10 Awesome Gadgets To Reuse Water We like the concept behind this. Small space apartment dwellers would appreciate the utility of having a washing machine option in their bathroom (we know we would). But then again, the toilet in the concept photo above looks like it's giving a piggyback ride to a reject from The Transformers. The "Washup" concept is a sustainable and space saving water consumption device that reuses wasted water from the clothes washing cycle for toilet flushing later (hopefully not at the same time...do your load before dropping it). We just worry we'd accidentally lose socks in the toilet while loading and emptying the machine above. Ingenuity gets an all new meaning in designer Andrew Leinonen's simple yet very powerful Filterbrella concept. With most nations facing water crisis, recycling used water becomes more important than ever before. Perhaps inspired by Britain's constant drought warnings and reminders to 'use water wisely', an inventor has come up with a combined washing machine and shower.
Building a biological DIY greywater system (with no reedbeds) October 16, 2012 | Natural Building, Water Harvesting + Reuse | 37 Comments | Author: Kirsten Bradley Our criteria for building the greywater system for the tinyhouse was pretty simple: cheap, made from readily available materials, and effective. We also wanted to use the outputs to irrigate a grove of important fruit trees, as water is very precious here, especially in a dry year. After many, many hours of research on systems involving reed beds, infiltration trenches, fancy UV zappers and all the rest, we decided, on the advice of permaculture and greywater specialist Ross Mars, to keep it simple, and let the biology do the work. To summarise the approach (and Ross Mars’ general take of domestic greywater), we decided that the intermittent trickle of water coming from our bath and shower would be best dealt with in a living and dynamic system, rather than in a series of reed beds or trenches. What Ross suggested was a very simple system. >> More posts on appropriate technology
Washing Machine Greywater Resources Pantyhose filter For those of you attending our Wednesday night greywater workshop at Good and for those of you who can’t, here’s a list of resources for using your washing machine as a irrigation source: The New Create an Oasis with Greywater: Choosing, Building and Using Greywater Systems by Art Ludwig. This is the bible of greywater. Follow Ludwig’s instructions and you can’t go wrong. Ludwig’s open source Laundry to Landscape system. 1″ polyethylene tubing–an alternative to PVC pipe. Oasis Biocompatible detergent, the only laundry detergent we can find that’s appropriate for greywater use. A selection of three way diverter valves. A local Los Angeles source for drums, the Apex Drum Company: www.apexdrum.com. A description of our greywater fruit mini-orchard. Our greywater surge tank version 1.0. A liquid fertilizer of the type that you could add to your greywater surge tank during a wash cycle to fertilize your garden. Oaktown’s Greywater Guerrillas, another source for inspiration.
Laundry To Landscape Graywater Systems; Design & Parts Complete information from the original inventors by Art Ludwig We originated the Laundry to Landscape Greywater System and published it unpatented into the public domain in 2008 for the good of all. This site has the most up-to-date, reliable, and complete information, and is the source of much of the info replicated on tens of thousands of other pages on "Laundry to Landscape." Please help the quality of information on this system and support our continued research by "liking" and linking to us, getting our instructional DVD or book, and encouraging organizations that have not done so to credit us as a source of original information on this topic--thanks! New Greywater Book and Video Set: The New Create an Oasis, Builder's Greywater Guide, Principles of Ecological Design, Laundry to Landscape instructional DVD $51.80 ($13 savings) Laundry to Landscape Instructional Video Produced by Art Ludwig, published by Oasis Design, 2010. 90 minutes Digital Download—$14.95 Choice of resolutions. Parts
How To Build A Greywater Filter For $30 Or Less My wife, of course, likes to take baths. My son is afraid of the shower so he takes baths. I try to conserve water wherever I can and even take a 5 Gallon Bucket into the shower with me to collect the water when it’s heating up, and while I’m lathering up (5th paragraph down in the post). In a way I am a bit hypocritical in the sense that I have a pool, and pools aren’t eco-friendly or promote water conservation. I’ve been trying to think of ways to offset the extra consumption of water due to the pool – which leads me back to the bath water. Our entire yard was cemented over a long time ago. I bought a 5.5GPM pump a while back from a used electronics store and I have lots of marine batteries to hook it up to. 5 gallon bucket – can be bought at a hardware store for under $5, but most people already have one laying around a 1 1/2″ pipe connector – male and female – for the drain hole. Here are the step-by-step pictures of the project as I constructed the filter. The parts list Pinterest
