g'day,

don't know if you are able to give any idea where in qld you are?

but just wondering why the need for such a complex sounding grey water system, when the plants will grow quiet happily with fresh grey water straight from the home.

also for me i'd be a bit worried if we were generating 400 litres of water for use from the house on a daily basis especialy if you have to provide your own water. that amount equates to around 3,000 gallons a month, and that doesn't take into account what you need for drinking and for watering vege patches etc.,.

also the way i see it if you have food trees growing in this area you mention the sun won't need to get to the ground to dry anything the trees will do that well enough. and you are in a dry area as you said, so can't see any benefit in losing moisture to evaporation, without trying to minimise that loss.

we use a drop toilet and run a dry system collecting night water and using that to water vege plants, plus we make our own washing/general purpose detergent and use an earth friendly dish detergent, our plants look happy enough and they produce. we mulch very heavily so much so that our food trees produce on rain water alone.

len

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Thanks for your very sound permaculture info. We are in south-east qld, about 60 kms inland from Rainbow Beach. Complicated wastewater system - sigh, it is a council by-law. Do you have any suggetions for planting? I will have at least two pipes and be able to switch between the two to avoid over watering in wet times.

mmm sounds like you are close to or near glenwood, anderleigh or gunalda maybe even bauple?

if so i am in the same shire as i am around 60+ k from rainbow beach to the east of us. and my grey water system isn't that complex just a grease trap and a tank to allow for the water to drain away, all shire council approved. we submitted a plan suported by soil test engineer reports and a plan of what we preffered but the shire people being the little dictators they so want to be added a bit but basically we got what we wanted.

our water goes to vege patches and food trees mostly the citrus and stone fruit. maybe you could e/mail me you are welconme to visit and see what we have and how it works.

i would suggest anything you want there vege gardens citrus, qld nuts bananas you name it. we get enough rain here to keep our food trees watered with just heavy mulching, but then we did look for property that had a good clean aquafa that helps heaps.

still think you want to be using heaps less water than what you intimate by the amount of waste water you should generate.

len