campo living - reusing "grey water"

[spanish_lad]

Does anyone do this ? The washing machine is working fine on our solar power, but we noticed that it uses 50L at a time.

The water stinks after a few hours - we use fairy pods.

We have put the waste pipe into a large bin, and we use the water for watering the plants by hand.

I was thinking of a cheap sump pump from bricomart, with a hose adaptor on it, running to a sprinkler so that it waters everything as soon as the bin fills up? I saw a video of an automatic pump that came on when the bucket was full.

none of the plants seem to be suffering so far - in fact they seem to be better than ever !

If it works out, i might actually divert everything except the toilet to go into the bin to water the garden. Imagine the water savings !

[Wicksey]

SL we lived without a water supply for 8 years at our first house and that is how we watered the garden. We saved rain water off the roof for our main house deposito which would last us about 8 months (but in those days we used to have monsoon like rain!).

We never got around to setting up any system of pumps but used to empty the washing machine into buckets (the waste hose was easily accessible as it was in the bathroom and not under kitchen worktops). My OH had the job of running in and out with buckets to water the garden. Also when we had a bath we would bucket out the water.

Even now, all kitchen sink water goes out onto the garden from a washing bowl, and the water that needs to run through until the hot is through in the shower also goes into a bucket and into watering cans.

Our first house was built for us on previously untouched land so there were no plants to start with. We had a very lush garden in the end when we moved, all from recycled water. We planted oleanders and olive trees, plus a bougainvillae which seems to thrive if it is just given deep watering once a week. We treat our current one the same and it has taken over the house and gets a lot of admiration from the neighbours.

[spanish_lad]

Im glad to hear that other people do it as well, its not just me "being tight" ... (a truck of water is 90€ .. i dont want too many of them!)

[jimbothescot]

An old Spaniard told me once that grey water is fine for plants and olive or almond trees but never to use it on citrus trees. He says they don`t like it.

I can`t confirm as I`ve never tried it, but might be worth remembering as these old Spaniards usually get it right.

[spanish_lad]

Well all the plants are thriving so far, some of them never looked that good when we were using town water ! I'm shocked to be honest, I thought it would kill them