[Strawbale] rainwater catchment for toilets?

[Erica Konrad]

did you mean your message to seem as condescending as it read by putting
green in quotations. this is why i dislike e-mail as you can never really 
read the tone in a
message.

we're very proud of our efforts to make a green home and showcase it in a 
high profile urban setting. our two other strawbale/green homes were outside 
city limits and for us, at this point in our life, it is important to be in 
the city (of 12,000) to profile alternative living for the average person, 
not just ones with acreages.  is our home perfect, no, but i doubt most 
people are. we are doing the best we can to limit our impact on the 
environment.

 the city has also refused composting toilets.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Neeley" <dbneeley at gmail.com>
To: "Erica Konrad" <strawbale at netidea.com>
Cc: <STRAWBALE at listserv.repp.org>; "SB Yahoos" <sb-r-us at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2007 12:24 PM
Subject: Re: [Strawbale] rainwater catchment for toilets?


> 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
>
>
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