I read an article recently about grey/gray water recycling in the home. Unfortunately, I can't remember which magazine I read it in.
We have an existing home and would like to recycle our water to use for landscaping or our pool. We live in the Phoenix area and water is super expensive, plus we like to use as little as possible.
Any recommendations for products? Anyone have any input or ideas on how to add something like this to an existing home? Is it worth it?

You might want to 'google' that.....should come up with alot of articles.

There are a number of systems out there. We’re building a house with a split drain system one for black and one for gray water. So far we’ve had to realign our expectations with reality, we wanted a system to provide water to a pond and irrigate the yard so our desires were very close to yours. Our new expectations are now irrigate the grass in the yard and use clear water for the fruit trees and azaleas. To help keep the pond filled we will be piping all the roof runoff to the pond.

These are the systems that I thought held the most promise, there are a lot of companies out there and they don’t all come up on a google search.
http://www.rewater.com/

http://www.bracsystems.com/residential.html
From an email exchange with Brac
1) PH level: I have a number of very old and large azaleas that require acidic conditions to survive. Do you have any idea what the PH level is after treatment given a normal amount of soap products in show and clothes washer water? Through our own testing, we have seen levels between 6.9 and 7.7, with the chlorine at 1 ppm.
2) What irrigation system do you recommend using? Any subsurface irrigation system will work.
3) Can we use a drip irrigation system? Is it going to clog from soap residue? We utilize a 100 micron polypropylene filter media, so anything larger than 100 micron will be captured. The chlorine neutralizes the soap suds.
4) Historically one of the problems with using grey water for toilet flushing in general is the soap residue gumming up the flush mechanism, is that an issue for your product? Answered above.
5) I’d like to use some of the water to maintain the water level of a 40-60,000 gallon pond used for irrigation of non-food plants and aesthetic reasons will the grey water be a problem? If the water is unsuitable, could I add an additional filter or aerate to get rid of the remaining soap and contaminants? I wouldn't recommend this without further filtration.


For simplicity
One company in Jefferson, MD cuts 12 in pvc pipe in half, buries them concave side down in rows a couple feet apart and runs the water down the pipes.

For what its worth, I like the rewater a little better. Nothing to do with the filtration but if their irrigation controller and emmiters work as advertised, our current expectations would be met.

There is a company, Big Carrot, that started a prize for a municipality that can install grey water recycling filters in new construction homes. Maybe if enught people contribute to the cause, it can change the grey water recycling systems in the U.S. If you go to bigcarrot.com, you can find out more about it. What do you guys think?

Hi JS,
One thing to note is that local ordinances may prohibit or determine how you implement and what you can use the gray water for. I'm not in Phoenix so I'm not sure where you would go to find that out, but perhaps an inspector or gray water expert in your area can tell you about the issues. I was looking into gray water as well, but in my area there are some restrictions that made it less appealing.

Joe