Shades of grey: Greywater health and safety

Conversations about greywater often start with questions: Is it safe? What about disease? Greywater is safe, but we do need to take precautions.

First, let’s talk a bit more about greywater and blackwater:

• Greywater: Waste water with a low level of solids and a very low level of pathogens or toxic chemicals. Sources: washing machines, showers, tubs, bathroom sinks.
• Dark greywater: Water with a moderate level of solids or a low level of pathogens or toxic chemicals. Greywater turns into dark greywater if it sits for prolonged periods. Sources: Washing machine water used for diapers, kitchen sink water with small amounts of garbage disposal use, greywater stored too long in a tank.
• Blackwater: Water with a high level of solids, pathogens, or toxic chemicals. Sources: Toilet water or water from a sink that has cleaning chemicals poured into it.

Blackwater and dark greywater both can, under certain circumstances, be handled at home, but it requires lots of caution and more complex systems. I plan to ignore both for the rest of this series.

That leaves us with greywater. Greywater is not very contaminated. One statistic I saw claimed that residential greywater in the US has about the same level of pathogens as drinking water in some drought ravaged third world nations. That’s not a good thing — there are very good reasons that improving access to clean water is an important philanthropic goal — but it does illustrate that the contamination in greywater is something to be managed, not feared.

The low level of contamination in residential greywater in the US can be processed by the microorganisms in the soil, but every greywater system should follow basic guidelines to ensure healthy treatment. Ludwig’s book presents two fundamental guidelines for safety:

1. Greywater must pass slowly through healthy topsoil for natural purification to occur.
2. Design your greywater system so no greywater-to-human contact occurs before purification.

From these general principles, many specific principles can be derived: don’t add non-biodegradable chemicals to your greywater, get it quickly into the soil, don’t use it to water food plants, don’t spray it directly on plants such as grass, etc.

But the bigger point is that when it comes to greywater, both disregard for health concerns and excess obsession with health concerns should be considered errors. Education combined with careful design and management can produce a safe home greywater system.

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.

Review of Q4 2011

It's the start of a new year, and the end of the old one. Construction on our house started around the beginning of October 2011, which lines up quite nicely with the yearly quarters. In this post, we'll summarize the last three months and reflect on what has happened so far.

This was a major quarter for our house. We started construction from just a pile of dirt:


It was dug up:


Then footings and foundation walls were poured:


Framing started with the lower floor:


Continued with the main floor:


And then almost finished with the upper floor and roof:


Here's a video summary:



We haven't done a lot of design during the last several months, but we had some good accomplishments. We finalized and ordered the kitchen and bathroom cabinets from Pedini and the windows from Eagle. Our architect redesigned the garage entry (for people) to allow us to stay dry when going from the garage into the house. We changed our HVAC system to one that allows us more control (details in a later post).

This has been a relatively quiet period for us as the owners, but now it's time to start doing a lot more design work. We're working on choosing some of the colors on the roof and edges, deciding what concrete is going to be poured in the backyard before landscaping prevents heavy machinery from getting down there, thinking about stairs, the front door, and a lot of the built-ins, and designing all the electrical systems. The next three months will see framing completed, the house wrapped and sealed, and hopefully much of the rough-in completed inside. We're looking forward to seeing everything happen, and we'll keep cataloging all the changes.

Why greywater?

We live in the Pacific Northwest where we have the good fortune of an abundance — some might say overabundance — of rain. But not all climates are so fortunate. Some parts of the world have almost constant water shortages due to degradation of the local water supply or a population which exceeds the water capacity of the region. Even in the northwest, we have to occasionally worry about drought, and no one likes high summer water bills.

On the other side of the coin, most homes in the US dump hundred of gallons of water into the sewer system every week. Some of this water is blackwater, which is any water that contains high levels of pathogens, e.g., toilet water. But the vast majority is greywater, which is water that has only a small amount of contamination, such as laundry or hand-washing waste water. Since black and greywater are mixed in most sewage systems, municipalities have to invest in expensive treatment plants which treat the whole slurry as if it were blackwater.

So here we have two problems: water shortages and sewer system load.

As is often the case, this problem can be mitigated by turning waste into a resource:

By separating out greywater from blackwater, we can reduce our residential water usage and reduce the load on our sewer systems. It’s a win-win!

In the next posts, I’ll give a high level overview of some of the concerns around greywater reuse and some practical tips about greywater systems.

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.

Second Floor Framing

Framing continued apace, with the majority of the second level finished. Framing on the roof was started, and the main structure is now visible.



With the second floor in-place, the extra supports on the main floor have been cleared out. We captured a panorama of nearly the entire floor.



The video shows one of the upper walls literally popping into place. We had a chance to observe the framers put up the north wall upstairs. They build the entire wall flat, including the plywood sheathing, and then use jacks that attach to a beam (I think a 2x4) to lever the wall into place. Then it is quickly given a few nails on either end to keep it standing while they get everything squared away with sledgehammers (probably a rubber head). The majority of the framing has been done by just three guys (I'm assuming there were a few extra helping to deliver the largest beams).



Next week should see more framing. The garage is the main thing we we're excited to see next, but it might be slightly delayed due to some changes to the roof connecting the garage side entry to the main house entry.

Framing Continues

[This is a bit late; the post is talking about the last week of 2011, from Christmas to the New Year.]

Framing continued this week, with various pieces getting some attention. The main floor framing was finished, including the brow above the entry way. The garage floor was framed, with sturdy boards laid down for the floor. Some big beams were delivered to provide the ceiling of the main floor, and support the second floor. This includes a large metal beam that runs over the dining room to the pillar at the stairs.



The upper level had floor enough to walk on, and to see the beginning of the rooms up there. I captured a panorama of what will (roughly) be the view from our bedroom.



There was also a bit of work done on the backyard to level it out, and integrate it with the slope of the neighbor's lot.

The camera got knocked around a bit this week; plus the holidays resulted in less work than normal.



Below is the full month summary. There were a lot of changes in December! It started out as bare foundation walls, and ended up with most of the main level fully framed. It will be exciting to see what January brings!

Main Floor Framing

This week there was a lot of progress on framing. The lower level was finished, and the majority of the main floor was framed. The footings for the back deck were dug out and poured. This was exciting to see. It is the first time we were able to walk around in a full-scale version of the plans we've been working on for so long.

I took a few pictures of the in-progress work on Tuesday, and then more pictures over the weekend. I also added descriptions to all the pictures, since it can be confusing trying to figure out what is what when only the framing is in place.



The video only shows part of the work, since the exterior sheathing blocked some of the later work.



This week the crew will start framing the upper floor, with the roof scheduled for a week or so after that.

Framing

This was an exciting week, as it saw the start of framing! A little bit of backfill was done at the beginning of the week. After that, framing started strong. They put together a good portion of the lower floor, including the media room and storage/future bathroom. There is also the first of the trusses that will support the main floor.



In the video, you can see how all of that framing work only took three days. The form of the house will be appearing very soon!



Next week the framing will continue.