The Problem: Hosepipe bans.
The Solution: Collect and store household grey water for the garden sprinklers.
With the heatwave smelting Britain this summer, the issue of how to keep gardens watered is fresh in mind.
The annual hosepipe bans are once again in place, lawns are turning brown and plants are wilting in the heat.
It seems ludicrous to use gallons of treated water to keep garden plants and lawns in good health, and doing so continues to place pressure on the water network.
However, for every garden there is a house using showers and washing machines each day, all of which produce grey water – water that is not clean enough to drink, but also not so dirty it needs to go into the sewer for treatment.
Such grey water is often filled with useful minerals that plants and lawns love, so my proposal is to capture and store that greywater and feed it into the sprinkler systems to keep gardens healthy through the summer.
There are two key components to such an idea.
The first is to identify the outlets which only have grey water and no toilet sewage, such as the kitchen sink outlet. This is pretty simple to achieve.
The second is to develop a simple system to capture and store the water, which does not cost the earth or take up too much space. This is slightly more complex.
An underwater system could be built, but this would be expensive. Since grey water is produced every day, storage does not need to be that large, so plastic water tanks in the garden connected to grey water pipework with a small electric pump would work well, or expandable water ‘bags’ made from tough plastic which could be hooked onto fences or lie amid flower beds could also work.
These would fill up when needed, and when not required the water would simply be diverted to sewage as normal.
Such a system would be both cheap and easy to install, and provide a very clear benefit to households – their gardens would remain lush while others wilted in the summer.
Indeed, there is a fantastic brand building opportunity here – provide a small certificate/plaque to put on the front of households that purchase the system.
Those houses will stand out as being lush in contrast to neighbours’ brown grass, and the owners get to show they are not breaking the law, but rather looking after their lawns with their own grey water.
As soon as one or two households in a street buy the system, everyone else will follow as they don’t want to be the odd one out, looking cheap because they won’t install the system.
A chance to create lush gardens and gushing profits all at the same time.
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