Letting the grey water out a bit to extend it's use?

Try feeding the grey water to your dog and see how high your Vet bill is. Grey water sits in the tank and grows bacteria. Do the right thing and dump properly.

Trackrig wrote:
So what does a tent camper do with his dish water?

Bill

Dish pan water does not sit,stagnate and grow bacteria.
A 2 gallon dishpan vs. a 40 gallon fresh tank is a big difference

Some good advice I got on here was to wash your dishes in a tub and dump it down the toilet, really extends the time before your grey fills up.

while the filtering and disinfecting requirements differ for reusing true gray water from state to state just about every state including GA has strict rules for reuse of gray water and protecting against the dumping of the same while encouraging safe reuse at the same time…

I would love to know which professional or college teams use un filtered or un treated gray water for playing field irrigation, especially a top irrigated system…

Since bacteria can grow very rapidly in held gray water many consider even gray water as septic if held for 24 hours... that would require sanitizing the tank and piping before it would be gray water again… most RV gray lines use at least some of the same lines for black water and allowing the gray to enter and flush the black tank allows cross contamination, along with the residual water held for weeks between trips… I would also guessing many RVs collect kitchen waste water in the same tank as the shower meaning that RV has no true gray water containment system to begin with…


“So what does a tent camper do with his dish water?”

The most common refrain to justify the lack of commonsense when disposing of waste while not in a tent…
There are many articles describing the use of and disposal of small quantities of unheld (pan) dish water… I really don’t recall ever seeing it recommended to dump it on the top of the campsite ground…

Snip,
Primitive Camping

When primitive camping, or backcountry camping, follow backcountry ethics regarding water disposal. This holds true even if you're camping on private land that isn't governed by specific water disposal laws. As the U.S. Forest Service says, straining and packing out food particles from dishwater ensures the waste won't enter the ecosystem. Likewise, campers must dispose of dishwater at least 200 feet from bodies of water, including both still and moving water. When bathing, campers must use biodegradable soap and stay at least 200 feet from water bodies (see References 4). They must follow the same rule when brushing their teeth.

I guess it would be determined by if it were allowed or not and if so, then the choice is up to you.
On the road? That's disgusting for the people behind.

Personally for us it's not a issue, we go up with 50 gals of fresh water and bring it home in two waste tanks totaling 54 gal. The only managing we do is to wash the dishes in tubs that fit in the sink so that they can be dumped in the toilet.
I know that some of the areas we can boondock in here allow and even encourage it but rules change and I prefer to just not worry about it. I'll need the water to rinse out the slinky in any event.

I have two 42 gallon grey tanks. One is for the kitchen sink.
The other for the main bathroom.

I have noticed that the kitchen grey water smells bad. Not so for the bathroom. It actually has a slight pleasant smell.

The kitchen one fills slowly and has a much higher concentration of oils etc to the water. The bathroom is mostly shower water with a little soap in it. It fills much faster.

Where it is permissible I will let some of the bath water out if I need to.
Now my camping is ALWAYS boondocking at mostly remote locations, but even if I had a neighbor right next to me, he wouldn't know.

TRACKRIG - I am POPUP tent camper. I carry two 7-gallon AQUA-tainers which I have cut a hole in the cap to lalow me to push my sink drain hose into the container. When the sink stops draining I know the container is full so I switch it to the empty contain sitting next to it.

Then I tote the full container to the local bath house and pour it down their pot.



You can see my catch containers in this photo...


I use one of those folding wheeled totes like this to haul off the 7-gallon containers and bring back fresh water to keep my fresh water tank re-filled.

Its a privilege to me to be able to follow the camp ground rules.

I have also noticed the GREY WATER drain areas showing up in the camp roads. That is pretty neat. Cloudland Canyon at Trenton GA has those usually two per camping block.



Roy Ken

I was in a CG in GA that allowed the gray water to drain directly on the ground. I can't say that I noticed any gray water residue anywhere around the vacant campsites, nor was there any smell or indication that it was causing a problem, nor could I tell as I was packing up that my gray water had pooled or smelled. I personally don't think gray water hurts anything, but I don't dump it anywhere it's not allowed.

Can you imagine if everyone dumped their gray water. There is a reason that gray water tanks have been required since the mid 1970s.

So what does a tent camper do with his dish water?

Bill