A friend saw my last post on gray water and had some interesting suggestions of her own that are worth sharing, as well as a plumbing issue they’ve been dealing with. In addition, she provided a link to one of the best (and short) summaries I’ve seen on gray water. Thanks, M2! Read on….

Liked your gray water post!  We’ve switched entirely to biodegradable soaps for dishes, laundry and bodies, so we dump dish water and everything on the garden.  Just this week we decided to shower with a tall trash can to catch as much extra splash water as we can – including the soapy stuff.  We used laundry water at our house in SF, but have had trouble with this house’s pipes in the garage.  After two small floods, a plumber put an airtight seal around the hose that runs water out of the washing machine, but I’m thinking of changing the angle of the hose (to prevent water from running backwards, which is what was happening; the plumber had some sensible explanation about the size of the drain pipes and gravity and air pressure and such, but I’ve forgotten the details) and running it outside to see if we can get away with it.

Found this link, which seems to have some good info:
http://www.umassgreeninfo.org/fact_sheets/plant_culture/gray_water_for_gardens.html