Look up earthships for an expansion on those ideas.

Just don't tell anyone. It might be illegal. In the US, we use drinking quality water for our toilets - how dumb is that?

Or save all the water and don't use the toilet at all, look into making use of humanure.

I do like your idea about using rainwater to wash clothing though, I'll have to add that to my bag of ideas for my next house.

Cheers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Humanure Handbook

another way use used water to flush the toilet ie.,. water from washing machine, use bucket in shower to capture water, or use bath water.

some local rules aren't steeped in common sense are they?

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

My Grandmother keeps a bucket(s) in the shower with her and uses the excess shower water to water her garden.

Interesting info. on len's garden page. My mom grew up on a farm without running water in the house so her natural instinct was to conserve water. She collected rain water to wash our hair. At the time I didn't understand why but now I know it was because it was clear of inpurities & left our hair nice & clean.

From what I could get out of the water folks in my area. If the system is totally it's own and not connected to the house it can be legal, but because everyone is looking to make money off water the city or county hasn't looked into do this yet till they find a way to make a buck off of your saving. There is a couple of homes in the city that use grey water systems to flush

We have been in a drought for severael years,but have reached "major" water restrictions this past year.I laugh,because the cities still allowed car washing and lawn watering till we were down to less then 90 days of water.Unbelievable!!!
Anyways.....we have been using grey water on more regular basis for over a year now.We can still only hand water and I haven't taken the rain barrell plunge yet,due to the cost.A co-worker did tell me about a guy that sells them cheaper then most,just have to get to him,a bit of a drive.I am sure we will continue the grey water flush long after the drought is over.It has become habit to shower w a 5 gallon bucket and various other containers...lol.
Water is life and everyone needs to stop taking it for granted.

get a composting toilet and save flushing at all

Bill

I think it should be required that all new construction have a recapture for greywater for use in toilets. Very simple technology and only a small additional cost to plumbing a house.

And anyone who retrofits a house for this should get a tax break.

I don't like the idea of using greywater to flush. I don't use the toilet that often and I would think the greywater would be pretty rank by the time I used it to flush. Unless the plan is to filter it first, and by that point the cost is going to go way up due to replacing filters and extra pumping , etc.

I would agree that filtering greywater in a reed bed or other reuse system should be encouraged as should humanure composting instead of the standard septic system.

Cheers,
Kyle

I don't like the grey water toilet idea either because I have two dogs with the bad habit of using our toilet for a water bowl.

But I think rigging our grey water to an outdoor faucet for watering the gardens or washing our hands would be awesome. I suppose it would even be "clean" enough to wash the car.