What Is Greywater Recycling & How Greywater Recycling Systems Work?

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What Is Greywater Recycling & How Greywater Recycling Systems Work?

Greywater recycling involves the capture, storage, and treatment of water from showers, lav sinks, and laundry machines.

Common uses of treated graywater include flush fixture water, irrigation, cooling tower makeup, laundry water, and site and vehicle fleet wash.

Greywater recycling is often integrated into hotels and resorts, multi-residential apartments, student dormitories, military barracks, and correctional facilities due to the high number of showers, lav sinks, and laundry machines common to such projects.

Although it may also be considered for commercial offices, corporate campuses, biotech labs, and manufacturing facilities, greywater recycling is less practical and economical due to the lack of high-volume greywater producing fixtures.

Integrating greywater recycling into a project requires upfront costs: the treatment system itself, and the materials and labor to install the duplicate piping required to bring water from the shower, lav sink and laundry lines.

Though these costs may be significant, and ROI slow, many development firms, higher education institutions, Military, Municipal, State, and other Federal departments are often mandated to recycle greywater due to stringent local requirements enacted to mitigate water scarcity.

On the other hand, when water costs are high and the volume of water demand reduced is significant, greywater systems can pay for themselves much faster. Some projects even qualify for financial incentives.

Due to the contaminated nature of raw greywater, more thorough filtration and sanitation methods are required to ensure the water will be safe for non-potable uses. Wahaso’s systems first pre-filter the greywater before it flows to a collection tank where it is dosed with a deodorizing agent. Our certified Ultra Filtration greywater system filters water down to 0.02 microns. This is almost 100 times smaller than the size of a single bacteria. Supplementary sanitization is achieved through an Ultraviolet (UV) bulb system, with Chlorine only added if necessary. The treated water is then pumped to its end use so you can save water and reduce the building’s footprint.

If you would like to learn more about Wahaso’s greywater systems contact us here.