This is one of those inventions that I read about and end up scratching my head over wondering why nobody had thought of this earlier! The Grey Water Toilet System was invented by Alison Norcott, a student at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia who created a way for toilets to use the dirty water from your time in the shower to flush the bowl. The water is collected from the drain in the shower and stored in an in-wall tank that minimally treats the water using ultrasonic radiation. If you’re worried bacteria growing in a tank filled with dirty water, Alison has designed the system so that it flushes the tank completely of unused water every 24 hours.
Since most bathrooms that I’ve been in already have the toilet and shower in the same vicinity as each other, I don’t really see how this could cause any sort of major headache for somebody who wants to install this in their homes. I think this is a great idea coming from a place that takes water conservation very seriously. I’d love to see Alison’s system made into an actual product for homes in the near future.
how ’bout using toilet water for shower? anyone thought of that yet?!?! ;)
Really? Gross….
It’s talking about reusing the water we’ve already used to shower? Who wants to shower in used toilet water? I know I don’t…
Seriously… gros
Noooooo. You go to the bathroom in dirty shower water. You shower in clean water.
Dude, chill
he was just joking
that outlaws pissing in the shower…or you’d effectively be flushing your piss with piss… :)
I think it’s a great idea. Toilet water is only good for peeing and shitting in. Who says it HAS to be clean water?
Then again, for pet owners it could be disastrous. Poor fluffy could be poisoned by the chemicals in the shampoo if they drank the gray water. Something else to be said for natural selection.
It looks like it could be a dry system though, like an airplane. No water except for when it flushes.
Or you could be a responsible pet owner and put the toilet seat AND lid down and provide fresh clean drinking water elsewhere.
Wolfhowell, brings up a good point. It would be disastrous to have one of your little 2 year old kids going into the bathrooms and drinking the dirty toilet water or even your pets to say at the least. Yeah you have to be responsible enough to keep your bathroom door closed at all times, but in the U.S. it’s just too risky.
i wouldn’t say it’s any better if my 2 year old were to drink from the toilet bowl now… it’s basically diluted pee & poop water… and why is it more of an issue in the U.S.?
It’s more of an issue in the U.S. because they currently use very poorly designed toilets that have a much higher water level in the bowl. It is possible for a child to drink out of one unlike any other country on this planet. Obviously this would be negated if the bowl shown here was used rather than simply adapting American toilets to use grey water.
Interesting, but what if you have problems that cause you to go to the restroom, more often than the shower water can handle. Plus during some times of the year you don’t need to shower every day, where does the water come from then?
that was my thought
If you looked at the wall cut-away photo you would see that it is set it up so it uses grey water when available and fresh when it’s not.
Come on people. Think first. What possible use would a toilet be that didn’t have a reliable flushing system?
This new innovation….isn’t.
Greywater systems have been around for years, although this is a much prettier and more easily accessible design than most. It’s still a great thing, don’t get me wrong. But that girl is no innovative genius, just a clever design student.
I have been using this same system in Canada for cottages where they have to use a holding tank for waste. I must say that the design is definitely very nice but probably to expensive for cottage owners. My feed back from this type of design is that the toilet water now smells like shampoo and soap…lol! Downfalls include cleaning your toilet more often and when the water sits in the tank with hard water it flushes rusty colors.
Brilliant idea!!!
Some cuestions here:
Where is the water mirror?, how about if i take vacations for weeks… the toilet will be flushing every 24hrs?.. mm.. what happend with that green idea?
Good try, but i think that this baby need more information for this particular design. Actually if you want to do it in ceramics or vitrouschina, good luck!
A stupid idea because conserving water is a waste of effort. The planet is 70% covered in water. What are we conserving? Not a damm thing. This is absolutely pointless and a waste of time and money. The inventor/designer should hang herself for wasting the air I breathe by her own breathing.
Have fun showering in salt water meiliken! I’m not all that excited about that prospect. Conserve water where ever you can I say.