Conservation – why the cost of WATER will soon exceed the cost of oil.

Many people were caught off guard by the sudden increase in gas prices last year. This is the American way – instant gratification & out of sight, out of mind. Yeah, keep that reality the next time you can’t afford to take a shower when you want to! The transport costs of water & scarcity of fresh water worldwide equate with the premise that water will soon exceed the cost of oil. Enter the age-old hippie ideal of Greywater. It has come a long way since California communes ran their dish water into the garden. Now municipalities have various regulations for water use, reuse and detainment. And Greywater systems have adapted to apply not only include new technology but now they even meet local codes for new construction and retrofit applications. There are two types of greywater systems. Closed loop systems and open loop systems. In Colorado, the most easily adapted system for both new construction and remodels is the closed loop type. This means that there is no open piping, the entire system existing within the plumbing structure of the home. These systems take sink, bath, dishwasher or washing machine water & divert it into a holding tank, where it is treated with an organic compound and then re-routed into all the toilets in the home. Most homeowners use equal amount of greywater as they do “black-water” so the use in the home is always adequate to flush the toilets. With this application, homeowners will never using drinking water to flush again. In the current culture of overuse, it is hard to comprehend the scarcity of water. Even during times of drought and outdoor water restrictions, most people look no further than the browning front lawn. While it may take years before the cost of water raises enough to make Greywater reclamation common practice, it is good to know that with this easy installation, most homes can be retrofitted to decrease their water use by about half. With current water pricing, the payback on these $3000 systems is about 15 years. See the Water Legacy LLC website for more on the closed loop systems being used in Colorado.