Eco homes that recycle water for your outdoors

Despite the growing benefits of eco-homes, there are still very few new environmentally-sensitive housing in Kenya, save for a few commercial buildings with solar panels and large windows.

The need for homeowners to conserve water and energy has never been greater. Last month during the green energy conference, construction industry experts sought to promote green homes to curb pollution and for sustainability.

Few developers are installing solar roofing tiles to cut energy costs or altering architectural designs that allow enough light or recycle sewage to save water.

Heating

Homeowners can recycle water already used for houseplants, landscaping and washing the cars and pavements. They can also install solar panels on the roof to heat the bath water, swimming pool and the interior of the house, and harvest rainwater for use in the garden.

John Kabuye-Kalungi, the vice chairperson of the Kenya Green Building Society says there is slow progress by developers to incorporate all the green building measures- from roof to floor.

“There is the idea that constructing a green building is expensive due to the kind of materials used but this will save you a lot in the long run,’’ he says.

Kariuki Njoroge, who owns a house in Nairobi’s Karen Plains is one of the few who are seeing the gains of going green.  Last year, he installed a water recycling system in his home after learning about its benefits.

“I had previously heard about this in Israel where people have been recycling water for use in their homes, lawns and to grow vegetables,” Mr Njoroge says.

Recycled

He now uses the recycled water piped from a wastewater treatment system for his garden and lawn as well as cleaning his compound and at times to wash the car.

Before installing the recycling system, Mr Njoroge says he used to seek the services of an exhauster twice a year which costed him Sh12,000 per trip.

Unlike before when it was expensive to maintain his lawn using piped water from the city council, Mr. Njoroge says he now pays an extra Sh300 on electricity costs to pump the water.

The water flowing from the toilet, bathroom and kitchen has turned his garden into small paradise all-year-round as he can now afford to water it twice every week.

Lucy Mutinda, the engineering director at EcoCycle, the company that installed the water recycling treatment system says after several stages of sewage purification, a process that takes about eight hours, the tap produces clean, odourless water.

“The system recycles water and sewage into clean useable water that can be used for the outdoors and toilet flushing,” she says, adding that the water is not good for human consumption until it goes through another purification process.

Ms Mutinda says toilet flushing takes up a lot of water and recycling can cut the monthly bills and ensure you have constant flow in the cisterns, adding that some developers are opting for low flush loos to further control water use.

On the other side of Karen at Fair Acres Country Homes, is a development of 19 villas which has taken up the green energy solution by installing solar heating systems and sewage recycling plants.

Reduce

Mary Hiuhu, the administrator at the country homes says each house which costs Sh78 million has a 300-liter recycling system to cater for the needs of the home owners.

The villas each have an inverter system for power backup in each house with a four-hour capacity in case of black outs and also low-energy lighting.

“Our key measures are to conserve the environment around us by reducing noise pollution from generators hence we went with the inverter option as well as air pollution that has been reduced by recycling our sewage and water from the houses,’’ says Ms Hiuhu.

The solar water heating systems has helped reduce electricity bills by 50 per cent, she says.

Ms Mutinda says that it is better to install the water recycling system during construction of the home so as to include it to the toilet water piping system.

[email protected]