2025 August continued - Plumber greywater installation day 2

     The pipes from the bathroom. There is the laundry tub which includes the washing machine, then the hand basin, then the shower/bath. The floor drain in the middle of the bathroom floor is a separate minidrain.

     The bathroom drainage system required an air vent, so this goes up the south side of our house to vent above the roof level. You can also see the strapping which is hanging down from the floor joists to hold the pipes in place. All the pipes have to be sitting at exactly the right height and the right angle to give it the right amount of fall so that gravity can send the water downhill. The plumber did an amazing job.

     The pipe drops down into the ground at the end of the house, and goes through an inspection point and then a pipe 30cm below ground level.

     The pipe goes down to another inspection point and then turns a corner where it splits into two pipes, which each split into two pipes and lead to more of those purple upside down buckets with holes in them, where the waste water can drain under the ground.

     The bathroom has 4 drainage points while the kitchen only has 2. This is because of the larger amounts of water expected through the bathroom.

     A raised swale of dirt was required on the uphill side of the drainage areas, so that any water running down the hill will be diverted. This will keep the drainage area as dry as possible to help with the absorption of the wastewater from the house.

     The rest of the area is flattened off so that it can be just mowed over when the grass grows back. There could be the option to plant shrubs around the drainage area but it's better to have short green grass to help protect the dwelling from bushfire.

     This second day required twice as much sand to fill in the pipe trenches, so Josh had to move 2 tonnes of sand purely by muscle strength! We got there in the end, and are very happy with the results. The council inspector approved the system with constant photo updates sent by the plumber. We have been very happy with the results and highly recommend this system. Go to greywater.com.au for more information.

 2025 June - Josh started finishing the ceiling, by putting up some timber to help complete the manhole.

     Then he cut some 7mm plywood to size and filled in the last part of the ceiling.

As this was in the middle of winter, it should have definitely helped to keep the house warmer.

Then in August 2025 we finally had our greywater system delivered, and the plumber turn up to install it. This was delayed for a few weeks by constant rain, even though winter is meant to be the dry season! The big plastic tub is the aerobic grease trap, to be filled with drainage gravel, topped by soil and mulch so that all the kitchen water is filtered by live organisms.

The below pipe comes from the kitchen sink, hanging from the floor at exactly the right fall, into a trench which is dug at exactly the right depth. The bathroom waste water is a separate drain system.

An inspection point which lets air into the system was added, and then the kitchen waste water split into 4 outlets which are above the top level of the aerobic greasetrap. This gap prevents roots from being able to grow up the pipe and block it. You can see the trenches are being backfilled with sand, which we had delivered in a big truck.

Big thanks to Tabulam Sand and Gravel.

This giant pile of sand then had to be moved down to the area below the house, so I got the four wheel trolley and a bunch of containers and used my muscles to transport it down the hill. This kept me pretty busy all day while the plumber was working. I filled in the trenches with sand as needed during the day. I discovered that a 10 litre bucket full of sand weighs WAY more than a 10 litre bucket of water. And it didn't help that it was wet sand! My calculations were that I had at least 8 x 15 kg = 120kg per trolley load. That means that 8 trips was 960 kilos. I moved a tonne of sand all by myself in one day!

I felt like the plumber had the much easier and more fun job of operating his cute little excavator!

The water then drains out the bottom of this big tub through the purple 'bucket' which has holes drilled into the sides. Another job that kept me busy all day was filling the aerobic greasetrap with the layers of drainage gravel, geofabric, soil and mulch.

Then the water went down a buried pipe, past another inspection point, and then split into two side pipes.

At the end of the side pipes was more of those purple bucket things with holes drilled into their sides. The pipe comes out halfway up the bucket, and ends right in the middle of the bucket, so that there is an air gap and roots are unable to grow into the pipe and block it. This is my favourite part of this system, as all other systems are designed to fail after a few years so that the plumbers get to have more work when they have to come back and unblock all the pipes. This purple bucket is then buried to ground level, and the lid can be easily opened to inspect it at any time. All of this water is purely gravity fed, which means it can't fail due to broken pumps or loss of electricity.

