Gray Water Disposal System

Unfortunately, one of the things that many individuals don’t take into account during grid-down scenarios is where they plan on disposing of their gray water. Gray water can be soapy dish water, the water from your washing machine or even the water from your shower. You absolutely have to decide what you are going to do if the grid goes down during a hurricane or some other situation and you can’t flush the toilet contents like normal.

Now before I show you two set ups that I created, I’m going to tell you that MOST cities and states have laws in place to prevent you from allowing your gray water to be disposed of in anything but a city sewer. While I understand their reasoning to an extent, we absolutely must get to a place where we as a species evolve into being open to making changes to old laws that have sat on the books doing more damage than good.

We currently have laws in place from as far back as the Wild Wild West when settlers had water laws established, which haven’t been updated to address the latest modern updates in gray water disposal and rainwater collection. You can’t even collect rainwater without a permit in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Thankfully, many states are seeing the error of their ways and have begun to offer incentives to at least collect rainwater. But back to gray water disposal, currently there are only a handful of states who have modernized their laws to allow a homeowner to dispose of gray water into their gardens, landscaping or composting areas.

We should briefly touch on the difference between what we call gray water and black water. Gray water is essentially any water that doesn’t have urine or fecal matter within it, and obviously black water is what gets run down into the sewage system. With modern inventions we are able to almost completely do away with the need for a sewer system but again, the government has the tendency to move at a snails pace in updating old laws. In theory, you could dispose of urine into your gray water system and it would add nutrients to the water you put in your gardens. Dealing with fecal matter could be just as easy when you factor in the incredible value of a composting toilet. I’ve touched on the benefits of a composting toilet in a previous post, but I will say that a composting toilet would be one of the greatest changes to bathrooms across America. With all the scare over fertilizer, in theory you could properly compost human fecal matter and disperse it after a few months of composting around your fruit trees or wildlife trees. Personally, even after composting I wouldn’t use it in my annual vegetable gardens, but you are free to make your own decisions.

When I went searching for ways to use permaculture practices with wastewater disposal, I decided to create my own set of goals for the design:

• filter the gray water through some matter that would break down over time naturally
• grow food trees to absorb any excess water that went onto the land
• restore every drop of water I could back into our Florida aquifer
• easy to use design with components that anyone could find on their property or purchase locally

Washing Machine Gray Water Disposal System

My sons and I dug a rectangular hole approximately four feet deep and filled half with decaying leaves that were topped with some mulch that was in the process of composting down. It’s surrounded with 4-8x8x16 cinder blocks to help direct water flow better when it shoots out of the PVC pipe. There are two Truly Tiny bananas which grow 4-6 feet tall to absorb excess water and provide another source of food for our family. As the matter inside the bed decays, you just continue to add to it. If you click on each picture, you’ll see how happy the bananas are with all the excess water they get.

Main RV Gray Water Disposal System

Here again my sons and I dug down about 4 feet into Florida dirt and filled it halfway up with decaying leaves and the other half mulch. This bed is larger due to the amount of output a single-family can create on a daily basis. The 8x8x16 cinder blocks keep the gushing water within a set of boundaries and direct it where it needs to go. This bed, due to the size and depth have four of the Truly Tiny variety of banana trees.

When you are combining gray water disposal and plants, keep in mind a few things:

• You can’t use strong chemicals such as bleach when creating a gray water system that uses bananas or other food production trees. Mild vinegar or baking soda use doesn’t seem to cause any ill effects with the banana trees.
• If you are taking certain medications, they may be excreted in your urine and may cause issues with plant life. This is something you must attempt to research yourself.
• Do not allow gray water to sit in any tank over 24 hours or dangerous bacteria can grow and lead to bad outcomes.
• Do not use gray water on annual vegetables, but fruit trees and wilderness trees are fine.
• Laundry detergent and dish soap needs to be fragrance free and as natural as possible to reduce any issues with plant growth.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and I’ll do my best to answer this. Good luck and happy prepping!