Sunday, December 7, 2008

Gray water to toilet

So here's what I did. I had an old sediment filter laying around so I tied it into the gray water drain line and ran it to a demand water pump. The water pump leads to the toilet water supply. I installed a tee fitting and from it put in valves to select from gray or fresh for flushing purposes. In addition i put a check valve on the fresh water side so we don't get any nasty surprises if i goof up on a valve. The pump is on a second switch at the sewer clean out so I can be sure it's off. If the gray tank is empty the pump will cycle on and stay on until some liquid hits it. We only use this sytem for dry camping stays of more than 3 days. I'm speculating that my decrease in fresh water usage on a typical 6 or 7 day dry camp trip is at least 10 to 15 gallons. This not only effectively increases my 60 gallon tank to a 70 or 75 but effectively increases my gray tank from 45 gallons to 55 or 60 gallons. We can all take a military shower each day of camping. Our last dry outing was to Death Valley; we camped at Texas Spring which is a dry camp which also prohibits generators. We were there 4 nights and had more water than we knew what to do with. On a side note we had bacon cooked in our microwave everyday (no generators). More on that later.
The only noticable problem with this setup is the odor associated with the gray tanks. I will keep you posted on the progress I've made with that problem later.
Additionally, the pump system can be used as a very effective transfer pump system if the gray tanks are full and you want to dump some into the black tanks. All of us who camp know it takes a lot use to fill up those black tanks. Because our kids are in school we haven't had the opportunity to dry camp for more than 7 days so we've never even gotten close to having to try this trick, but I'm sure it would gain us a few days.

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