can you use bath water on plants?

With all the forecasts about water shortages I was thinking about the above. Can you use it straight away if you have some way to get it from the bathroom easily? Does it depend on what you have a bath in ie- shampoo, bath oils etc. or can any water be treated/used?

 

i cant see any problems, maybe not for use in greenhouse where eg tomatoes are very sensitive
one of those syphon gadgets would be handy

 

We have almost always used bath water. You cannot store it for very long in a water butt as it tends to go smelly. You can buy something to add to it to stop that, but we never bothered.

 

out of interest- how do you get it from bathroom to the butt? I guess you intercept the pipe in some way?

 

LG, Google for "greywater diverters", I can't find it at the moment, but I have seen one that uses a chain that you pull, when you want to divert it into a but or chamber, but otherwise goes straight down the normal soil pipe. Need to put it into a temporary storage of somekind, otherwise may over heat the plants. If you are in a house, with the old outside soil pipes visible, then this would be easy. I'm in a bungalow so although easy, not much head flow into storage tank. Could put tank in ground, but then would have to pump it out!

Hope this helps

 

great thanks. i will do a bit of a google later. I dont think any of my pipes are visible though but am sure there must be some way.

 

We used a hosepipe and syphoned it out of the bath, but this is not allowed under the terms of the hosepipe ban. Nor are you allowed to connect a hosepipe to the water butt.

 

We've always just used buckets and watering cans to carry it down to the garden - it's a bit sloppy, but it means you're not doing anything you're not allowed to do!
Seems crazy to be talking about this when I've been soaked the last couple of days out working!!

 

Dont think I would use it on pot plants, but on the garden I dont think there's a problem.
I remember diverting the waste pipe from the bath and kitchen sink back in 1976, difficult to say if the water did any real good but I cant remember it doing any harm.
A bit of detergent in the water has a wetting effect, I've been know to add a drop of washing up liquid to the watering of plants that I've kept dry over the winter, when they wont take it up, peat based compost is worst.

 

Palustris, so it's ok to watch the bathwater go down the drain then? :(

Sounds like official thinking!

 

If you've got a pond you could use the hose to top it up, apparently they are classed as livestock.
You could spill some while on the way to the pond with the hose. :D

 

http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/watering.asp seems as useful as you'd expect from the supreme authority!! :D

 

Essex and Suffolk Water: Using water wisely in the garden

On the other hand, it's chucking it down up here :D

 

Sure has, Froggy! But it keeps changing - one minute chucking it down and looking like it'll never stop, then extremely warm and sunny! It'll make the grass grow! So long as it can dry out enough for me to cut it, I'll be happy - doesn't take much, does it? I really can't imagine a hosepipe ban in Scotland!!

 

If your worried about damaging plants with re-used water you could use something like 'water butt fresh' which you can buy here (http://aquahydrotech.com/catalogue1.asp?product=163&product_type=2