Get the Dish on Recycling Graywater
If you've been putting serious thought into how to make your home more efficient when it comes to water use, you've probably thought about a graywater recycling system, which captures used water and reroutes it for irrigation and other purposes. But you might be intimidated by the different kinds of
Posted — UpdatedYou aren't, but it can help to have a guiding hand (or a cheerful work crew, like the one seen above).
Some regions don't regulate graywater at all, leaving it a bit of a legal gray area (ba dum bum CHING!). That's good news for you, in a sense, because it allows a great deal of flexibility in terms of which systems you install and how you use them. However, others have concerns -- legitimate, as it happens -- about greywater recycling, and they want to make sure it's performed safely for households and communities. That means they may restrict such recycling to graywater only, eliminating the risks of potentially contaminated dark graywater.
You can go to the local building office to find out which regulations, if any, pertain to graywater recycling systems. If there are none, you can try obtaining a permit anyway -- your request can actually trigger a region to start thinking about creating a coherent regulation system. If such systems are not allowed, we of course would never want to encourge you to violate the building code, but you could launch an appeal or work with a plumber on a permit application that would press the issue.
And, uh, if you did accidentally install a graywater recycling system without knowing that you weren't supposed to, the punishments you'd likely face would include fines and a corrective citation: you'd need to essentially bring the system up to code, which might require removing it.