The filtered water drains into the soil underground, so there is no chance of bad germs being on the surface which might harm somebody. The soil absorbs the water and the living organisms eat the nutrients. Grass will grow over the area and it can be mowed over. This will create a lush area below the house which will help to keep it bushfire safe. Many greywater systems add chlorine to 'clean' the water, but that is just poisoning the land. Plus it is expensive to purchase and expensive to keep up the maintenance. This system is approved by the local council as we followed all the rules about keeping it at least 50 metres from the nearest intermittent waterway.

Our plumber had never seen a system like this before, but he worked with us and read the plans and made it fit into our site. This system is from greywater.com.au, a lovely guy called Jonathon who lives in Brisbane. He actually drove all the way down and delivered to our place by himself! He makes these systems himself, and has worked hard over the years to get the govt approval for them.

The plumber was Calvyn from Pipe Dreams Plumbing. He has only recently moved to the area from Brisbane and was the nicest plumber that I had dealt with all year. I highly recommend him, and the way he tows his little excavator behind his truck meant that the whole job was super easy and didn't require any extra staff,

The second day of installation will be the bathroom pipes.

 2025 January continued

     The below photo shows the outlet for the rangehood which is above the stove in the kitchen. The black flaps open when the rangehood is turned on and let the air out. There is steel mesh which stops the bugs from getting in. We chose black as it goes perfectly with the black trim on our windows.

The below photo shows how the rangehood exhaust fits seamlessly into the side of the house.

Meanwhile we put a wall cabinet in the bathroom above the laundry tub, but instead of paying $40 for a door I used this piece of second-hand offcut to make my own door.

I cut a template out of paper based on the doors of the cupboards in the kitchen, so that it would suit the Bunnings Kaboodle Hettiche hinges.

I will admit I made a mistake with my first attempt at cutting the hole for the hinges, but then I turned the door around and cut the right version of the holes on the other side of the door.

Eventually I will paint over the edges and the hole, and no-one will be able to tell the difference between this and an expensive door!

Meanwhile I was trying to sort out a greywater system for the house. I drew up my own plans based on my research.

I thought that the area downhill from the house would be perfect for a gravity fed system, and then we wouldn't need to depend on an electric pump which would suck power, be noisy, and inevitably break after a period of time.

I spent months contacting all the local plumbers, but they all refused to install anything other than the usual septic system with a underground tank of stagnant water, and an absorption trench which would only get clogged with roots in a few years. Of course the system they wanted to install would also cost more too. I kept researching plumbers further and further afield, and eventually had a list of over 30 plumbers who either refused to do the job I wanted, or just never got back to me at all. Eventually I found a plumber who was new to the area, who said he was willing to do the job. Finally!

Meanwhile I kept myself busy making rustic wooden mini-fences which would make the edges of the greywater absorption area.

Eventually in July we had delivery of the greywater system, and were ready for the plumber to come and start work. The next bit gets very exciting!

 2024 November continued...

     The kitchen needed a rangehood above the stove, so we bought the bunnings wall cabinet which is specially made for rangehoods, and also another smaller cabinet to fit in the gap next to it. These cabinets were so easy to assemble that I could do it by myself. Here are all the parts for the small cabinet.

Here is the assembled cabinet sitting below its final spot.

Here are both the cabinets assembled, sitting on the floor.

There was an awkward mini gap between the cupboards, so we custom made our own mini spice rack.

Here is a photo of the box for the range hood.

2024 December - This photo shows the two cupboards after they have been screwed into place on the wall above the stove. You can also see the rangehood has been installed, it is the blue part with the white part above it. You can also see the silver flue which is coming out of the rangehood and exiting out through the wall to outside. You can also see the square hole which was cut into the back of the cupboard so the wiring could come through the wall. This will be a powerpoint that the rangehood directly plugs into, when the electrician comes back to finish the job. You can also see the black power cord from the rangehood sitting there ready to go. We can plug the rangehood in and use it if we want, we just need to run an extension cord over to it. You can see another square hole in the wall under the left side cupboard with wires sticking out of it, this is going to be another power point.

2025 January - The doors for these cupboards are ready to be painted.

Four coats of paint later, and the cupboard doors are now black.

We used the Bunnings Kaboodle Hettiche hinges, expensive but apparently the best ones.

Here are the three doors installed and looking great. You can see we have put some spices in our mini-spice shelf!

The final touch is the 'push to open' magnetic spring latch. We love using these and it means that the cupboard doors don't need any handles.

Next time I'll show the picture of the outside of the rangehood exhaust. Josh did an amazing job!