Wulf's Web-Den

Droughtplug

23 May 2008 by Wulf Forrester-Barker
wine Review0.3

Rating: 2 / 5

Droughtplug is a company that manufactures devices to help reuse grey water. Grey water is what you get after doing something like washing (without too much soap); you wouldn't want to drink it but garden plants will lap it up in a dry season. Jane and I use grey water to keep our more ornamental plants happy, saving rainwater and tap water for the edibles.

Earlier this year we bought a Droughtplug Recycling Kit which comes with hoses, connectors and a rubber bulb. It works on a syphoning principle. One end fits into the bath plug and a few pumps on the rubber bulb should be enough to get the water flowing so that the bath is then drained out without further effort.

Unfortunately, when we finally got round to testing it last night, the results were less than satisfactory. Firstly, the plug attachment was a little small for our bath. I checked the company's website to see if they offered a range but it looks like 42mm is all they offer and our plug is just a bit wider than that. We had some squares of rubber (meant as airbed patches) and were able to use these to compete the seal, but this wasn't a promising start.

We then found that, although water could be pumped, we couldn't get a syphoning flow established. I think it may be that the dustbin we were collecting water in outside was not much lower than the bath inside. The nearest we got to success was holding the end of the hose in the bathroom sink (the adaptor was too big for this plug hole). The extra height did get a syphoning action working but the result was a slow trickle. That would be fine if we could get it working from a bath-full of water and leave it running; it is not so good from a sink-full where you have to hold the hose in place.

I have a few more ideas to try but, at the moment, the product doesn't offer any labour saving over traipsing through the house with buckets. So far, despite being a promising idea, the result seem to be little more than a damp squib.

[hReview]

Technorati Tags:

review

hreview

microformats

droughtplug

water

recycling