We hear it all the time. Save water! Conserve! Low flush toilets. Low-flow shower heads. Water barrels for the garden. Bucket in the shower. If it is yellow, let it mellow…..what, you don’t do that?
I admit, I don’t shower over a bucket to collect water. I have over three feet of thick hair and hate low-flow shower heads since they triple my shower time just trying to rinse my hair. My experience has been awful with low-flow toilets.(Don’t ask!) I would rather we “let it mellow” all day with a single power flush than trying to get the waste contents of a cloth diaper down with multiple “low water” flushes.
I am on board with water barrels though. However, check with your municipality before collecting water. Did you know some towns and counties made it illegal to collect rain water outdoors or even collect grey-water in your own home? You would be surprised by the neighbors relishing the chance to rat you out.
Luckily, we have no such laws in my town so I collect plenty of water. One way we collect a ton of water is via the dehumidifiers in our basement. I suppose it is debatable just how grey the water we collect is, considering it is pretty clean. However, due to filtering and hard to clean parts, it is not recommended as drinking water. We have to run our dehumidifiers most months of the year to keep the house from rotting since our home was built in the 1800s. If we skip just two days, mold begins sprouting up in corners.
Since we collect gallons of water each day during summer months, I take that collected distilled water for practical uses:
- Watering plants: we love our houseplants, but we also have chlorinated city water that the more sensitive plants react to poorly. The distilled dehumidifier water is perfect for these guys.
- Rinsing diapers: when emptying the water tanks, I will pour the water over the dirty cloth diapers sitting in the laundry tub. This cuts down on pre-rinses.
- Pouring it into the washing machine while it fills. When we add water to our machine, it adds less. Not all machines work this way though.
- Add the water to a bucket with Castile soap and wash my floors.
- To piggy back on that last one, I also use it in my steam mop for the wood floors.
There are plenty of other uses for your dehumidifier water. I just don’t recommend it for cooking since your filter isn’t meant for food grade distilling. In summer, we easily collect 10 gallons of water in this matter, since we have no air conditioning or venting in our home. It actually adds up to more water “conservation” than many of the traditional water reduction methods.
Do you collect water for re-purposing?