Grey water is the leftover water from when we wash our hands, dishes, take showers, etc. It’s important to properly dispose of grey water to take care of the environment, but also to prevent attracting scavengers and insects near the campsite.
Having a good grey water setup also means less trips to the grey water dump, and more time kicking back relaxing.
Finally, a good grey water setup can keep your sink and shower flowing freely. Trapped water and air are a major factor in slow draining camper sinks. Setting up an air gap is a good way to ensure your sink keeps flowing smoothly.
To make the chore of disposing water easier, we whipped up two setups for connecting our sink and our shower to a grey water tote.
You can also use these setups to connect to one sewer connection, although we recommend using a second, separate sewer slinky to connect to a sewer drain, just to make sure there is no chance of cross contamination.
Here’s how we put this together. Don’t be scared of the shopping list. It’s pretty easy once you get the bits together.
You should be able to find all of this at your local hardware store, but I’ve included Amazon affiliate links below to help. If you buy anything through our links, we may get a portion of any sales - which helps keep us running and bringing you content like this.
Our grey water system for the a-frame is made up of:
To assemble:
Glueing anything together is not necessary, but will help minimize pieces floating around and getting disconnected.
We like to leave the 12” piece (9) unglued, so we can disconnect it and store it in a bin more easily.
If you have a shower you want to connect, it takes a few more specialized parts. You’ll also need:
To assemble:
Screw in the male hose adapter (7), and this one is done!
When you’re ready to camp, screw one end of the garden hose to the PVC sink connection, and then connect the brass hose connection to your sink line. Twist the 12” air gap into place.
If you’re using the shower connection, connect the other end of the garden hose to the 3/4" male adapter on the PVC shower connection, then connect the shower adapter to the shower drain. Finally, screw the "sewar slinky" connection to the adapter on the PVC shower setup, and then onto the large opening on the grey water tanks.
If you aren't using the shower adapter, you can connect the garden hose to the small connection on the grey water tank lid.
And you’re set!
You’ll have free-flowing water that should last you a few days at a time, depending on your usage. This tote also includes a tow bar, so you can connect it to the back of your tow vehicle to take to the dump station.