What ReWater does is completely different than anyone else - we design, manufacture, sell, and support LEGAL greywater irrigation systems that require a permit.  If you’re looking for a quick inexpensive solution to a temporary drought that is allowed by the new code, our systems are probably over-built for your purposes.  However, our rugged, permit-ready systems are a permanent solution to long-term water shortages and rapidly rising water rates, which are very cost effective over the long run.  Unlike what could be thrown together under the new California code for single-fixture systems (ONLY), our systems will provide a lot of water and will last over the long run.  They are extremely environmentally friendly too.

To retrofit a home (or other residence), first off, your home must be on a raised foundation, and all the regularly-used showers, tubs, and clothes washer must be on the ground floor, in order to even access your greywater.  Only then is it possible to access those drain pipes.

On a single story home, if there’s only a minimum crawl space under the floor, it takes a lot longer to do that plumbing than if the plumber can walk around under there.  The longer it takes to do the plumbing, the more the job costs in labor. Retrofitting is different at every residence. 

  We’ve seen a large 6-bathroom two story home on a hill that had all its greywater drains already plumbed together by coincidence and the plumber only had to walk under the raised house and splice our tank to the greywater pipe and assemble the filter, costing $500 dollars for labor.  And we’ve seen a $7,000 labor bill for a very large family with a huge landscape in the desert where the owners felt it was a good investment during their major home remodel.  Those are extreme examples.

  In any type of building, the greywater drains have to be isolated from the sewage (toilet and kitchen) pipe drains, combined into one pipe, and that pipe brought outside the foundation (usually) to where our surge tank would sit.  That tank would then be plumbed to overflow back to the main sewer by gravity, as a failsafe design (which is not required for the single-fixture system allowed under the new state code.) If your home has a sewage injector basin to lift the sewage to the sewer system, then the greywater tank can overflow into that injector basin instead.

  If your home is on a concrete slab floor, the plumbing needed for the system probably can’t even be retrofitted because the drain pipes are buried under the slab and few people are willing to pay thousands of dollars to cut into their slab, on top of the cost of the system and its plumbing, to save water.  Capturing the clothes washer drain water is usually easy because that drain pipe can be accessed above the slab, but then you only have a portion of the greywater.

  If one or more of the regularly used greywater drains is upstairs and you’re not planning on remodeling that particular part of your plumbing, it is almost never cost effective to try to separate that water from the sewer line, where the pipes are already connected inside the space between the ceiling and the upstairs flooring before they go down inside the wall.  The rare exception is when that drain is over an unimproved garage; if you can see the actual 2” greywater pipe, you can probably access it there, and then bring it down alone.

  As for costs and benefits, it all depends on how much water you will capture and reuse.  If you will not be able to collect a lot of the regularly-used showers or the laundry, the total project may not seem cost effective for you considering the cost of the system and the labor to install it.  Remember, with retrofitting, you’re really only concerned with plumbing the regularly used showers, tubs, and laundry.  Regularly used bathroom sinks produce very little water.  Guests showers, tubs, and bathroom sinks rarely produce any water.  Unless you have an abnormal number of long-term visitors, don’t bother plumbing in the guest bathroom greywater pipes.

  If you’re already planning on retrofitting your plumbing, as you might during a home remodel, then retrofitting for one of our systems may seem very cost effective to you.  Everyone has a different comfort level for their return on investment.  You can find our cost/benefit analyses on the Homepage of ReWater’s website titled “Water/Money”, which is an Excel spread sheet format based on capturing all the greywater from a home.  Just add your particular variables in the proper cells on that spread sheet, such as your water rate, the number of people living in your home, etc., press “enter”, and see what your cost/benefit analyses is.

  If you want our automatically self-cleaning filter system, you will need to tap into at least a 1” fresh water supply line and install the Reduced Pressure Principle device on it before connecting that line to the rest of our filter system.  If you select our simple bag filter system and want to supplement your irrigation system with fresh water when you’re away on vacation, you could use an air-gap for the separation required by law and inject water directly into our surge tank.  The ReWater controller will know when there’s not enough greywater to fulfill the irrigation programs and, after midnight, will supplement any balance of the irrigation program(s) with fresh water, whether via the water connection on the main irrigation pipe in the automatic filter system or by injecting water into the tank in the filter bag system.  If more greywater were to be produced during this supplemental irrigation cycle, the controller will immediately stop using freshwater and revert to greywater.  If it still doesn’t finish the program(s), it will revert to potable water again.  And on and on until the program(s) are finished.

