Anyone Have Experience with Gray Water?

[anomad]

We bought one little house that had two sinks and a shower going through a pipe that day lit above the creek. The toilet, thankfully, went into the worlds smallest septic tank. After much head scratching we bit the bullet and had a new County approved septic system put in for everything. Could have done some cheaper commando options... My neighbors washing machine dumps out on our shared dirt road. It's great, keeps the dust down when they are washing clothes.

Agree with what others said about overkill. If you can get equipment in there I would put in a homegrown septic tank and drain field. I have seen some long linear drain fields dug here on steep slopes by day laborers. Basically long ditches switch-backing down the mountain. If your soil really doesn't perk you can dig out an area and backfill with sand and rock. That gets expensive.

 

[etpm]

Hmm, dually noted.

Um, it's duly noted. Duly as in due with the -ly added to make it an adverb meaning properly. So duly means properly. Dually would mean noted twice. Sorry for being pedantic, I guess even one NA beer is too much for me. Betcha didn't think this post was from a machinist.
Eric

 

[etpm]

FYI, the bacterial load from gray water is pretty much the same as from a toilet. Regarding septic, I dunno about how well your soil percs, even if it is full of rock it may perc well. If water drains fairly well you could put in an infiltrator type system. These only require digging two feet down and don't require anything added, such as gravel. The do require the plastic clamshell running the length of the ditch though, but these are easy to install, relatively cheap, are 1 foot high, and are covered by a foot of dirt. I put in an infiltrator system at my house on Whidbey Island, which is about 30 miles north of Seattle. This was 20 or so years ago. It has been completely trouble free.
Eric

 

[HawkinsHollow]

FYI, the bacterial load from gray water is pretty much the same as from a toilet.

Really? Sorry, I am going to have to call BS on that. I have been doing a WHOLE bunch of reading up on gray water systems and this is the first mention of this. Gray water might be full of bacteria, but it is not the same kind of bacteria as in toilet water. . IF the above statement was correct rules around handling gray water would not be as loose as they are in some places.

Um, it's duly noted. Duly as in due with the -ly added to make it an adverb meaning properly. So duly means properly. Dually would mean noted twice. Sorry for being pedantic, I guess even one NA beer is too much for me. Betcha didn't think this post was from a machinist.
Eric

Thanks for straightening me out. I wondered but I was too lazy to look it up.

 

[paulsharvey]

Grass... Running the water over/through grass and veg does a World to clean it. If your already talking about doing a waste system, im assuming we are in the "does it work" not the "is it allowed" camp. Really, dump the water through vegetation/across grass, and you are fine.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

We bought one little house that had two sinks and a shower going through a pipe that day lit above the creek. The toilet, thankfully, went into the worlds smallest septic tank. After much head scratching we bit the bullet and had a new County approved septic system put in for everything. Could have done some cheaper commando options... My neighbors washing machine dumps out on our shared dirt road. It's great, keeps the dust down when they are washing clothes.

Agree with what others said about overkill. If you can get equipment in there I would put in a homegrown septic tank and drain field. I have seen some long linear drain fields dug here on steep slopes by day laborers. Basically long ditches switch-backing down the mountain. If your soil really doesn't perk you can dig out an area and backfill with sand and rock. That gets expensive.

Thanks for your reply. But you are telling me a 14 gallon bucket is overkill and your advice is to do a full blown septic tank and drain field. That seems a whole lot more overkill than a 14 gallon bucket., not sure I get the logic.

 

[paulsharvey]

The old places, it was a dirt bottom hole, 3 or 4 coarse of CMU on a footer, and PT 2x planks over the top, and maybe a drain field or maybe not, as the block is porous anyways. There are a dozen ways to make this work, nearly all shady or illegal, but work just fine. With shower and sink water, you could easily pipe it to the drop off and just let it spill down the rocky embankment...

But, if you want the "right" answer, you're trying to make what was never meant to be an inhabited box, into a functional structure... So, worrying about "proper" its pretty late for that.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Grass... Running the water over/through grass and veg does a World to clean it. If your already talking about doing a waste system, im assuming we are in the "does it work" not the "is it allowed" camp. Really, dump the water through vegetation/across grass, and you are fine.

I have read that as well. They say keeping it on the surface does a lot better job cleaning it up because the microbes and oxygen is there. Maybe I am overthinking it a bit too much.

The old places, it was a dirt bottom hole, 3 or 4 coarse of CMU on a footer, and PT 2x planks over the top, and maybe a drain field or maybe not, as the block is porous anyways. There are a dozen ways to make this work, nearly all shady or illegal, but work just fine. With shower and sink water, you could easily pipe it to the drop off and just let it spill down the rocky embankment...

But, if you want the "right" answer, you're trying to make what was never meant to be an inhabited box, into a functional structure... So, worrying about "proper" its pretty late for that.

Duly noted! And a pipe over the edge is where this might just begin. But I think I can do better than that.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Taking a shower isn't much different than washing underwear with racing stripes. As long as the guy doesn't poop in the shower, that is.

Our washing machine goes out a 1" pipe through the basement wall, through 20ish feet of pipe, and into an upside down horse trough that's buried underground. That's the way the house came 30 years ago. There was also a previous horse trough and a 55 gallon drum. Both of those are no longer used. Our washing machine can use as much as 66 gallons on a full cycle. But we live on sand. It perks as fast as you can dump it.

I think for showers only, you're going overkill on filters, layers, etc.... and way too small on a 14 gallon container.

Take a 55 gallon drum, cut one end off, then cut it in half vertically so you have two troughs, dig a trench, fill the bottom with gravel, lay the two halves of the drum in there like arches so you now have 70" long by 23" wide surface area, or about 11 square feet. Run a 2" perforated pipe inside the length of the drum, connect to shower drain line and bury it.

If you want to test it first, build a 2' x 6' box out of 2x4, set it on the ground, dig out the inside about 3" deep, set the box in there, and dump as much water as you think a shower would use into the box. See how long it takes to go away. Repeat a few times.

Good design for a dry well. It may seem obvious, but the discharge pipe goes on top of the gravel. My dad (actually my older brother) hand dug a septic drain field in 1961, put the pipe in the bottom and drain rock on top of it. During heavy rain events the trench filled up with water and the drains quit working.

 

[paulsharvey]

I helped a friend many years ago convert a pole barn to an apartment. We installed dual 55 gal plastic drums and 2 drain lines, but the soil was pretty fat/clay. You think 110 gallons is a lot of storage to slowly drain through out the day, but its really not. Only took a few weeks and his girlfriend was sick of dont being able to wash dishes and clothes on the same day. Shower averages 17 gallons; clothes washer, dishes, ect. Average household uses 70 gal+ gal per person per day.

All that is kinda meant to say, yes, for quick spartan showers your right, but if this expands to more than that, your system won't keep up the way you originally designed it. You either need good drainage or good storage, and OK drainage; but it sounds like you have neither. With all that; assuming it stays a camp cabin set up, and your hauling water in; it should be workable, if never really ideal.