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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

can you water the garden with bath water?

9 replies

Blipbip · 27/04/2013 19:37

This is DH's latest money saving scheme, personally I hate the idea and am trying to fob him off with "the soap will kill my lovely flowers and poison our lovely kids" but he wants some evidence of this. As I would rather not kill the plants and poison the kids on soapy home grown veg, is there any good reason not to use the bath water for this?
TIA

OP posts:
Beamae · 27/04/2013 19:44

It's called greywater if you want to google it. I think you can use bath water as long as it's not too soapy, and not all the time. I don't think you can use it on veggies. And I think you can get a filtering system installed. I'm not 100% sure about any of this though. Have you thought about a water butt for rainwater?

gardeningmum · 27/04/2013 20:02

I'm sure it is OK - In the past when we have had droughts and hosepipe ban I have used the rinse water from the washing machine. I suspect the issue is more logistical - i.e. how you are going to get it from bath to garden

iheartdusty · 27/04/2013 21:25

there is a kit here but the hose looks very short. I wonder if it would be effective if you attached it to a longer hose?

iheartdusty · 27/04/2013 21:26

ah, it says you can add up to 20m of hose to it

Blipbip · 27/04/2013 22:02

I think its a syphon - so any old hose pipe would work you just open the bathroom window, pop the hose through and bobs your unkle. As long as you find a way to fix the one end in the bath and your bathroom is upstairs, I suspect.

The problem I have with this is that it is his bright idea but I'm the one who waters the plants actually I thought of it months ago but didn't suggest it to DH as I could see it was me who would have to do all the hard work

OP posts:
ScumbleGoosie · 28/04/2013 09:44

Yes you can use your bath water. Unless you use a medicated soap or shampoo.
You use a dilute spray of household soap to treat aphids and other bugs if you don't want to garden with hardcore chemicals, so your plants should be quite happy.
I'm a lazy sod and water my houseplants in my bathroom with it while I'm in the bath Grin

Blipbip · 28/04/2013 20:41

Thanks Scumble having investigated it today it doesn't look that hard to set it up so the water goes from the outpipe straight into a butt so I'm feeling a bit more positive about the idea.

I can't quite work out why he thinks its a better idea than a rain butt though...

OP posts:
Walkacrossthesand · 12/05/2013 22:47

My problem with the rain butt concept is that most of the rain falls in the autumn/winter when we're not watering the garden so the butt fills up and sits waiting...Then summer comes, we use the butt contents, rainfall is low so the butt empties & isn't re-filled...At least bath water would be regularly generated!

iheartdusty · 13/05/2013 21:33

Wouldn't bath water go a bit scuzzy if it sat in a butt - all those dead skin flakes and soap scum won't benefit from sitting around. I'd try to put it directly on the garden, and just disconnect it in rainy weather when it wasn't needed.

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