For those who thought I was telling lies. From www.met.ie
Rainfall in Ireland
Most of the eastern half of the country has between 750 and 1000 millimetres (mm) of rainfall in the year. Rainfall in the west generally averages between 1000 and 1250 mm. In many mountainous districts rainfall exceeds 2000mm per year. The wettest months, almost everywhere are December and January. April is the driest month generally but in many southern parts, June is the driest. Hail and snow contribute relatively little to the precipitation measured.
Measuring Rainfall
Rainfall amounts are collected by a standard gauge consisting of a funnel and a container. The 15 Meteorological Service stations measure these amounts every hour but most of the 750 or so rainfall stations around the country read their gauges once a day. A few gauges in remote mountain locations are only visited once a month.
Rainfall Records
Driest year 1887-only 356.6mm of rain recorded at Glasnevin Dublin
Longest absolute drought Limerick 3rd April to 10th May 1938
Greatest monthly total 790.0mm Cummeragh Mtns October 1996
Greatest annual total 3964.9mm Ballaghbeena Gap 1960
Greatest hourly total 97mm Orra Beg, Antrim, August 1980
Greatest daily total 243.5mm Cloore Lake Co. Kerry 18 September 1993
How Often Does it Rain?
The general impression is that it rains quite a lot of the time in Ireland but in fact two out of three hourly observations will not report any measurable rainfall. The average number of wet days (days with more than 1mm of rain) ranges from about 150 days a year along the east and aouth-east coasts, to about 225 days a year in parts of the west.
How Heavy is the Rain?
Unlike the rain in many other countries, especially in the tropics, average hourly rainfall amounts in Ireland are quite low, ranging from 1 to 2mm. Short-term rates can of course be much higher: for example, an hourly total of 10mm is not uncommon and totals of 15 to 20mm in an hour may be expected to occur once in 5 years. Hourly totals exceeding 25mm are rare in this country and when they do occur they are usually associated with heavy thunderstorms.
Do you see how they try to pretend this is no big deal _________________ www.askaboutenergy.com
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3429 Location: California, USA
Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 2:31 am Post subject:
I just got four 25-gallon indoor storage tanks and am building a water-recycling system.
Each day's "purge water" from the shower (the cold water that comes before the hot), about 5 gallons per day, will go into a "clean" tank.
This becomes a drinkable water supply that will be "rotated and refreshed" regularly because it will also be the regular weekly input to the rinse cycle in the washing machine.
The wash-cycle graywater from the washer (full of detergent and dirt removed from clothes) will be filtered, stored, have enough bleach added to sanitize it, and used for toilet flushes via an overhead tank connected to the toilet tank. One week's graywater from this source will provide approximately one week's toilet flushes.
The rinse-cycle graywater from the washer (basically clean with a little bit of residual detergent) will be used for the wash-cycle water for the next load of laundry, thereby cutting laundry water usage in half. After the second load of laundry, the rinse water will be stored, have bleach added to keep sanitary, and re-used for wash water for the first load of laundry the next time I wash clothes.
So, for example: Wednesday night's wash-cycle input water will be the rinse-water saved from the previous Saturday's laundry. Wednesday night's wash-cycle output graywater gets stored to flush the toilets on Thursday through Saturday. Shower purge water collected on Sunday through Wednesday, becomes Wednesday night's input the the rinse cycle. Wednesday night's rinse water is stored and used for Saturday's wash water.
Saturday, use Wednesday's recycled rinse-water as input to the wash cycle. The used wash water is recycled to flush the toilet from Saturday night through Wednesday. The shower purge-water collected from Thursday through Saturday becomes the input to Saturday's rinse cycle. The output graywater from Saturday's rinse cycle gets stored for use as input to the following Wednesday's wash cycle.
The only fresh water coming into the system is water that would ordinarily go down the drain waiting for the shower to get hot. This water does two jobs: washing clothes and flushing the toilet, and then of course it (along with my manure, which I can't use in the city) goes down the toilet and into the city sewers.
In the meantime, I have at any given time, 20+ gallons of fresh water (purge water from the shower) in storage, which is an emergency drinking water supply. And I also have at any given time, 20+ gallons of laundry wash-cycle graywater, which is an emergency supply for four days' worth of toilet flushes.
With more storage tanks, more drinking & toilet water could be kept in storage.
Important note: If you store graywater in a closed container for more than a day, it can become septic, which means your graywater becomes de-facto blackwater, starts growing bacteria in large numbers, and starts to smell nasty. If you're planning to store graywater, you want to store it in a container that is open to the air, and you want to put bleach in it as needed (look up the details of how much bleach per gallon of water to keep it sanitary).
Bleach (in smaller amounts) should also be added regularly to stored drinking water.
Graywater tanks should also be washed and rinsed out occasionally.
