Comment on Water companies in England and Wales explore ‘surge pricing’ during drought
Denjin@feddit.uk 3 days agoCan that safely be dumped straight onto the garden though?
As long as you’re not using antibacterial agents, bleach or things with parabens and phosphate you’ll mostly be fine.
Its pretty minor to switch to “biodegradable” soaps if you don’t use them already and then you can just dump your bathwater straight onto the garden no problem.
HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
I had always heard you shouldn’t eat stuff watered with grey water
Denjin@feddit.uk 2 days ago
Looked at a few sites talking about using bathwater on the garden and as long as you’re watering the roots and not edible leaves directly it’s perfectly fine. You also want to use the water immediately rather than storing it.
gardeningbeyond.com/can-i-water-my-garden-with-ba…
gardenadvice.co.uk/…/bath-water-for-watering-my-g…
HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
Ahh right, that makes sense. For my garden it would be bay, sage and rosemary.
Immediate use could actually be achieved by piping it straight to the grass next to the garden beds and let the roots get it through the soil. Probably through a filter somewhere along the line.
MouldyCat@feddit.uk 2 days ago
I also looked at this recently as I thought that soap would be harmful to plants and/or microbes and the Royal Horticultural Society has done some investigation of their own into the use of greywater, and their advice is “plants can be watered with shower, bath, kitchen and washing machine water (from rinse cycles)”, finding that “soil and potting composts are effective at filtering out” the soap/detergent.
I’m just echoing what @Denjin@feddit.uk with the RHS link, and I didn’t read the articles he linked but it wouldn’t surprise me if the RHS guidance is the source of those.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
Look into micron filters or even submicron hollowtube filters. They’re washable and reusable, they filter out most suspended solids, some heavy metals, and even pathogens (most bacteria and parasites, even some viruses).
I don’t think they’d make grey water potable necessarily, but if you’re worried about bathwater contaminating your garden then combining these with switching to biodegradable soaps and solvents is probably enough.
Adding a charcoal filter stage might bind some stuff that the hollowtube misses. You can even run it through a UV chamber if you want another line of defense, but that’s a bit slower and might be redundant, especially if you’re just watering your garden.
There are also ceramic filters out there that are supposed to remove pretty much anything the hollowtube filters would miss, but they’re more expensive and the parts aren’t quite as reusable. Supposed to make pretty much anything potable though.
I’d have to do more research about dissolved particles, but I think some of the filters mentioned can catch some of it. Otherwise it would require distillation or reverse osmosis, both of which are slower and require more expensive equipment. Building a solar still is an option but it’s the slowest one.
Denjin@feddit.uk 2 days ago
First linked site recommends a filter to grab hair and any solid bits of dirt or soap etc. I plan on adding an irrigation system for the future in my garden (mostly fruiting plants in the summer and brassicas over winter) that would be fed first from bath water, then water butts, then tap depending on what’s available.
Given how likely it seems that we’ll see significant shortages of water within the next few years, rainwater storage seems like a decent idea to me, £3000 for 5000 litres doesn’t make sense in pure financial terms but if it means that or not having any water at all, it seems like a pretty small price to pay.