How do you disinfect Grey Water?

Veleda216 · Post by **Veleda216** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:54 pm

The Survivor's Guide discusses disinfecting one's grey water but not how you do.. can anyone provide some guidance on that?

phil · Post by **phil** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:45 pm

Hi, Veleda,

We had the same question so we asked at BMOrg. Here's the answer from Karina, paraphrased by me.

Filter the water into a container to remove solid matter.
Add 1/4 cup bleach to 5 gallons of filtered grey water.
Let stand at least 10 minutes.
Disperse it back to the playa.

No mention is made of disposing of the solid matter, so my intention is to dry it out and put it in with the rest of our garbage for disposal at the Reno Transfer Station.

MissCaRoL · Post by **MissCaRoL** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 12:55 pm

This is a really old thread - but is the info still current? And do you have to use chlorine bleach or can you use the more bio friendly chlorine free bleach (eg seventh generation chlorine free bleach which uses hydrogen peroxide as a base)?

Isotopia · Post by **Isotopia** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 1:08 pm

No hippie bleach.

Use the real thing.

1/4 cup per gallon of grey water will sure as hell kill anything in it.

capjbadger · Post by **capjbadger** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 1:21 pm

It's only bio unfriendly if you're trying to drink the bleach.

Letting it stand in the open lets the bleach evap off (better off letting it stand overnight if you can). And get only pure bleach, not that froo-froo sented stuff with all the extra crap in it.

-Badger

swampdog · Post by **swampdog** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 1:23 pm

And did I hear you ask, "but what about the very first step, before we bleach the water? How do we get as much particulate out as possible?"

Filtering: Get 2 or 3 white 5 gallon buckets like they use at restaurants. In a pinch, you can buy them at the big box home improvement stores for a few bucks.

Get a screen-door screen from big box store ~$7 I think buys you way more than you need.
Get a pond pump filter - I think this was a bit more $$ but not much. Mine was about 12" square IIRC.
Get a bungee cord or something that will fit around the top of one of the buckets.
Cut the bottom out of one of the buckets. This is your filter. Put a layer screen-door screen over the top and push it down a little so it's concave. Put in the pond pump filter. Another layer of screen on top, all concave. Strap the whole thing down with bungee or whatever.

Put the filter into another bucket.

Pour your crapwater through the filter and it should at least take out the worst of stuff. If you want to, use another bucket and pour it through the filter until it's clean enough for you. You can also use alum which is supposed to glom up all the particles - I tried it once but didn't generate enough dirty water to really put it to the test. Then BLEACH BLEACH BLEACH and evap or carry out.

Fire_Moose · Post by **Fire_Moose** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 1:39 pm

or tie a shirt across the top of a bucket and pour it thru,......

dragonpilot · Post by **dragonpilot** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 1:43 pm

Dudes and dudettes!

There's gray water and then there's gray water. The gray water laying around in an evaporation pond isn't too bad to deal with. However, the gray water in an RV holding tank is almost as nasty to deal with as the black water...trust me! Consider the mixture: dish water, veggie matter, grease, bath soap, milk, juice, coffee, saliva, toothpaste, beer, soda to name a few ingredients.

Anyone contemplating handling RV gray water needs to know this. Wear adequate protection...rubber gloves, goggles, and a surgical mask. You w/b gagging! Draining a gray water tank also risks spillage onto the playa for which you can be fined, so make sure you have some kind of containment system set up. Also, the gray water coming out of an RV dump pipe comes outta the pipe like a fire hose when the valve is opened. One needs an adapter cap (at your fave RV supply store) to snap on the end of the dump pipe with a short piece of scrap garden hose attached.

It can be done, but in no way do you want to be sprinkling this stuff on the playa EVEN after disinfecting.

kman · Post by **kman** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 1:50 pm

When people say "bleach" do they mean regular old Clorox, or is there some specific "pure" bleach that you're supposed to use?

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 2:06 pm

Clorox is a brand name of the "pure" or at least "real" bleach. Okay, it's nasty crap, as in poisonous, as in "kill the little beasties" as in "disenfect."

Wow.

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 2:13 pm

Isn't that the same as dumping out a chlorinated hot tub onto the playa? Might as well jump into the puddle then....?

kman · Post by **kman** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 2:38 pm

theCryptofishist wrote:Clorox is a brand name of the "pure" or at least "real" bleach. Okay, it's nasty crap, as in poisonous, as in "kill the little beasties" as in "disenfect."

Wow.

So, we want this:

And NOT the "Ultra" Bleach, or any of the scented crap.

swampdog · Post by **swampdog** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 2:50 pm

Dougly said:

Isn't that the same as dumping out a chlorinated hot tub onto the playa?

Wouldn't the bleach evaporate pretty quickly? Seems like pretty volatile stuff.

capjbadger · Post by **capjbadger** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 2:59 pm

swampdog wrote:Dougly said:
Isn't that the same as dumping out a chlorinated hot tub onto the playa?
Wouldn't the bleach evaporate pretty quickly? Seems like pretty volatile stuff.

Quick-ish... Let it set for a few hours or overnight.

-Badger

mthyer · Post by **mthyer** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 3:29 pm

Veleda216,

The EPA, the CDC and the Red Cross publish guidelines for "emergency" disinfection of water. Goal is always the same, take what you have and make it potable.

http://www.epa.gov/safewater/faq/pdfs/f ... r-2006.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinkin ... ction.html
http://www.amoa.com/disaster/home_readi ... ater.shtml

I don't think I have enough time to really work on it, but solar distillation would be my personal favorite. Pretty easy to accomplish as long as the sun is out and it greatly simplifies the physical chunk separation parts of the process (Red Cross suggests this the other two do not). Grey water is just like any other water, youâ€™ll want to separate the solids or let the settle, then ensure that youâ€™ve killed or removed anything you canâ€™t see.

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 3:32 pm

The way we did it the year we filtered and misted! gray water was ...

gray water is screened into a first barrel where a flocculant is added and allowed to stand, i believe it was two hours. This causes solids to settle out. The water was then filtered into a second stage where it was shocked with chlorine bleach and allowed to stand an hour and tested for microbes. If it tested high, we shock it again. No batch required more than two shocks of chlorine. Water then filtered into final barrel where it was misted/applied to playa, etc. One final check was made for microbes. The water would have passed standards as not being harmful to drink but I don't think anyone would want to.

We finally ran out of filter cartridges on Saturday of the event. It was a pain in the ass and we don't do that anymore. We just rent a gray water tank from United and let them take it away.

phil · Post by **phil** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 4:07 pm

I can't find this year's closure notice, but last year's is here:
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/E9-18721.htm

Gray water is defined in the closure notice:

J. Waste Water Discharge

The dumping or discharge to the ground of gray water is prohibited.
Gray water is water used for cooking, washing, dishwashing, or bathing
and which contains soap, detergent, food scraps, or food residue.