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In Maryland, says Hanson, anyone who has a backup sewage system, such as a traditional septic system, can install this type of setup for about $5,000. The cost includes submitting plans for health department approval, purchasing dosing equipment and installing the trough or chamber. The NutriCycle systems can be used in both new construction and retrofit situations.

“If an existing house has a failing septic system, a homeowner can install our combination system (a composting toilet and graywater irrigation troughs),” Hanson says. “In this case, failing septic systems can usually be abandoned completely, and the homeowner can have a good, healthy graywater system that lasts almost forever.”

The Williamses say it “just makes good ecological sense” to use wastewater productively. The past two summers, their graywater has grown a bumper crop of sunflowers that draws birds of all shapes and sizes to their garden.

Greenhouse graywater

Graywater greenhouses, in which graywater is routed to soil beds inside an attached sunspace or other structure, are another graywater strategy especially suited to cold climates. Greenhouse plants’ irrigation needs are fairly regular and well-matched to the virtually constant supply of household graywater.

Faced with spending $12,000 to $15,000 on a mound septic system, Duluth, Minn., homeowners Cindy Hale and Jeff Hall decided to put their wastewater to work instead. In 1999, they obtained an experimental septic system permit from the county health department to install a graywater greenhouse and composting toilet on their rural property.

Designed by the Community Eco-Design Network of Minneapolis and architect Roald Gundersen, formerly a project architect of Biosphere 2 (a glass-enclosed ecological system in Oracle, Ariz.), the couple’s superinsulated solar greenhouse contains six planter beds watered by two rainwater cisterns and a graywater collection tank set in the floor.

Household graywater from the bathroom and kitchen sink drains into the holding tank. A pump delivers a measure of graywater to the beds at least once every 24 hours, helping prevent the buildup of fetid water. Drain tile distributes graywater to the 9-by-3-by-3-foot planting beds, which consist of a 36-inch layer of sandy loam over a layer of 12-inch-deep compacted sand. At some point, the soil may become too saline from the buildup of graywater salts and may need to be flushed or replaced, Hale says, but so far they’ve had no indication of such problems, even after five years of intense use.

“We have fresh greens, vegetables and flowers all winter,” she says. “You need to do research to select things that will do well in the cool, low-light environment [of a Minnesota winter], but there are lots of options.”

The grass is always greener

Most graywater systems are designed to disperse water to discrete areas in the landscape — a fruit-tree basin, a bed of wildflowers. But if you have more lawn than garden or orchard, you still can put your graywater to use and whittle down your water bills. Subsurface drip irrigation systems are at least 30 percent more efficient than watering lawns with sprinkler systems. The ReWater System out of Chula Vista, Calif., for example, routes graywater from drains to a small tank or “drum” equipped with a pump that sends the graywater to a sand-filled filter. The filter snags line-clogging debris and sends the water to irrigation lines buried 9 inches below the lawn’s surface. At this depth, the benefits of microbial activity are maximized while the risks of ponding and runoff are minimized. In colder climes, this depth also prevents lines from freezing in winter.

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