Greywater practicalities: Collection

The last three posts in this series are going to get a little technical (but still not very). If you only care to know the general gist of greywater, you can stop here. If you want to know a bit more about how a greywater distribution system works, read on!

A greywater system has three subsystems: collection, distribution, and receiving. Each subsystem impacts the others, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll consider each separately.

Collection is the process of gathering the greywater. Greywater plumbing should follow all of the relevant plumbing codes, but instead of mixing greywater and blackwater shortly after they are produced, a greywater collection system keeps the two separate. Like any major plumbing change, collection plumbing is easier to add at construction time or when you already have the walls open to modify plumbing. As such, it's worth doing during construction even if the water initially is all sent to the sewer.

The most important factor to consider for collection plumbing is conserving fall. Fall is the vertical distance your pipe travels. Since greywater systems generally rely on gravity to move water, you want the points where your collection plumbing exits the house to be higher than for the sewer system (which generally exit under ground). Make sure your plumber conserves fall much more aggressively than they normally would.

Collection plumbing needs to have overflow into the sewer system. In addition to the overflow, it's generally a good idea to add a manual diverter near the point where the collection pipes exit the house. This allows all greywater to be sent to the sewer if needed (e.g., if you only need the greywater seasonally). If you are designing a system that will also handle dark grey water from the kitchen sink or a diaper-washing-clothes-washer you can add additional diverters to allow selective water diversion. All diverters should be easily accessible or they'll never be used.

In the simplest systems, water flows directly from the collection pipes to the distribution system. But not all distribution systems are equipped to handle a large surge of water (e.g., from draining a bathtub and clothes washer at the same time). A surge tank slows the rate at which water enters the distribution system.

The opposite problem can also occur: the amount of water at a particular time is not enough to effectively flow through the distribution system. In this case, a tank can collect water and then dose the distribution system with a single large flow when enough has built up. Both surge protection and dosing require care to ensure that the water does not sit too long — think a maximum of hours, not days.

Tomorrow we'll explore greywater distribution.

In this post and throughout the rest of this series, I use Art Ludwig’s The New Create an Oasis with Greywater as my primary source; it’s considered one of the best resources on residential greywater for the lay reader. Other bits and pieces are mostly pulled from my memory of other books and websites I’ve read. Any mistakes are, of course, my own.