Plumbing

You must separate the good water from the bad during “rough plumbing”

or you can never reuse your water.

THE CAPTURE

Almost all the good water comes from showers, tubs, and clothes washers. Bathroom sinks and reverse osmosis discharge are legal sources. Never use kitchen, toilet, and salt water brine from an ion-exchange water softener.

While you may have many showers and tubs throughout your home, only those producing water regularly are cost effective to capture. If your home is in a desert relying on a well, plumbing every legal source may be cost effective for you.

THE DRAWING

On your plumbing plan, specify the drains you want separated into a secondary line that is taken to where you want ReWater’s tank to sit. It must be vented to the roof, and overflowing through a swing-check valve to the sewer. Show the filter system nearby, sending filtered water to irrigation, and discharging its waste to the sewer.

Almost all tanks sit below grade and most filter systems sit above grade hidden in the landscape, though hiding filters in a vault is an option.

Specify a 1.5” – 2” potable water line to that filter for backwashing that filter vessel and for supplemental irrigation with a reduced pressure principle device (RP device) protecting that line.

LA’s Unique Plumbing Requirement

From 1995-2009 LADBS refused to follow state law and issue greywater irrigation permits. When they finally started issuing permits, they required any supplemental city water to be injected through an “air gap” into a second tank where a second pump re-pressurizes the water for use in the system, almost doubling the cost of our extremely affordable filter system (but still half the cost of a NSF-350 “certified” system.)

LA’s stated reason for requiring an air gap was to protect the public water supply, but the Reduced Pressure Principle Device (RP) supplied with ReWater’s filter system is preferred everywhere else in California because air-gaps are often rendered worthless by a homeowner simply inserting a small section of PVC pipe over the air-gap to stop its messy “splash”.

Fast forward I6 years to now, and LADBS’ permit process now requires an RP and an air-gap because LADBS and public health officials now realize air-gaps are being made worthless in the field. So why not just a RP? It’s LA!

We’ve documented that the added expense of LADBS’ air-gap caused the vast majority of LA’s green homeowners who aren’t affluent to quietly opt for a bootleg system that might not have either a RP or an air-gap.

Avoid Plumbing Change Orders

If you do not show and specify all the above on your original plumbing bid request, your plumber will later charge you for an expensive “change order”.

The two pictures below show a plumbed ReWater filter system (regardless of its non-LA or LA-compliant city water connection) in a vault with its A) irrigation and B) backwash modes explained via colored flow arrows. Black ABS pipes are unpressurized and white PVC pipes are only pressurized while in use.

Displacing a filter more than 10′ from the surge tank requires extending all that PVC and ABS plumbing and 120v/ 230v/24v wiring to the controller from the tank/pump/float switch, and 24v wires from the filter to the controller.