Roman the plumber

This past election season we all heard about Joe the Plumber. Well, we have our very own icon, and his name is Roman the Plumber, or Roman Bukowinski. Roman and his wife Liz, residents of Birmingham, MI, entertained us all at their home this past Saturday night by taking us on all 3 levels of their home and showing us his gray water and solar heating systems. Roman designed all of this himself, and it is a sight to see. We started at the upper level, in the kids' playroom, and were shown how the house is cooled by radiant tubes in the ceiling. In the basement, he showed how the solar collectors on his roof were integrated into his home radiant heating system. He has installed radiant plex tubes in all 3 floors in the home. Also, he explained his innovative gray water system, pictured below. It takes water from his showers and sinks and cleans it as the water moves through 3 levels of sand filtering containers. He then reuses the water to flush his toilets. (And with 4 young kids, this is a good idea!) He has received approval for this system from the City of Birmingham and is working with the State of Michigan to upgrade the standards for these types of systems. Oh, by the way, the kilt in the picture above is authentic - Roman is Scottish.

Here is a brief video from the evening:

A gray water system in Birmingham

Yesterday a group of us met at the home of Roman Bukowinski in Birmingham to see his gray water system. Roman is a civil engineer and master plumber who moved here 6 years ago from Scotland. He owns a company called Tartan Plumbing, and is building this home in Birmingham that he hopes will become LEED certified. He spent 2 hours showing us some of its features.

In the basement we saw his elaborate gray water system, pictured. He had seen a similar system that cost thousands of dollars, but decided to save money and build his own. The system consists of 3 tiers of bins. The top tier is fed waste water from his showers and sinks. It gets filtered through sand and then is fed down to he next level, where it passes through another layer of sand, and finally through to the bottom layer. He has the system rigged so that the resultant clear water is sent to the toilets, then to holding tanks, and finally outside to water the lawn (through skinny tubes placed under the lawn) and the gardens. He also uses solar tubes (yes, tubes, not panels) on the roof to heat up the water. It really is an amazing feat of engineering. The house is currently under construction, and we want to return to see all of this in action.

Here is Roman describing a bit of his motivation for this project, a little about his radiant heat system, and an explanation of the sand filtering in his gray water system. It's worth seeing, if only to hear his wonderful Scottish burr.