Best water use ever!

[trikkonceptz]

Peter there had a great idea Ben. Many if not all toilets are near an exterior wall with some sort of window. Most. It would be easy to set up a 10 gallon tank just outside the or on the other side of the wall to collect rain water and tee it off from the water valve in the toilet. Then you get gravity fed rain water running your toilet.

OK so you use city water in the dry months, but during your rainy season you get free toilet operation.

[bennelson]

That's a great idea about the rain water flushing.

However, in my case it's not really what I am looking for.

I have to pay for OUTGOING WATER. I get my water from my well, which is almost free (just costs the electricity to run the pump)

If I flush my toilet with rain water, I still have to pay the exact same amount to have the waste-water hauled away.

If I flushed my toilet with shower water, I am getting a SECOND use out of the shower water that I already need to pay to remove.

[trikkonceptz]

Well kick this idea around .... some one will figure out the efficient logistics.

Collect all your grey water, shower, sink etc ... Develop a way to evaporate it so it doesn't flow anywhere, thus you do not have to pay for it.

[Ryland]

Do you have a basement under the shower or near it? you can get large square plastic water tanks that fit on a pallet, build it up a bit so the over flow is gravity fed back in to the drain, over flow should also be based off the bottom of the tank so it cleans the sediment out first then use an RV style pump to build line pressure up going to the toilet, pex tubing is really easy to use to run supply lines, if you are doing this you might also want to look in to a drain heat exchanger that will preheat your cold water coming in to your shower with the heat from the drain water (warmer cold water mean you use less hot water and it's direct use of the heated water), you might also want to look at what else you have in your house, water softeners dump waste water, reverse osmosis water filters dump waste water and is it worth owning a washing machine? right now my house with three people in it we average 42 gallons per day with an old 5 gallon flush toilet and a high flow shower head that I need to switch out as soon as I find one of a quality that I like.

[bennelson]

Hey Ryland,

What you are saying is the sorts of things I am thinking of.

My house is over a concrete block wall/cement floor crawl-space. It is just like an unfinished basement, except for the fact that it's only 22" tall, so Height-based designs are an issue. I DO have space BELOW the bathroom, just not a lot of it.

I have considered some sort of "pre-warmer" heat exchanger. The well water in pipe runs almost right under the bathroom.

I would pre-heat the cold water from the well going to the water heater using the warm water that just left the shower. Even with warm water sitting in the storage tank in the crawl-space, some of the heat would leak back into the house, rather than just going down the drain.

[Snax]

One thing that I have noticed makes a significant impact on shower use is how warm the bathroom is. Stepping into a cold bathroom that pretty much just stays cold encourages people to use a larger quantity of warmer water. Assuring that the bathroom is already warm enough to be comfortable in while in the buff can significantly cut down on the length of the shower and temperature of the water used.

One really easy solution there is to install a heat lamp if you don't already have one. Even one positioned nearby, outside the shower curtain or glass, can provide a significant boost in how warm it feels. Anybody with a standard ceiling bathroom fan can make this upgrade relatively easily. Make sure that same lamp is also on a timer as well to keep it from getting left on, and to regulate how long you spend in the shower.

It also helps to have a programmable thermostat turn on the heat shortly before people normally use the shower, and if you can ventilate the bath areas more with forced air systems, the baths will also tend to warm up before the rest of the house.