To break out the laundry wash-cycle and rinse-cycle water as separate outputs, you need either a twin-tub washer ("semi-automatic", i.e. manual cycle controls) such as the Danby TT420 (which I have; about $250 - $300 depending on where you get it) or the one just introduced by Haier (or overseas you can also get Panasonic, Toshiba, Samsung, etc., and in the UK, used Hoovermatics also), or you need to be clever about intercepting your automatic washer as it cycles from wash to rinse.
If you have a top-load washer, you can intercept the cycle by leaving the lid open, since it won't spin with the lid open, the cycle will stop and you can go move the discharge hose to the appropriate container. If you have a front-loader, you have to kinda' keep an eye on it and move the hose at the right time. The use of purge water in front loaders is a little more difficult since they normally use a pressurized water input and can't be filled manually; you have to mount a tank overhead and count on it producing some water pressure via gravity.
Saving & recycling rinse water into the next load's wash water is difficult with conventional top-loaders, more so with front-loaders, because they have to discharge this water in order to spin (whereas with a twin-tub, the spinning is done in the second tub, at 3x the speed of your normal washer's spin cycle). However, you can still catch it in a tank and then pump it back in at the right time.
If your hot water pipes are insulated such that your showers are hot right away, there's no purge water to save for washing clothes; however, you're already saving energy that would have been lost via un-insulated hot water pipes, and you can cycle clean-water storage into laundry water, and use graywater from the laundry for flushing toilets.
Another benefit of the twin-tub washer, and of external spinners such as SpinX that are sold as separate appliances, is that spinning the laundry at high speed removes enough water to cut dryer time by 1/2 to 3/4 (the latter if you hang-dry overnight), which is a savings of 4 to 6 kilowatt-hours for each load that goes through the dryer. SpinX costs about $450, and for a household of two to four people will typically save enough on the electric bill to pay for itself within a year.
All of the above is intended for city-dwellers without land. In the suburbs, the biggest thing anyone can do to save water is to replace the lawn with non-irrigated landscaping (or grow a garden, where at least the water is helping to produce food), and that also eliminates the need for using a lawnmower, saving a few more gallons of gas per month. In a rural environment, water/energy tradeoffs are a different mix depending on your circumstances, but you have more freedom to design & build infratructure to suit the need.
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 12599 Location: zombie horde wonderland
Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:05 am Post subject:
Water is my priority. I live in an area with alternating droughts and floods (Central Texas - flood capitol of the US). On our land we're blessed with two seasonal creeks which bring us many hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. We're currently working on strategies to capture some of it for later use. We're also working on controlling overland runoff to slow it and allow it to soak into the ground instead of plowing on through taking our topsoil with it. This is an ongoing challenge.
gg,
I also save "purge" water, though I didn't know what to call it . I have only been saving it from my kitchen sink faucet, which amounts to about a gallon a day or so. That gallon is used anytime I need cold water - making coffee, tea, watering plants, animals, etc. I have thought about saving the water from the bathtub as well, and your post gives me inspiration. I knew it was more water going down the drain than from the kitchen sink, but I didn't realize it was five times as much.
As for recycling grey water. We do not own a dishwasher, so when I wash dishes, I do so in a dishpan of sorts - actually a very large plastic bowl that completely fills one side of the sink. Rather than just letting the water go down the drain when I finish dishes, I use that water to flush the toilet - at least once a day, the dishwater flushes my toilet.
I guess I've been doing what you're doing - though on a MUCH more limited scale. Thanks for showing what more can be done.
A question, though, that you might be able to answer. I have heard of people diverting grey water from washing for watering gardens and plants. It seems to me that the detergents, etc. in grey water would be harmful to the garden and would build up in the soil. Do you have any idea of what could be done to "purify" the grey water for use in watering gardens? Or are these people really just messing up?
Kathy
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3429 Location: California, USA
Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 7:41 am Post subject:
SQUEAMISH ALERT: explicit technical mentions of poo-poo and suchlike below.
Graywater for plants is an interesting question.
First, all graywater is not the same.
Graywater from the laundry is probably cleanest, with the following exceptions:
Diapers or other clothes having fecal deposits or stains (fecal coliform, very dangerous, can cause cholera and dysentery). In fact this should be considered blackwater (blackwater = water that is carrying any quantity of fecal matter or decaying food matter).
Clothes worn by people who have contagious illnesses. These clothes can be disease vectors, i.e. sources of contagion.
The above two categories should always be washed as separate loads, and you should use either chlorine bleach (Clorox) or oxygen bleach ("color-safe") bleaches. Add the bleaches manually during the last few minutes of the wash cycle or in smaller amounts in the first rinse cycle. Adding bleaches at the same time as detergents can cause the bleach and or the detergent to deactivate each other. If you are using a front-loader, check the user manual carefully to find out how it handles adding bleach relative to adding detergent, and adjust your laundry practices accordingly. If you are using a top-loader, keep an eye on the washer and just open the lid and add the bleach at the appropriate time.
