Plumbing for a Greywater System (Plus Some Money Savings!)

Reader Contribution by Jennifer Kongs
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The Small Home, Big Decisions series follows Jennifer and her husband, Tyler, as they build a self-reliant homestead on a piece of country property in northeastern Kansas. The series will delve into questions that arise during their building process and the decisions they make along the way. The posts are a work in progress, written as their home-building adventure unfolds.

Customization is the name of the house-building game, and we are taking advantage of all available options by including as many eco-friendly features as possible and laying out the house to fit our lifestyle. One part of this effort is our customized plumbing — our goal is to build-in a greywater system that will rely on gravity to feed water from our washing machine and a washbasin (both in the basement) to outside water-storage tanks. In the photo above, you can see the pipes that have been installed that will run under our concrete basement floor. The pipes in the top/back of the photo are the ones that will connect into our future greywater system. Runoff rainwater collected from the roof will also be piped to the same storage tanks. (We will take a closer look at the full system and the rainwater collection in later posts.)

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