What is your climate? And do you have a little
land and plant area?
If it is an arid climate, and if you have an area of plants, it would be great if you could use the greywater for irrigation. I use my greywater for irrigation, and at the school I lived at for over 20 years, we did, a very simple system. We just had the greywater daylight out from buried pipes to narrow little irrigation canals along a lot of
trees. The willows love it, but the apricots, pears and apples also seem to love it.
The willows get water from the bathing block so it has lots of
soap, laundry detergent, and god-knows-what "products" our 60-100 teenagers use, but the willows don't seem to mind.
The fruit trees get water from the school kitchen and dining hall dish pit, so the water has comparatively less soap and detergent, and a lot more food particles making it rich. We made a
wood chip filter to filter out the food particles, which seemed like a great thing but then we had to destroy it for kitchen expansion construction. Otherwise in warm weather the canal downhill from the kitchen sometimes stank.
I was greatly inspired and encouraged by
Art Ludwig's book about greywater, and his website,
Oasis Designs. He explains how topsoil exposed to the air has such a lively ecosystem in it that "daylighting" your greywater can be much less trouble and less smelly work than trying to filter it into
underground perforated pipes. We don't have any regulations constraining us, and we were already doing that, so it was good encouragement.
Storing greywater, even for a day or two, and even when it doesn't seem very dirty, tends to make it smell something awful.
