A large, create gray water filter. Does this make sense?

[Worrier King]

Thinking of cutting a 55 gal. barrel in half. Put cutside up on a solid 4x4 wood support where dirty gray water is poured into from top, and then gravity processed with water exiting out the bottom into the then "cleaner" other 1/2 barrel water tub below. Filter is the upper 1/2 barrel thats 4/5 full with sand, screen, controlled exit hole at bottom side. Maybe activated charcoal?

Would be filled trying to recycle bath/shower water and used dishwater with a goal towards garden or maybe even clothes washing use ran thru again?

Not drinking, thats for sure. And don't want to kill plants.

Would have to change at least upper sand once in a while.

Does this sound worth it? Especially when water could be rare?

If you have 500 gallons of water, and can use it twice instead of letting it get away, you then have nearly 1000 gallons of water.

 

[Knoxville's Joker]

It could work

The water is of course non potable. If it is just drain water from washer, dishwasher, sink, and showers, it would be OK for use watering plants. Just make sure your not pouring down anything nasty in your drains and you should be OK. You could also pipe your gutter drains into this for even more water. Just a thought.

 

[Caplock50]

I believe I got it from a "Mother Earth News" magazine article, but a water filter that I plan to use is almost exactly like you describe. They used a cheesecloth 'screen' at the bottom, over the drain hole. And it had alternating layers of straw and charcoal nearly all the way to the top, starting with straw at the bottom and ending with a charcoal top layer. And this was for filtering the water for drinking.


There have been several 'sand filters' discussed here also. Try doing a search on the subject. I'm sure you'll get many hits. Enjoy!

 

[timbo]

WK, tsherry had something similar in his first story I believe. It had to do with straining rainwater at downspouts and filtering it through sand,etc.

Dont know why your filtering wouldnt work. It's really a mini-principle of what happens to water filtering down to well depth.

ps, I cant remember the ingredients that Tom used in the rain barrel thingy. Might want to try a search on that.

 

[dexev]

Google 'slow sand filter' for some ideas. Also 'subsurface flow wetland'.

www.oasisdesign.net sells a book (most of the good stuff available online) that has a good discussion of the principles and some plans.

Basically, what you want to do is get the water into soil/sand that has an active bacterial culture. The soil bacteria eat the organics in the wastewater, and out-compete (or just eat) the nasty bacteria. Same idea as thermophilic composting.

-mike

 

[Worrier King]

Thanks everyone. Hadn't seen those other threads.

Seems to make sense then, and not a waste of time. Could be done pretty cheap and easily to get multiple-reuses of water.

 

[RC]

Just a thought, but it doesn't really seem very cost effective to do that much filtering of gray water, if you're just going to use it in the garden, etc. As you pointed out, you'll need to clean the filter at some point, which would be a mess, it seems to me.

If you want to clean the water some, it seems to me that it would make more sense just to drain it into a barrel, and then tap the barrel somewhere in the middle. Just let the water settle, and much of the dirty stuff will either rise to the top or settle to the bottom. I would think if you let it sit for a while, the layer in the middle will be relatively clean, and this would be a lot less work.

Periodically skimming off the top level and dredging the sediment from the bottom would be a lot easier than trying to clean a filter, IMHO.