[Strawbale] rainwater catchment for toilets?

[David Neeley]

Mike/Erica...

Some areas with municipal systems will be somewhat irked at flushing
toilets with rainwater or graywater since they charge for wastewater
based upon your use of city water.

Personally, it seems a shame your "green" house doesn't have
composting toilets and avoids the addition of blackwater to the sewage
stream entirely. That would enable you to use the rainwater for other,
more useful needs.

By the way, a company called Bricor makes a shower head that gives a
very pleasing shower using only 1 gallon per minute (the B100 Max),
which would also save you a great deal of water. This is the shower
head that the U.S. military is purchasing for troops in Afghanistan
and Iraq: http://www.bricor.com/prod.htm

David

On 8/12/07, Erica Konrad <strawbale at netidea.com> wrote:
> Thanks all for the great advice - this listserve is so helpful.
>
> We will keep our rainwater separate from potable. We are going to have one
> sink which will drain directly into our cistern, dedicated to washing
> vegetables and rinsing dishes (washed with phosphate free detergent) to make
> sure we'll never run out of water for toilets and irrigation. This way we
> need no backflow preventors and no reason to connect our domestic water to
> our rainwater cistern. Hopefully this will satisfy the inspector on Monday.
> We'll keep you posted with our discussion with Nelson City Council on green
> home building.
> Mike
>
> Erica Konrad/Mike Bowick