Emma Buggy

By the way... How about using some of the water as for the chickens?

Thank you both for your replies!
James - yes well, we are total beginners, experimenting and learning as we read / try things out and talk to other local organic farmers. we have been trying various methods of making our own compost - all going well, but very slowly so we are yet to use any of it on the garden. we also have a compost toilet just recently made up - so we will eventually be composting all over the place!

we have tried out the grey water system as we wrote out above and so far so good - the water comes out clean, it takes time to filter through the layers - which for some reason gives me extra piece of mind..,

We are using our own home made potassium based soap - our soil could do with more KOH and we defiantly do not need anymore sodium - which is in most eco soaps and already in high amounts in our tap water

Tyler - yes we did have a look at this page and I too am worried about using the grey water in drip irrigation, but I am hopeful that if we keep a good eye on our system (everything is very accessible and removable) we can avoid overly dirty grey water from getting into the pipes maybe.. we are thinking of adding a second bin to the system which will have a second round of filtrating before the water goes through the drip irrigation system. I can't think of any other system that would allow us to re-use the water without spraying over the veggies, any ideas?? The sun here is so hot that water when sprinkled from above doesn't really reach the roots much..

Another thing to mention - we were also thinking of running extra  tap water through the system so that the tap water comes through a little better quality for the plants, as the grey water won't be enough to feed all plant's this can also flush through to top them up a bit..

We need  a lot of water to water all our veggies and it barley ever rains here ;( - so grey water has no chance of sitting around for more than a few hours as it will be used on the same day

Hey there Permies!,

We have just built ourselves an outdoor kitchen next to our veggie patch which we can't wait to start using.. We are now setting up a simple grey water system to collect the water from washing dishes to use on the garden. We have done a lot of research - but we have never used grey water or built a system like this before so I thought I'd run my idea past those of you who have experience with this before going ahead with it to see if you guy's have any tips or things you would change about it or if you think it might just work fine..

Beneath the sink there will be a 30lt plastic bin with a small pipe leading the grey water directly from the sink into a hole in the lid of the bin - which is elevated.
The water will then pass through a piece of cloth which will catch any excess food waste.
The cloth is attached to a plastic sieve bowl which is layered with scotchbrite at the bottom to catch any other little food bits / oils
the water will pass through the scotchbrite, the sieve and then into the layers of thin sand - charcoal and lastly larger stones and finally out of the filtration system at the bottom and into a new bucket which we will attach to our irrigation system to irrigate the plants from soil level (have read that I should avoid splashing grey water onto leaves)

p.s. We need to try and re-use water whenever possible as water is very scarce and of bad quality on the island - shipped over from Athens by boat - by next year we hope to collect rain water to help with this
We are also thinking to create another water filtration system to filtrate the tap water before irrigating other parts of the garden as our tap water is of poorer quality during summer months and becomes very salty - so any ideas on that would also be welcomed

p.s 2
We are considering a thick layer of compost as an additional filter right at the very end of the system. what do you think?

Thanking you  in advance lovely people!

Enjoy the spring or Autumn time!

Emma