So I had a weird thought, that I’m guessing I know the answer to, but was wondering it anyone had any specific knowledge.
I got one of the Spot-Bot carpet scrubbers, which works well kinda okay. But the “soap” is really expensive. Particularly the oxygenating agent which makes it particularly effective, but you can only do about 5 7 inch circles on a 7 dollar bottle.
In case anybody doesn’t know how they work, it sprays the carpet, scrubs it, and sucks it back up into a dirty water reservoir.
So I had a weird thought, What if I dump the dirty water through an old Brita pitcher filter. If there any chance it would filter the dirt out of the water but leave whatever unbonded detergent and unreacted oxy stuff, so I could get by with just a refresher dose rather than a whole new mix-up?
You could filter out the solid dirt. I expect that the soap, including the soap bonded to grease etc., would go through the filter. So you should end up with the unused soap, and emulsified yuck in th e filtered water. It should take less additional soap that starting over again with clean water.
Maybe search the internet and find a recipe for the soap and oxygen stuff.
You have no idea how relieved I am to see that you are asking about soap for a carpet cleaner. When I read the title I was thinking you wanted to reuse hand soap after a shower. But all is good.
I suspect it wouldn’t be worth the expense and bother. Probably cheaper and easier to just get clean water and fresh soap, despite its expense.
But consider this – my father used to save the water from the washing machine (we had an extra-large sink that it emptied into, and he simply pumped it outside into a barrel), and used it to water his lawn. The soap and the dirst didn’t hurt anything (if anything, it made the grass less palatable to critters), and he wasn’t using precious fresh water on his lawn – he was using waste water that would’ve gone down the drain anyway.
I’ve thought about capturing the rinse water from my washer for the lawn. It has very little soap in it.
I hadn’t considered using the wash water to. I thought the soap & bleach would kill the grass.
But, if your dad captured the wash water and rinse water in the sink. That would dilute the soap. Using that on the yard is a good idea.
What CalMeacham is talking about is called grey water reuse. VERY important and very popular in arid places like Australia. During shortages many cities disallow outside water use, i.e., watering gardens, washing cars, etc. There are commercial grey water systems you can buy/install, which may have some degree of filtration or treatment. Lots of Aussies have some kind of jury-rigged system, like using an extra wheelie bin (those plastic trash cans on wheels) to drain laundry water into, then siphoned from there to the garden; other families use the bathwater to flush the toilet.
I can’t find it via Google, but years ago my mom had a wash machine with a ‘soap-saver’ cycle (or that’s what I remember her calling it). The washer drained into an washtub, and then would refill from there.
Presumably the concept was to wash your relatively clean whites first, and then reuse the water (and soap) on a load of heavily soiled dark clothes.