Greywater is water from your bathroom sinks, showers, tubs, and washing machines.

It is not water that has come into contact with feces, either from the toilet or from washing diapers. Greywater may contain traces of dirt, food, grease, hair, and certain household cleaning products. While greywater may look dirty, it is a safe and even beneficial source of irrigation water in a yard. There are many simple, economical ways to reuse greywater in the landscape. Why recycle "greywater"? Once fresh, potable water has become greywater, it is a free resource. You've already paid for it the first time; therefore, the collection and reuse of this greywater will not cost you or the environment any more than its initial use. This results in a significant water savings for your home, a reduction of your carbon footprint, and a cost savings to you, as well. We'll look at all of these benefits in more detail later. what can I use my discarded greywater for? Greywater, obviously, cannot take the place of potable water throughout your home. But there is one glaringly obvious application where the luxury and expense of potable water is not needed -- in fact, it seems absolutely absurd to process and purify water for this purpose. And this application is toilet flush. This is not the only possible use. Indeed, there are many systems and plans on the market today for applications that use greywater to irrigate a lawn or garden. But since the outdoor use of greywater is sometimes seen as a potential public health risk, it is typically heavily regulated and requires the piping of greywater out into large underground leach fields. Such systems require extensive digging, piping, and landscaping, and still they do not reduce water consumption -- they only save on the costs of treating the greywater at the sewage plant. With our plans, your homebrew Greywater Recycling System will collect, filter, and store household greywater and then pump it back out, on demand, for flushing your home's toilets. It will actually reduce your household's monthly water consumption in addition to decreasing the load on purification and waste treatment facilities. And since it will be completely contained within your private

home, you should be able to build and install your system yourself without the hassles of government regulations. How does this system work? Our Greywater Recycling System is similar in principle to some of the commercially available systems. It consists of a filtration chamber, separation/storage tank, and pump with additional built-in safeguards against overflow and underflow scenarios, venting, and a quick and easy bypass scheme to allow the system to be taken out of the loop for maintenance. As shown in the schematic diagram below, this system is connected between your home's showers, bathtubs, and washing machine and the public sewer system. It intercepts the lightly polluted greywater and filters it on its way to the separation/storage tank. Here, through settling and flotation, impurities are further separated from the water. The water can optionally receive chemical sterilization here, as well. An electric pump then supplies the filtered greywater at the required pressure and flow-rate to the toilets throughout your home. Can I really build it myself? Yes! With a free weekend, a few tools, basic handyman and plumbing skills, and our plans, you should be able to construct your own Greywater Recycling System for about $350. All parts are off-the-shelf and should be readily available at most home improvement or hardware stores. Some components can be found "used" and may be available at little or no cost to you. This would make your system even more green! Our complete set of plans includes a comprehensive tools list, detailed

fabrication diagrams, actual photos, assembly instructions, and a materials list with parts sourcing suggestions. Also included are suggested maintenance procedures, tips and formulas for measuring the efficiency of your system and for getting the most savings possible, a basic troubleshooting guide, and ideas for additional features to help customize your system. How much will it save me?

This is a difficult question to answer, as savings will vary depending on the size and layout of your home, the number of people in your household, your individual lifestyle, personal schedules, utilities costs in your part of the country, the size of your Greywater Recycling System, and other factors such as optional solar power, etc. In the U.S., about 30% of the average household's water consumption goes towards flushing the toilet. This may be higher if you have older toilets or if members of your family are at home all day long. For instance, older "standard" toilets use about 5 gallons of water per flush, whereas newer efficient models will use less than 2 gallons per flush. Also, on average, a household's toilets are flushed four times per day per person. But you can see that if you work from home or if your children are home-schooled, for example, this number could be much higher. We have personally seen an average of about a 35% reduction on monthly water bills where our system has been installed. Keep in mind that there are minimal operating costs -- filters, chemicals (if necessary), and electricity. These costs can be as little as about $15 annually. If you run your pump on solar power, for example, or you don't need to use chemical treatment, then your costs could be even lower still. But even at $15/yr. with a 35% water savings, an average system will pay for itself in only 5 to 6 years.

What about its "carbon footprint"? Good question. This is another type of savings you need to consider -CO2 emissions. Right now, using one gallon of tap water -- from collection, purification, and pumping to the home, to pumping the sewage, treating it, and pumping it back into the environment -- creates an average 1.55 grams of carbon dioxide emissions. So for every 1000 gallons of water you save, you reduce carbon emissions by 1.55 kilograms -- almost 3.5 pounds! Realistically, this system can save at least four times that, or more, in just one year... per household! But this reduction does come at a carbon price -- the power required to run the pump. The generation of one kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity creates 450 grams of carbon dioxide. So you will use the following equation to determine your net reduction in carbon emissions (in grams): [(gallons of water saved) * 1.55] - [(kWh of electricity used) * 450] Of course, if you are using solar electric power, then your annual carbon footprint reduction (in grams) will be even greater. Simply use the left half of the equation to calculate your carbon reduction -- 1.55 times your annual water savings (in gallons).

What is Water Demand Management?

Meeting this increasing demand from existing resources is self-evidently an uphill struggle, particularly in water stressed or water scarce regions, in the developed and developing world alike. There are typically two potential responses; either supply-side, meeting demand with new resources or demand side, managing consumptive demand itself to postpone or avoid the need to develop new resources. Worldwide there is considerable pressure from the general public, regulatory agencies, and some governments to minimise the impacts of new supply projects (e.g. building new reservoirs or inter-regional transfer schemes), implying the emphasis should be shifted towards managing water demand by best utilising the water that is already available. The limited and costly options of developing new water resources for the Pacific urban areas has already made many governments adopt to the approach of water conservation. Water demand management involves the adoption of policies or investment by a water utility to achieve efficient water use by all members of the community. A demand management plan may involve a wide range of demand management measures including: * cost-reflective pricing; * universal customer metering; * reticulation leakage detection and repair programs and pressure reduction; * a communication strategy, including a community education campaign; * customer advisory services, the use of incentives for installation and/or retrofitting of water efficient equipment; * reduction of water use by the water utility; * regulation of the efficiency of water using appliances, especially in new buildings; * use of reclaimed water (e.g. waste water/grey water) to reduce the need for fresh water supplies; * water use restrictions, either on a temporary pr permanent basis.

Demand management measures can be short or long term depending on the needs of the community served by the water utility. Measures which have a short lead-time are for instance restrictions, drought pricing and retrofitting programs. Others such as pricing structure reform, leakage detection and repair and regulation of the water efficiency of new buildings are longer-term measures. Strategic planning is a key aspect of a successful demand management strategy. This means understanding the constraints, analyzing how much water is used, when, by whom, for what purpose and at what level of efficiency; determining the potential reduction in water use that can occur through improvements to water-using equipment and behavior and developing programs to achieve these improvements. Economic evaluation of demand management measures is important to ensure that cost-effective measures are implemented. The sequence in which measures are implemented is also important. For instance it is not possible to establish a fair and efficient pricing system for water unless all customers are metered.