How to get water from washing machine to grass?

[noahandlinasmom]

Is there just an extra long hose you can buy to use gray water from your washing machine to water your lawn? Anybody do this? Have pics? Also, I like to use our bath water to wash our clothes in, any simpler way than bucketing it into machine?

[ledzepplon]

:

I'm also interested in methods people have come up with to reuse their household water--I used to fill the washing machine with bathwater, but now we have a front-loading machine, so I can't do it anymore.

[kriket]

damn it I was just reading something about this. I think it was something that I googled.. maybe one of the other mamas know. I clicked to respond then the name escaped me

[zmom]

Subbing.

Also, does the water just go in one spot or do you put it into a rain barrel type thing and distribute later or what?

[snozzberry]

Here's a post about reusing gray water from Ideal Bite.

[Caneel]

Not to sound flip, but yes, an extra long hose from the discharge. This was very common when I grew up as everyone had on-site sewage disposal and didn't want washer water going into the septic tank (or drain field)

Depending on where in the house the washer is located, you would need to run the hose so gravity would ideally do all the work (and therefore avoid a pump to get it out the house)

At our house, there was a hole drilled thru the bathroom wall. The washer discharged into a rigid black pipe (thru the wall) out to the yard.

You will want to make sure the pipe is pitched to allow water to drain away as well as sized correctly to handle the volume as you don't want the water backing up into the washer.

At my childhood home, it wasn't collected but just ran out into the yard. Mom wasn't the type to garden or be concerned about water usage.

[kriket]

snozzberry: that was the site I was reading! I knew I got it from someone's siggy here!

p.s. every time I see you I think of licking a police car I think it was in a movie.

[noahandlinasmom]

Thanks for the responses so far

[snozzberry]

Originally Posted by kriket

snozzberry: that was the site I was reading! I knew I got it from someone's siggy here!

p.s. every time I see you I think of licking a police car I think it was in a movie.

It's from Willy Wonka when he's telling them that they can lick the wallpaper and it'll taste like what they lick.

[lilyka]

She is thinking about Super Troopers :

[USAmma]

My dh looked into this last year. We would need about 20 feet of hose and at the hardware store they sold it by the foot. It would have been like $150 for that much hose. Because of the connections in the back it was not compatible with another type of hose. We also realized that we would need to have it drain into a large barrel because of gravity or have a pump of some sort. We kinda gave up on it after that.

We live close to an older, mostly Hispanic neighborhood and since they don't all have fences, we can see into their yards. A lot of them have the washing machine right on the back porch and I assume it drains right into the yard. Dh was unwilling to do this with our machine, but it might be another possible solution if you are willing to move your laundry operation outdoors.

[kellynewcomer]

Love hearing about how people solve this. Interesting stories. Yeah - in Arizona, why not have the washer on back porch. I guess it would get dusty out there..

[PikkuMyy]

We had a washing machine on the back porch before and it drained into flexible hoses in the back yard that had holes punched in them. That was when we rented the house out to people. Once we moved in, we installed a real greywater system so that where the W/D and shower were going to connect to the septic tank, we had the plumber put in a valve so that it can go there or it can go out via plastic pipes we ran out to a big pit in the backyard that has a 50 gallon drum in it. This has a filter and then it drains into a big ditch of gravel. Then we covered it all over with dirt and planted grass on it.

This would be pretty easy at your own home, not so easy if you rent.