Siphon Your Bathwater

So it's back to greywater today with a tip on siphoning your bathtub water. The concept goes like this. When you take a shower keep the plug in. Yes it's a bit gross at first, but you get used to it. When you are finished, submerge a length of tubing in the bath water. Hold your finger over one end and pass it to an accomplice waiting outside in the garden. As long as your bathtub is higher than the part of your garden being watered, you will have created a siphon and the water will drain out of the tub.

Now if this sounds like a pain in the ass, or if you have no accomplices there is (or perhaps was as the website does not seem to be working) a siphon device on the market for just this purpose. Called the "Ban Beater" this siphon pump was being sold in the UK as a result of the draught that struck south-east England this year. However, this greywater siphoning tool is on the expensive side and it's hard to justify spending a lot of money just to save a few cents worth of water, especially when the siphon devices themselves are produced with plastic and other petrochemical products. Devices like these suddenly become popular when governments institute water rationing as did the British earlier this year. There are less expensive siphoning devices available in hardware and auto parts stores made for siphoning gas, but SuviveLA has not tested them yet.

If siphoning is too much effort for ya, it's time to move on to more permanent solutions involving rerouting your plumbing that we'll get into in subsequent posts.