Grey water drainage?

ballinloughan

Hi,

I recently had a plumber visit to quote replacing an existing shower. The shower is upstairs in an ensuite with a wash hang basin and tiolet. He commented that there was no 'grey water' pipes comming outside the house. There is only one 4 inch pipe comming from the ensuite and entering the septic tank under ground piping system. So it looks like the drain from the wash hand basin and the shower tray are connected to the toilet drain pipe inside the house, under the ensuite floor.

The plumber suggested that this was against building regs ... I did have the house surveyed before I bought (house was built in 2004) and there is no mention on the survey regarding the grey water drainage.

My question - Is this against building regs??

Any help/advice appreciated.

Mellor

The house is perfectly in line with regs, the regs don't call for any grey water system, its covers two, surface and foul. A, a plumber should know this. The above set-up is standrd and alot of houses are even further behind with a single combined dranage system

ballinloughan

Thanks for teh reply ...

So to clarify - the setup for the grey water is OK and is a more modern way of dealing with grey water? Or - ideally should there have been a seperate set of piping for the grey water, that is connected to the main drainage system outside the house as opposed to inside, under the floor.

He also mentioned that he would be reluctant to replace the shower tray as it may damage the current drainage connections for the shower and hand basin waste water that is under the floor.

Mellor

Unless, I am misunderstanding you, you have all the foul water connecting into the 100mm SVP inside the house, this is standard in alot of new houses.

A more modern wat to deal with it would be to recycle grey water. This means that WCs and similar go to foul, but grey water is collected and used for various things. Similar to the idea behind rain water recycling.

ballinloughan

Yup ypu have it - the grey water is connected to the foul inside the house and then piped out through one 100mm pipe.

Thanks for the inputs.