Comments on: How to build your own grey water filter for $30 or less

By: admin

admin — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 22:58:07 +0000

Hi, thanks so much for commenting and letting me know the post was of interest to you. I know it has taken me a while to reply so I don't know if you're still considering it for your project, but I finally found an example kit online here. Please let me know if you do the project and how it goes! Thanks again

By: hello!

hello! — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 05:50:58 +0000

This is a great idea! Thank you I am doing this for a science project. But I was wondering where to get the koi pond filter. I cant seem to find any anywhere! Do you know if there is any at Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, Target, Pet Co? If you could contact me at my email (ggbartolome@gmail.com) that would be a great help to me and my project.
Mahalo,
Gabby B.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 23:59:18 +0000

That is a great idea. At my last house I had a pool as well and unfortunately when I back-flushed the filter I was not doing this with my water. Usually I probably dumped only about 50 gallons at a time, but that would have been 50 gallons less from the local water supply. Thanks for posting your comment!

By: John

John — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 22:44:21 +0000

Hi there, we who backwash our swimming pools can have a drum or two set up with a pipe running back to the pool. A similar filter of sand and gravel separated with some cloth should be more than enough. As we backwash our pools the water pours into the drum (hidden in the garden) and then trickles back into the pool. The water is already pH balanced and has chemicals etc in it and therefore we’ll also save on chemicals too. It is also not a good idea to pump pool water onto our gardens or down the drain, so put it back where it belongs… in the pool.

By: Marc

Marc — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 10:24:35 +0000

That is a very interesting and bright concept and it would appear as if it would filter the water very well…thanks for the tip.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 20 May 2010 20:37:55 +0000

Wow, that’s some great information! Thanks for sharing it! I think that your idea of using t-shirts is probably easier and cheaper than the filter solution I had in place, I’ll have to give that a try.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:07:15 +0000

I basically did the same but instead of a bucket I have a large trash bin, about 3 feet tall and I only have one layer of sand with no filter, just a few layers of cotton t-shirt between the sand and the loose gravel. My sand layer is about 10-12 inches deep. I also bought a 150GPH pump(about 2.5 GPH). I am planning on rebuilding the layers with about 2 inches of activated carbon, but I can’t find a cheap enough supply. On a large scale availability is scarce and expensive.
I was just using bath water to water my garden but I started to notice that my plants were exhibiting alkaline soil problems Specifically iron deficiency . And further research told me that the additional soapy water was adding alkalinity to the soil which prevents iron uptake. Now I just supplement the water with small amounts of vinegar to acidify (or neutralize) the waste water and all is well. Hopefully the sand filter provides additional benefits.

What I might start doing is using another pump to cycle the water through the sand filter to increase what I can filter out.

By: Different view on a water filter | ecoenthusiast

Different view on a water filter | ecoenthusiast — Sat, 15 May 2010 09:16:45 +0000

[...] did find an article about a home project for filtering grey water that seems easy, exceptionally cheap, has lots of pictures and instruction, and much more practical [...]

By: admin

admin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 07:33:33 +0000

Hi! Thanks for the question. I may not have quite the answer you’re looking for, but I’ll give you as much information as I have at this time.

I haven’t really used the filter in about six months. The biggest reason is because my yard is about 95% concrete and I just don’t have a need for as much water as I can potentially collect with the filter. I get almost enough water just by using a 5 gallon bucket in the shower (http://ecoexist.net/archives/4) to water the plants and flush the toilets occasionally. I expect I’ll pick up the filter bucket again when I start planting my garden this spring though. When I did use the filter I would clean the top filter about every 3 filter cycles to get the soap residue out, using the filtered water of course. I’d then rinse out the sand every 7-10 filters, and replace the sand about every 30 filters. One thing I needed to look into improving is that the flow of the filter wasn’t quite fast enough. I was using a 5gpm (19 litres per minute) pump and had to keep turning it off and on so that the filter wouldn’t overflow. Maybe a wider bottomed bucket or something would make it better.

If you try out this project, then please comment again with your progress and experiences. I’d love to hear how things go. Good luck!

By: Greta

Greta — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:17:12 +0000

Hi, I read this with great interest given that commercial sold versions of grey water treatment systems in Australia are pretty expensive, and yet I know people have designed similar things for their yards to water the plants. In fact, the first time I ever saw a system like this was in Nepal used to purify water for drinking and…well…I had no stomach problems. But aside from that, how has this worked since you built it? And how often have you had to clean or replace the sand and gravel? Is it good for kitchen water (minus grease) and laundry rinse water?