(Editorial comment: American consumers have been lulled to sleep by advertising claims of "fully automatic" washers that just let you press a button and go away while the machine does everything. While some of these are well-designed and perform as intended, it's really better overall to keep an eye on the washer and exercise more deliberate control over water consumption and the addition of detergents and bleaches etc.)
Clothes worn by people who are working with hazardous materials such as petroleum derivatives ("grease stains" from working on the car, etc.), paints, manures, etc. If you generate a lot of grease-stained laundry, get a separate washer for this because the stuff is going to leave deposits in the washer (which will get on your subsequent loads); and you can't dry it in the dryer because it could start a fire or cause an explosion.
The graywater from the above cases should NOT be used in any outdoor irrigation that is going to come into contact with humans, including putting it on your lawn. You can put it into engineered "micro wetlands" that are designed to purify it and allow it to percolate into the groundwater, but the design of wetlands is beyond the scope of my expertise.
With those exceptions, most laundry contains basically "clean dirt" along the lines of dust and dust-mites, floor dirt, outdoor earth-dirt including grass stains, along with various mostly-harmless bodily dirt such as sweat, skin oils, airborne dirt (such as air pollutants, soot, outdoor dust, etc.) that has stuck to your skin, dead skin particles, and so on. This stuff, when washed out with detergent, is basically harmless, and the graywater from this operation can be used for outdoor irrigation.
Graywater from laundry such as described in the paragraph immediately above, can be applied to lawns and certain types of edible crops. When applying it, do not sprinkle or spray or otherwise cause it to turn into airborne droplets. Instead, us some kind of watering method that applies it directly to the ground. However, this water needs to be filtered to take out lint and so on, otherwise it will clog most forms of drip irrigation systems (and can clog soaker-hoses immediately). Do your online research about what types of crops are safe to water with this category of graywater (I am not an agricultural expert and my research does not cover this aspect of graywater recycling).
Of critical importance is the type of detergent you are using. "Soaps" are not recommended for laundry because, in hard water, they will form "curds" in your washer that have no cleaning ability and can get into your clothes. "Detergents" are chemically different than soaps; in addition to the usual mass-market ones (Tide, Cheer, Persil, etc.), there are a number of good eco-safe ones on the market, check your local grocery stores, food coops, health food stores, and so on.
Only use eco-safe detergents if you expect to use graywater for irrigation purposes. Check the manufacturers' websites, and don't be shy to call the manufacturer and ask to speak to someone who can answer a few questions about whether water that contains their detergent can safely be discharged onto landscapes.
These considerations also apply to dishwashing detergents and to soaps and shampoos used in the bath or shower.
Now we come to dishwater.
If you use an eco-safe detergent, and if your dish water contains no meat products, it could be clean enough to use as irrigation water IF it is applied immediately after it is generated. Do not allow it to sit around, doing so will just provide a breeding ground for all manner of nasty bacteria. Dishwater that contains meat residues may also propagate any diseases that were in the meat, i.e. salmonella, trichinosis, bird flu, mad cow, etc. (In case anyone's wondering, this isn't an anti-meat thing: I am a happy omnivore who loves a good burger.)
Solid food particles in the dishwater should be treated as if they are compost. That is, if you use it for irrigation, do so carefully and do not allow buildup of this particulate matter on the surface of the ground.
Dishwashers often have soft-food disposers/grinders built in, so the discharge water will contain food particles that are finely ground. This is OK because again, consider it compost, and it will break down faster than if the particles were not ground first.
And now, on to the shower:
Shower water should always be treated like blackwater. It contains a high level of "biologicals" that are potential disease vectors. For example many people blow their noses in the shower, because the humidity in the shower causes their sinuses to loosen up. So now we have nasal mucus in the "graywater," along with all the germs the mucus has kept out of your respiratory tract.
Most people wash carefully enough that they also wash their genital areas and their bottoms. Okay, now when you wash your bottom, a certain amount of fecal matter that was not removed by wiping with toilet paper, goes into the water. Yes, even if you're fasidious about wiping your bottom until the toilet paper appears perfectly clean: it cannot remove 100% of the fecal bacteria from the skin. DO NOT USE toilet paper that is treated with "antibacterials," it will only promote the growth of RESISTANT STRAINS and that is a VERY SERIOUS PUBLIC HEALTH RISK.
Also most people wash carefully enough that they also wash their feet. Now you have athletes' foot fungus getting into the mix, fresh from between your toes.