Homemade Water Filter: Make A DIY Bio-Sand Water Filter Bio-sand filters are super quick and easy to build homemade water filter systems and they are very effective at filtering dirty water and making it safe. Watch the video for details. A homemade water filter like this would be great for filtering and purifying water stored in rainwater catchment systems. Below is some additional information from Wikipedia on the effectiveness of homemade bio-sand filters Bio-sand filters remove pathogens and suspended solids through a combination of biological and physical processes that take place in the biolayer and within the sand column. Filtration process Pathogens and suspended solids are removed through a combination of biological and physical processes that take place in the biolayer and within the sand layer. Mechanical trapping. Removal of contaminants Turbidity Results for turbidity reductions vary depending on the turbidity of the influent water. Heavy metals There is limited research on removal of heavy metals by biosand filters. Bacteria Viruses
How To Get Water From a Drilled Well When The Power Is Off May 1, 2013 | Steve Belange | Topics: Homesteading, Jan/Feb 1999 | Comments Most homesteaders get their water from private, drilled wells. Most private wells use electric pumps. We thought the solution to this would be a “well bucket” that fits drilled wells as small as 5″. By then I had put together a homemade one, from parts available at the local hardware store. Then we discovered that neither one would work in our well. The well bucket on the left took weeks to arrive and with shipping, cost more than $50. What now? At the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair last summer, an anonymous visitor dropped a sheet of plans for an interesting-looking simple hand pump on the table at the Countryside booth. It consisted of an off-the-shelf foot valve and some PVC pipe and fittings. We uncapped the well and inserted the pipe and foot valve. To pump water, we grasped the top of the pipe, and plunged it up and down. On the downstroke, water entered the pipe via the foot valve. Figure 1
Simple Pine Branches Can Filter Out 99% of Bacteria Producing Clean Water If you’ve run out of drinking water during a lakeside camping trip, there’s a simple solution: Break off a branch from the nearest pine tree, peel away the bark, and slowly pour lake water through the stick. The improvised filter should trap any bacteria, producing fresh, uncontaminated water. In fact, an MIT team has discovered that this low-tech filtration system can produce up to four liters of drinking water a day — enough to quench the thirst of a typical person. In a paper published this week in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers demonstrate that a small piece of sapwood (the youngest wood of a tree which serves to move water up from the roots) can filter out more than 99 percent of the bacteria E. coli from water. Co-author Rohit Karnik, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, says sapwood is a promising, low-cost, and efficient material for water filtration, particularly for rural communities where more advanced filtration systems are not readily accessible.
Off The Grid Rainwater Catchment System Early on in the process of building our tiny home, we needed to create systems for catching and using water. We purchased these 50 gallon, food grade barrels for $10 apiece from the local Pepsi distributor, hooked them up to the gutter of our metal-roofed home, and proceeded to catch rainwater for drinking, cooking, and dishwashing. We use a Berkey filter to make the rainwater potable, and relied on water from our pond for irrigating the garden and for bathing. This system worked really well, at least until we had an almost two month drought in July and August. As cold weather set in, we needed to make some changes. A small group of friends and neighbors came over to help dig this shallow grave-like hole. Empty barrels were then placed on their sides into the hole. We ended up buying this antique-style, made in China pump from Lehman’s, and it works beautifully. by Teri Page / via HomesteadHoney
6 Ways to Find Out If Your Drinking Water Is Safe The news is full of dire warnings about pollutants, toxins, bacteria, and other worrisome extras turning up in drinking water. But how do you find out if the water coming out of your kitchen tap is safe? It’s not as hard as you might think—there’s a surprising amount of information out there, if you know where to look for it. Here’s how to become your own clean-water sleuth. 1. You know that bill you pay every month, or every quarter, for your drinking water? Every water agency has to provide this report to its customers by July 1 each year. 2. This watchdog agency maintains a handy-dandy (and easier to use) database of water quality reports, searchable by zip code and by water company. At first glance, the results can be scary. The best way to use the EWG report is to compare the healthy limit column with the legal limit column. 3. 4. 5. When your water supply comes from a private or a community well as opposed to a municipal agency, you’ve got to do a little extra digging, as it were.