Why Flush Good Water Down the Toilet?

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David Lupberger talks to Mike Vail, of Water Legacy, about their Grey Water Re-Use system. Vail shows how the system works as it takes used water from sink and shower drains, sterilizes it, and sends it back to be re-used in toilets.

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Video Transcript for "Why Flush Good Water Down the Toilet? "

David Lupberger on Using Gray Water for Toilets: Hi, I'm David Lupberger with ServiceMagic.com. I'm here with Mike Vail, from Water Legacy in Boulder, Colorado. He's going to show me a gray water reuse system for homes. I got to start with Mike, what is gray water?
Mike Vail/Water Legacy: Gray water is what is typically referred to as used water in a home or building that hasn't come into contact with any organic matter or sewage. Like your bathing water from your showers and tubs or your sink water from your bathrooms. That's primarily what is considered gray water.
Lupberger: And so you're saying, we can reuse that now?
Mike Vail/Water Legacy: Yes absolutely.
Lupberger: Alright tell me a little bit about re-using it, number one. And why are we starting to reuse gray water? So let's just start with the system itself, and how it works.
Mike Vail/Water Legacy: Well the system itself, the way it works; as you can see is about the size of a hot water heater. It's a totally packaged system. First and foremost, you have your normal drain lines, except that you've taken and separated the ones from our gray water sources such as our bathroom showers, and tubs. It comes down and enters the tank here, it goes through a filter, it ends up in storage in the tank here, and while sitting here in the tank a timer control valve re-circulate that water and disinfect it and keep in storage in this particular case to flush the toilet.
When a toilet is flushed in this home, these are the supply lines to the different toilets. The water is then supplied to the toilets for flushing. So theoretically this home and all homes that these are installed in, you never ever use fresh water to flush a toilet.
Lupberger: Why is that an issue?
Mike Vail/Water Legacy: It's an issue because you know globally, let alone in the states here, we're only a few years away from having a very serious water shortage issues. In at least 36 states in this country, we've already had them for a number of years in the southwest US. So we're looking for new innovative ways to start conserving water. One of the ways to do it is to quit using drinking water to flush our toilets.
Lupberger: For example the average home, how much water is used in an average home; over a year to flush toilets?
Mike Vail/Water Legacy: Depending on the size of the family anywhere on the low side from 12,000 gallons to upwards of 24,000 gallons a year is flushed down the toilet alone.
Lupberger: So you're saying by reusing this you could literally not use 12-24,000 gallons a year.
Mike Vail/Water Legacy: Yes, absolutely.
Lupberger: Alright can you show me a little bit more about how the system works.
Mike Vail/Water Legacy: Yes, okay so once again the water comes down the drain line from the gray water sources. It enters into the tank through here, going into the tank is a filter. It filters out all of the lint, hair, large particles and stuff and ends up here down here in storage under the water. Then we have disinfecting system and timer, this timer is set to turn the system on four times a day thirty minutes at a time. So we run it through the UV and then also in addition, to give a multi barrier disinfection event. This pump here is called a peristaltic pump that pumps in 35% grade hydrogen peroxide into the system to give added residual antibacterial effects to the water while it is in the toilets. So that nothing can re-grow once it has reached the toilets itself.
Lupberger: Mike is safe to say, that as water shortages become more prevalent, will we be seeing more of these in homes?
Mike Vail/Water Legacy: Oh, absolutely. Especially because the plumbing industry feels that they've made all of their fixtures work as efficiently as they can. If they start making them work on less water, they won't work. So the only way left to conserve water in this home is through re-use.
Lupberger: So really we've got low flow toilets, faucets, and now water re-use systems?
Mike Vail/Water Legacy: Now we have re-use systems that will eventually be the way we've added water conservation to the world.
Lupberger: Okay thank you.
Mike Vail/Water Legacy: Thank you.