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Comment by hanniabu | Hacker News Reader

Why don't we use grey water to flush toilets? It can use water either from the bathroom sink or shower.

Honestly, I do. I've placed a bucket in the sink to capture waste water from washing hands, which is then reused for flushing the toilet after depositing... liquid contents in it. It saves a bit off the water bill and also made me realize just how much water I use up when washing hands...

Of course I hide the bucket when guests come, it's too weird a thing - but in all honesty, I've wished many times for a system for capturing sink & shower water in a tank, for use in toilet. The standard practice is inefficient.

EDIT: I didn't know the term "greywater" before, and after reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greywater I'm having second thoughts about my scheme. If the city is actually treating greywater and water from toilets separately, then I guess it makes sense to let the sink water drain. But then again, that's a huge if. I'll need to take a closer look at my indoor plumbing and read up on the water treatment scheme in my area.

As of now, very few buildings have separate grey and black water plumbing. In the event that you did have separate plumbing in the building, you would need separate plumbing in the street as well.

Unless you live in a very water constrained area, it's pretty unlikely. In the US, plumbing for reclaimed water is available in some areas (purple pipes), and seems like an easier intervention, it's often used for landscape irrigation, which has easily accessible plumbing to retrofit. It can be used for toilet flushing as well, if that is plumbed separately from other fixtures in the building.

Can you irrigate with water that has detergents in it though?

Yes, depending on the detergent content. Reclaimed water is usually water that's been treated for pathogens at the treatment plant, but hasn't had been through all of the post-treatment cleansing required before discharging into waterways.

I’ve heard that newer houses (this was over 15 years ago though) here in Germany often use shower/bath water for the toilet.

You can put a small sump pump with a pressure switch in the bucket, and an overflow setup back into the normal drain. This way when the toilet flushes, the sump will kick on and fill the toilet and keep pressure on the water line feeding it. Any excess sink water will overflow out the upper hose on the bucket and go into the normal drain.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't you just have the one output from the pump going to the toilet tank? Then if the overflow switch triggers the sump pump, it'll overfill the toilet tank, which will drain into the toilet bowl, and down the drain... right?

It's exceedingly unlikely your American home is keeping graywater separate from blackwater. If it were, you would know, it would have been mentioned as it's quite exceptional.

California not long ago changed its laws regarding graywater handling in response to the sustained droughts. Now residents are permitted to divert graywater themselves for other purposes like irrigation and gardening. So it's become a little more common to find diverted graywater systems in response to this change, but they're often ad-hoc diy setups in drought-stricken regions.

You're right though, showers and laundry are huge wastes of water, at least relative to residential water use. Unlike toilets, they're also much harder/impossible problems to solve without the voluminous use of clean water. With toilets there are options like composting and incinerating, and in places with ocean access seawater can be used for flushing. Bathing and laundry don't really have alternatives.

Here in Belgium it is mandatory (for quite some years) with every new building development to install a tank capturing rain water from the roof. This water must be used for flushing toilets and you typically also use it to water the garden, wash your car, etc. With some extra (carbon) filters people also use it for their washing machine.

I have a 10000L tank which is more than sufficient for a household of 4 and some garden. The minimum size is calculated based on your roof surface but normally people install a bigger tank. The extra cost for a few 1000L more really isn't that much and it can save you the cost of a fallback system in case the tank runs dry.

The overflow of the tank goes to a separate sewage system that usually ends in a local stream. This way it doesn't dilute the actual grey/black water which, incidentally, makes a water treatment plant more effective (or so they say). It also allows the water to infiltrate into the ground and there's less risk of flooding the streets during a downpour. At least, this is the theory. Work is still very much in progress to split the sewage systems but we're getting there.

Probably because it requires extra plumbing, not to mention a storage tank. And most places don't have a fresh water shortage.

I've seen where the tank top is a handwashing station. There is a faucet on top and a small basin in the tank top, when you flush, the inlet is connected to the faucet. You wash and the soap water goes into the tank for use on the next flush.

I understand Hong Kong uses seawater to flush toilets.

The chlorination process is simple: just pass some current through the salt and voila, chlorine.

Japan has this... a common design is to have the bathroom sink drain directly into the toilet's water reservoir, so the grey water is used for the next flush. No changes to plumbing needed, since it's all built into the fixtures.

Admittedly, there is a bit of a psychological hurdle to washing your hands in the toilet, even though the water is isolated and perfectly clean. (This could be solved through clever plumbing, to separate the two fixtures.)

Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/9rabuk/t...

If your hands are particularly dirty (a very possible use case for a sink) do you flush after? Genuinely curious.

Complexity

The reason so many 'amazing' idea never take off in houses and why cookie cutter housing rules.

There are big regulations, if you cross the piping you could theoretically contaminate the streets or larger water supply.

You now have two water systems in a house. Plumbing is not cheap, having two is more $.

You'll need a pump and holding tank, a place to run the pump and holding tank. It'll might me loud and can break down, will fail in blackouts. Can the tank get legionnaires disease?

The cost of additional plumbing is not small. Also, what is the source of grey water? If it's your house drainage, when you rinse chicken blood or poop or one of the other many nasty things people rinse down the drain, now it sits in your tank for an undermined period of time?

Or like my parents, use a well's water (not potable) for their toilets. That required a small dedicated tank, a small pump to a well, and dedicated pipes for the toilets. Potable water is for all other needs (sink, shower, etc).

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