  Even more if you wait till you have a full bowl of dishes instead of just washing a couple of plates etc.

And how about when you wash the vegetables.  By using a bowl of water to wash them instead of a running tap we learnt you can save around 5 litres of water each time you prepare your veg. 

Of course one of the heaviest users of water in any given day has to be clothes washing.  Laundry day in our household uses on average 120 litres. At first we had a table top washing machine, now I have a twin tub and the way I save water is by doing full loads instead of half.

But honestly this kind of usage is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak as far as hefty water usage is concerned when you realise just how much we use to keep our garden in bloom.


In order to keep these beautiful flowers alive in the Spanish summer sun it takes on average 250 litres of water a day.  Oh my word!  Now whilst we have a balsa (water tank) in which we collect and store rainwater for use on our trees and vegetable garden there comes a time when it is empty. 
This means I have to use the water we have delivered by truck to keep the garden in bloom.
This is both expensive and wasteful the recognition of which led us to looking into the recycling of the grey water we produce.

Of course before we embarked upon this mission we did a lot of research, eventually coming up with a conglomeration of ideas that we are hoping will serve us well.

But first things first.

Siting.

Our house sits on top of the uppermost terrace on our land, behind it lays the majority of our land, which is terraced.
Because we designed and pretty much built our house from scratch (we had occasional help but it was only occasional) we were able to plan and build into it where our services (water pipes, drain pipes etc) both entered and exited our house. Straight away we decided to put all the bathrooms and of course the kitchen on the back of the house so we could make best use of the fall the terrace below offered us when it came to drainage.
Now our house actually lays on top of a huge slab of bedrock which pretty much extends down to the terrace below so our first attempts at digging holes for the grey water recepticles proved a little haphazard, but in the end we found an area close enough to the house so it was easy enough to pump the water back up to the garden and yet far enough and low enough down the terrace for the water to drain into the tubs that avoided the bedrock.



Thankfully we had help from two volunteer workers.




Chris from the UK 

 Clay from the US

.                                      
 


With the aid of our trusty friends the Azada and Pick the holes were dug into the rockhard soil whilst all the while we tried to avoid the bedrock so that we could sit the former rain barrels in which the filtration medium would sit and water pass through as snug as a bug in a rug as they say. 

Of course it is essential that the barrels sit level.  Thankfully Chris and Clay were on hand with the spirit level and buckets of sand to make sure everything was tickety boo as they say.



But how does it all work we hear you say..

Well......Barrel no.1 (on the far left of the picture, it is sat on top of a slab of bedrock by the way) is where the water from the house enters the system, it is fed by the two pipes that exit the house, one pipe comes from the kitchen the other (which is actually two pipes combined into one) comes from the bathrooms.

In the first barrel we put stones half way up to around the level of  exit pipe and then put in a filter basket, having drilled holes in the base to allow water to escape from all angles.  

We then lined it with a piece of old mosquito netting and filled it in our case with wood shavings.

  . This hopefully catches any food particles that may be in the kitchen water as well as hair etc that has managed to go down the plughole from the bathrooms.

To give you an idea of what it takes out of the water take a look at the picture below. Ewwww!

We then set about creating the piping for the second and third barrels drilling holes in the pipes that are placed at the bottom of the barrels to allow the water to escape easily. 





















The river pebbles we are using are then put into the second barrel to around 15 centimetres below the outlet pipe and a layer of bio filter wool is laid on top for good measure. 




To hold it down we put a couple of slabs of concrete on top.  This way the filter wool won't float around so much and block the outlet pipe. (well that's the theory at least, lol)

Now your probably wondering why we don't simply let the water flow into the second and third barrels from the top, well we could have done this, after all it is how the first barrel fills, however, we decided to reverse fill the second and third barrel because that way the water is forced to move upwards instead of downwards.  This in turn would mean the water would take longer to pass through the filter stones which would mean any particulate matter which had somehow escaped the filter basket in the first barrel would stick to the stones better.
Of course we could have simply have used the river pebbles in all the barrels and not bothered with anything else.  However, we wanted to make triple sure the water was as clean as we could get it, so we chose to use a little more high tech a filter medium in the third and final filteration barrel. Okay we can hear some of you saying high tech doesn't sound very eco.  And our reply would be, actually it is pretty darn close to being eco when you consider the none pebble filter mediums in barrel number 3 are made from recycled materials and all three types are cleanable and reusable so saving the planet and us money.    

But I digress.  First we popped some of our river pebbles into the third barrel though in truth there is only enough to cover the piping at the bottom of the barrel.

It is the second, third and subsequent layers as you will see are the high tech element.



In the above picture you can see a layer of bio filter wool which we lay on top of the stones followed by a layer of bio balls.
, Repeating the layering process until we were around 30 centimetres from the outlet or overflow pipe,  The outlet pipe then takes the water from barrel 3 and deposits the water into a collection tank which will be periodically emptied into the water butts at the side of the house and from there the water will be used on our flower garden. 

Of  course water that is left out in direct sun turns nasty pretty quickly, however, if you cover it, the algae and nasty microbes stay away.


Our hope and goal is, that by the time the grey water has gone through all the stages we have set up regards filtration it should come out into the grey tub free of any contaminants you would find in the water at the beginning of the process, even soap. 
Of course we are still learning and the process is still somewhat experimental.  If it turns out that our efforts are not enough then we will simply put in another barrel, filled from the base via piping as you have seen but this time we will use one of natures filtration systems at its best. 
Bullrushes.
Their roots lock onto any contaminants and store them away and after a time break them down into harmless substances.  Either way we are hoping our efforts will prove successful and we will end up with our grey water being clean (it will certainly be plentiful) enough to water our flower garden without waste. 

Quick update! We decided to pop in the extra barrel just for good measure as they say and as ever Toby my dog was on hand, watching over the proceedings and of course keeping us safe from anything that might happen our way, (Jabali, [wild boar] hunting dogs etc, etc).
 

After all it can't hurt can it. Clay helped me dig out another hole into which we placed another barrel. We are going to plant bullrushes into the river pebbles in the last barrel (as detailed above) which hopefully will provide an even better filtration system for our grey watet.  Oh and we added charcoal to the wood shavings basket and another couple of inches of river pebbles into the first barrel.