Nasal mucus, fecal matter, and foot fungi, are all potential disease vectors; therefore shower water must be considered blackwater, similar to toilet water. You can use it for flushing your toilet, but do not store it for more than 24 hours, and always add bleach.
By the way, when you take a bath in order to wash yourself, you're soaking in all those germs. Something to think about.
Saving graywater from the shower is a tricky affair. You can stop up the tub drain and let it accumulate, and by the time you're done showering, your feet have been standing in three or four inches of icky-soup. The way to deal with this is to finish your shower by sitting on the edge of the tub and washing your lower legs and feet with clean water.
You can stop up the drain and put a pump in the shower with you, so it removes the water to a storage tank as quickly as it accumulates.
However if this pump is powered from the AC mains, or from an AC-DC converter, you can get electrocuted and DIE if everything isn't designed and implemented exactly right. Don't even bother trying to do this one.
You can use a DC-powered pump that is powered directly from storage batteries that are set aside specifically for this purpose. However in this case the batteries should be sealed types, and should be mounted outside the bathroom such that they are not exposed to the humid air from showering.
You can mount a manual diaphram-type bilge pump on the wall inside the shower/bath area, and pump out the graywater by hand either periodically during a shower, or at the very end (and then wash your feet to get the icky-residue off). This method is safe but it requires manual effort AND the mounting of the pump needs to be done carefully so it is anchored into something solid and doesn't pull the tiles etc. off your shower/tub wall whiles you are using it.
Or you can risk getting busted by the building inspector, and have the output from the shower/tub go into a tank under your house. This is a complex plumbing issue that is outside the scope of my research and expertise.
Shower water can be used for toilet flushes. According to the literature, it's not safe to use for irrigation of edible or ornimental crops (including lawns where children play), however it can be discharged into an engineered wetland situation.
My thinking on this is, shower water could be used on lawns that are not subject to pedestrian traffic, or that can be protected from pedestrian traffic until a good day's worth of strong sunlight (UV) has had the chance to sterilize whatever nasties might be in the water. Again, do not spray or allow it to splash or otherwise turn into aerosols or droplets in the air, because doing so is the equivalent of making a great big sneeze full of germs into the air.
The more you think about water and water recycling, the less you take clean drinking water for granted. This is a good thing.
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 12599 Location: zombie horde wonderland
Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 7:51 am Post subject:
I think much of that advice is overly cautious. In a small household without members with contagious diseases, such concern is not necessary. (this is in my opinion and my own personal experience)
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3429 Location: California, USA
Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2005 10:13 pm Post subject:
Ludi, specifically which advice did you think was overly-cautious?
As a generalization, I agree that I tend toward caution, but people are free to experiment beyond the "known safe" zone and see what happens.
For example, an expert on graywater advises against storing it for more than 24 hours under any conditions, and advises against indoor reuse applications. I am going to experiment with re-use of stored laundry rinse-water as wash-water for the next day's laundry. My original plan was to store this water for a week. At present I'm planning to store it for a maximum of four days by doing laundry twice a week. And I'll be keeping samples to see how they fare when stored under various conditions (closed, open, with and without bleach) for a week.
Though, certain combinations are clearly a bad idea. For example, using used shower water as input to the laundry wash cycle (eww!).
Joined: Sep 13, 2006 Posts: 284 Location: Vancouver Island
Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 11:18 am Post subject: water, purification tablets and storage
So I was doing some reading the other day, and it came up that the local lakes I live nearby could have all sorts of parasitic nasties swimming in them and that water taken should be treated.
When I was a kid I drank from rivers and lakes and didn't suffer, but then that was quite a few years ago.
So, can anyone recommend a place I can buy water purification tablets?
Also, as we discovered last winter (and still haven't taken the time to address it) no power means no water...so...I'm thinking about buying 10 of those 4 gallons water jugs they sell in the stores in plastic jugs.
Since it's presumedly clean water, it won't spoil or anything right (other than maybe tasting a bit like plastic)?
Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 11:25 am Post subject: Re: water, purification tablets and storage
A basic camping filter or one of the "big berky" type filters would take care of most of your water purification issues. I keep a couple gallons of original non scented standard bleach around. Do a little research for the disinfectant ratios. I don't have them handy but you will find that basic bleach is the cheapest option and a 1 gallon jug will treat 1000's of gallons of water. Make up a table with common ratios and tuck it and a eye-dropper with the bleach somewhere cold and dark.
-G _________________ All right, you primitive screw-heads, listen up!
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. I have only been saving it from my kitchen sink faucet, which amounts to about a gallon a day or so. That gallon is used anytime I need cold water - making coffee, tea, watering plants, animals, etc. I have thought about saving the water from the bathtub as well, and your post gives me inspiration. I knew it was more water going down the drain than from the kitchen sink, but I didn't realize it was 
