Working Around a Frozen Laundry Drain

Central Virginia went through a long cold snap (for us) a couple weeks ago, which caused our laundry drain to freeze.  Our regular septic drain has not ever frozen for us yet  (thankfully!) but something about our laundry drain makes it more susceptible to freezing on really cold days.  Since we’re talking maybe one or two days every couple years, there’s no sense in investigating this issue too far.  Instead, we ran the drain out the window, and then into where one of the existing gutters empties.

The suds made it look slightly less appealing than a typical rain storm.  But it got my husband thinking about gray water and how to capture some of the water we use for “clean” purposes indoors to water plants.  I’m not sure how much of an issue this really is for us since we don’t water our lawn and you’re not supposed to use gray water on a vegetable garden, though you can use it on berries, and we have big plans for a new blueberry patch this spring.