Greywater pumps let you put kitchen appliances where you want

A kitchen greywater pump lets you put a kitchen or utility room somewhere that’s hard to reach with standard plumbing, such as a basement or garage. Here’s what the pumps do and what they can help you achieve.

What is greywater?

Waste water from baths, showers, sinks and appliances like washing machines and dishwashers is called greywater. It is usually piped away into your home’s main soil stack, the wide vertical waste pipe that also takes waste from your toilets down into the sewers.

This is fine in positions where the greywater can drain away easily on its own with the help of gravity. But, if you want to put your appliances at a long distance from the main soil stack, or below the main drainage line – the point where your soil stack enters the sewage system – you need a way to get the waste water into the drains. One way to do this is with a kitchen pump, such as those made by Saniflo.

What do these pumps do?

Saniflo is perhaps better known for its macerator toilets with pumps that similarly let you put a toilet at a distance from your main soil stack. But it also makes kitchen pumps, like the Sanivite, which sits in a cupboard or kitchen island, and can take waste water from up to four appliances or sinks. A pump like this will pump water up to five metres vertically or 50m horizontally, allowing you to put kitchen appliances and sinks in many places you couldn’t otherwise.

Particularly in cities where space is at a premium or in a large property, this is something that could be really valuable. A greywater pump may not be glamorous but it could be just the thing you need to let you put a utility room in the garage  – or, better still, that bar in the basement that you’ve been dreaming of.