  Because a legal greywater irrigation system must have underground drip irrigation in every state but Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, virtually no portion of any other irrigation system can be retrofitted for a greywater irrigation system.  This is because sprinkler pipes use high-pressure water, which are much smaller than what is usually needed for the low-pressure underground drip irrigation required by California law (Chapter 16 or 16A, California Plumbing Code).  Which means, if you have an existing sprinkler or surface drip system, most or all of it would just be abandoned in a retrofit situation. 

  In an existing garden with big trees and their big roots, or lots of hardscape (driveways, concrete or other types of sidewalks, patios, built-in barbeques, pool, etc.), there is a lot of manual work required to install a legal underground drip irrigation system.  If you were already planning on remodeling your landscape and needed new irrigation anyway, the labor cost would not be much more than you could expect to incur from installing any new drip irrigation system.  If you have a completely un-irrigated area that you want to irrigate with a new greywater drip system, there isn’t much cost difference between a greywater irrigation system and a conventional drip irrigation system.

  About 99% of our clients are building a brand new home from scratch because greywater irrigation always makes financial sense in a new residential project that will have a large landscape.  You don’t have to un-do anything, the landscape is a blank slate, and you’re already going to buying an irrigation system.  One advantage to the ReWater system is you can get a permit for it, which adds resale value to your home, compared to a bootleg greywater system, which does the opposite.  Any licensed plumber can install the filter portion of our system and any licensed landscaper who has installed drip irrigation can easily install the irrigation portion of our system.  We’ve trained hundreds of them over the years, with our owner’s manuals, DVDs, specifications sheets, email support, and over the phone.

  Though ReWater has installed hundreds of systems in the past, we no longer do installations.  We have a database of plumbers and landscapers who have installed our systems and who may be available to help our clients in their area.  We only refer our clients to them because we don’t want to burn them out chasing dead ends.  Many people want help reusing their water these days.

  Besides lowering your water bills, and seriously increasing your irrigation efficiency, if your wastewater rates are dependent on your fresh water usage, as most are in the West, then reusing your greywater will give you lower sewer bills all year round too.  If you’re on a private sewer disposal system, this aspect of a system will not directly affect you. However, if your leach fields are slowing down or failing, a greywater irrigation system will take about half the water out of them, giving them time to regenerate, and thus save your leach fields far more cost effectively than rebuilding your sewer system.

  If you want ReWater to take a look at your home to tell you what it would probably require and cost to install our system there, our consulting fee is $150 per hour with a minimum of 2 hours plus travel time. Up to $600 of such fees can be deducted from the cost of a fully automatic ReWater system.  We regularly travel around southern California on this bases and can usually schedule a site visit within two weeks under those terms, usually while visiting other clients near you that day. There isn’t any type of landscape we have not seen and helped to irrigate with greywater.  If you’re looking for a complete system that will last a very long time, it is money well spent.

  Some water districts may be willing to provide financial assistance for installation of a greywater irrigation system.  ReWater’s systems are legal systems, and a permitted system is a permanent water conservation device that satisfies all of the California Urban Water Conservation Council’s requirements for a Potential Best Management Practice, and water districts are contractually bound to at least investigate such devices.  Check with their conservation officer to see what they say.

ReWater was founded in Palo Alto in 1990 and has numerous systems installed all over the SF Bay Area ever since then.  We have been in San Diego since 1996, and have numerous systems installed all over San Diego County and Southern California.  We have systems scattered all over the rest of the West as well.  Much of our recent projects are in the coastal Los Angeles area where green building is the norm.

For information about rain harvesting, or backing up a greywater system with stored rain, please read this page.  Yes, it can be done, but it’s expensive water compared to greywater irrigation. 

Please feel free to contact us for more information.  We’ve been designing, building, installing, and helping others with the installation of legal greywater irrigation systems since 1990.