You know, as much as I love the idea, there’s almost no incentive for people to go through the trouble to use grey water in their homes, if they end up paying the same or more on their bill. Ignoring the $10,000 for the system to get started.
That is probably the biggest issue. The up-front capitol cost.
Not to mention the ongoing maintenance of pumps and valves needed to keep it working.
Unless local water prices are very high (or there is a grant/subsidy program), there is unlikely to be a financial breakeven during that homeowner’s life.
Something I never see mentioned in these articles/discussions is the design problems. I’m a civil engineer who works in infrastructure maintenance, including sanitary sewers up sizing/repairing. The minimum design guidine for slope is 0.5% for sanitary sewers, but there are many old neighborhoods where the slope is as low as 0.3%.
The way those pipes continue to operate is the large volume of water that is sent through those sewers regularly, flushing away the solid waste.
If, theoretically, every house swapped tomorrow to a grey water system, we’d seriously struggle with blocked sewers and backflows regularly.
Until someone solves that part of the issue, this system isn’t practical for widespread adoption.
Given this, i think a potential current solution is mass gray water systems added to waste water plants. Many waste water plants have effluent that is safe enough to release to public waters or lands after treatment. This treated water could be used on a city wide grey water system used for garden and lawn irrigation. I think some places with scare water already have similar systems.
Realistically, it’s better and more cost effective to add additional treatment to that water, and bring it up to potable standards.
Hundreds of kilometers of extra water main pipes, plus pumping stations and home services would cost trillions of dollars.
Most of these exisiting systems are meant more to service commercial/industrial/agricultural customers, it is unfeaseable to deliver grey water to every home or business. It would be incredibly dangerous to have the wastewater system directly hooked up to a potable water system. A variety of issues could disrupt the flow/treatment/monitoring of wastewater which could contaminate the drinking water system and its reservoirs/water towers and pose a serious threat to public health.
Most of these exisiting systems are meant more to service commercial/industrial/agricultural customers, it is unfeaseable to deliver grey water to every home or business
I’m not sure what you mean here. Even if you limit the great water system to large scale operations that would use the grey water, you’re still looking at billions of dollars to run the pipes plus all the pumps, sampling points, water valves, new water towers/resevoirs etc.
It would be incredibly dangerous to have the wastewater system directly hooked up to a potable water system. A variety of issues could disrupt the flow/treatment/monitoring of wastewater which could contaminate the drinking water system and its reservoirs/water towers and pose a serious threat to public health.
So can any surface treatment system that is currently used. Any city that uses rivers or lakes as their treatment centre already need to purify to a high standard and closely monitor quality of in and outflows. Additionally, most of those areas have their treated sewage outflow to the same body of water as they draw from. The whole point of designing a system is to build in backups and fail-safes to ensure those issues are identified and accounted for. It’s significantly cheaper than creating a whole secondary great water utility system, not to mention the additional costs for all those businesses that need to add another internal plumbing system
Depends on the usage in a given home.
I suspect there is more grey water created in most homes than flushwater needed, and I’m not sure if even watering the lawn would use all the greywater a house might produce. Without doing the math, I suspect there would still be some amount of greywater moving to keep the pipes rinsed.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Specifically, the committee was looking at grey water, which generally comes from household sources like laundry, showers and kitchens that haven’t been in contact with fecal matter.
Dorea, the UVIc wastewater engineer, points out that modern waterworks systems were set up for good reason: they keep us safe from waterborne diseases.
Rather than send wastewater back into the ocean, some of those places are treating it and recycling it, creating a closed-loop system or, in the case of Israel, using it for irrigation.
John Bell, the company’s co-founder and chief commercial officer, says the reuse industry is an emerging market that is gaining traction in certain parts of the world.
The company currently has its systems set up in about 150 households across North America and is hoping to see that number rise as regulations and incentives continue to grow.
In Florida, officials have implemented tax credits and other financial incentives to encourage builders to install these types of systems in homes.
The original article contains 796 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Does this mean I have to stop peeing in the shower?
The first rule of recycling is “reduce”, each shower pee saves 6L of water from going down your toilet.
Carry on, pee for the planet!
Is there anywhere that we have had a drought in Canada? I understand this tech for places like California and Israel, but is it necessary in Canada? Genuinely curious.
Tofino is short on water, one of the wettest places in the country
I’ll give you a sec to ponder that
Relevant to this discussion I just moved from the LA area to Vancouver Island. Though there is a drought here no one from Los Angeles would recognize it as such.
The city in California where I lived had a water treatment plant whose output was used to irrigate city parks and landscaping. Not particularly practical to run a parallel water system outside a dense urban area. Maybe not even then. I was not aware of any individual homes that were using grey water systems unless it was some DIY kind of set up. The most I ever did was collect the water I used to wash rice or when waiting for the shower to warm up and use that to water my garden. Eliminating waste like that probably does little in the grand scheme but after living in a desert for so long I can not just pour water down the drain without trying to salvage some of it. Dual flush toilets can also cut down on waste or the tried and true “Don’t flush for #1” . Even new toilets use 5L per flush so that adds up fast.
Tofino is on Vancouver island… I guess islands do benefit from this technology.
Vancouver Island, an island the size of Belgium.
Yeah… not very big…
Islands have tiny aquifers relative to the mainland.
Vancouver Island literally has glacier capped mountains lol
