Grey Water

kiwimama

I saw a siphon hose thingy advertised on the Argos site and thought it might be a very eco friendly way to water my vegies using the water from my toddler's bath each night - I only use a small amount of completely natural body wash on DS so the water is barely 'grey' at all, more an 'off white' :rotfl:. But I do recall last year being told grey water wasnt actually very good for plants contrary to common belief, so I was just wondering what are people's thoughts on grey water??? I'm growing courgette / beans / tomatoes and carrots.

WestonDave

I would find it hard to see why bath water as you describe would be harmful - I think there are concerns that soap etc can be harmful but the sort of amounts you are likely to be using in a baby bath are probably so small that its not going to be a problem. (Bear in mind that soap solution spray is often quoted as a blackfly killer so it can't be that harmful anyway!). That said you could go the whole hog and only use soap on your little one maybe once a week - ours never used much in the way of soap unless they were playing with it - we figured warm water would get them clean enough - they weren't doing mechanics!

Sally_A

It's fine, use it fresh onto the garden rather than put it into a water butt as it can go a bit stinky with a build up of soap residue.

It makes sense too if you are on a water meter.

Kay_Peel

I bought one of those syphon thingies to suck up the bathwater. The problem was that the pipe was only about 5 feet long and my bath is on the first floor - a long way from my garden. I ended up having to carry buckets of water from the bathroom to the garden - and you don't need a syphon for that! It was useless in the kitchen too - it wouldn't reach out of the window.

So I do it the MSE way now.

I have a couple of buckets outside the back door. I stretch some old tights over them, so that when I tip washing up water, and left-overs from the tea and coffee pots, into the bucket it strains off any bits of food and fat.

I've been using grey water (with Fairy Liquid and Stardrops and soap flakes from handwashing woollies) for about four years and there have been no ill-effects yet. I think that all the detergent got rid of a virus in the soil around my roses because the Black Spot hasn't dared to appear while I've been soaking the rose bed with grey water.:rotfl:

I really wish that syphon thingy had worked for me, though.