Netafim Tiran, a Greywater Dripline

In a lecture I heard recently, Leigh Jerrard of the Greywater Corp mentioned an intriguing product from Australia: a dripline compatible with greywater. Now, if you tried to push gunky greywater through conventional dripline it would clog in seconds. According to the manufacturer, Netafim Tiran Greywater Dripline gets around this problem because,

Each dripper has its own mini filter. When a contaminant attempts to enter the emmitter, it is rejected by the emitter and simply remains in the tube. The irrigation system should be flushed once a year, however anecdotal evidence indicates that flushing may only be required every 5 years.

100 meters of Netafim costs 100 Australian dollars excluding tax, or about .30 USD a foot. Not a bad price if it performs as advertised. Some quick Googling failed to turn up a US distributor. Root Simple reader Rachel wrote to point out Netafim's distributor locatoer: http://www.netafimusa.com/wastewater/support/locator.

To use Netafim you need to add a filter as you do with every drip system. I could see this product working nicely with Art Ludwig's Laundry to Landscape system.

If any of you have worked with Netafim, leave a comment.

Dry Farming

Jethro Tull--the agriculturalist not the rock flutist

According to a 2010 report by Ceres "Water Risk in the Municipal Bond Market," Los Angeles ranks number one in water supply risk. But we're not alone. Many other US cities including Atlanta, Phoenix and Dallas also face a future of water insecurity.

Due to these water risks we'd all do well to consider ways to grow edibles without supplemental irrigation. This may sound absurd at first, but I'll note that in our garden we've discovered, quite by accident, that many plants such as prickly pear cactus, cherry tomatoes, cardoon and pomegranates will do just fine in a climate where it doesn't rain for six months out of the year.  Scott Kleinrock at the Huntington Ranch proved that you can grow chard in Southern California with almost no irrigation through a hot summer (the chard thrived in the Ranch's food forest under almost complete shade).

As an avid gardener in a dry climate I certainly use a lot of water for my vegetables. Most modern vegetables are adapted to copious watering. But this was not always the case. A classic book Dry Farming by John Andreas Widtsoe, first published in 1911 and available as a free download in Google Books, describes how many farmers got along without the modern conveniences of supplemental irrigation.

A dry farmed wheat and alfalfa field in Wyoming from Dry Farming

Other than the advice to till frequently (tilling, among other things, destroys beneficial fungal networks), Dry Farming has some good tips:

• Maintain soil fertility 
• Plant deeply
• Plant varieties adapted to dry farming
• Know when to plant
• Pay attention to soil structure

The main takeaway for us home gardeners will be the development of drought tolerant veggies. Native Seed Search is a good start, but seed saving will be the ultimate solution. We're simply going to have to breed drought tolerance back into our water hungry vegetables. Combined with passive water collection techniques such as sunken rather than raised beds, those of us in arid climates can grow a surprising amount of food with a lot less water.

Clarification: dry farming is not growing during the rainy season (which is called "rainfed agriculture"). Dry farming uses strategies to store water in the soil during the rainy season and then grow during the dry part of the year. Though controversial, dry farming traditionally involves tilling.  It also requires much greater spacing of plants. For more information see the website of the California Agricultural Water Stewardship Initiative.

Pot o' Goodness: Low, Low-Tech Water Conservation

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Continuing on the greywater theme, on big cooking days, when I'm doing a lot of boiling, steaming, soaking and rinsing, I collect all that used water in a big pot and take it out to the garden to water the plants. It's full of nutrients, and won't cause any blackwater* problems as long as you:

• Use it immediately. It will turn foul if left to sit too long.
• Pour it straight into the soil--don't splash it all over edible leaves. Remember, soil purifies water.
• Don't use water full of food chunks or grease, as this will attract vermin and cause smells.

I know it's only a little bit water that I'm saving by doing this, but to me it's a symbolic act, almost a prayer. And heck, it hasn't rained here since March, so every bit counts. Also, the plants really like the super-water. I think of it as a smoothie for them.

Another option is to re-use cooking waters as stock. This is something I don't know much about. Sometimes I'll take some nice bright green water leftover from steaming or blanching greens and use that to start a vegetable stock. But I've heard of people using pasta water as the base of soups. Have any of you tried that, or other techniques along those lines? Do tell.

And let us know if you have any quirky ways of saving water.


*What's blackwater? It's water which is dirtier than greywater, and therefore not usually recycled. Typically this is water coming from the toilet and the kitchen sink. Food particles from the sink turn septic quickly, and grease and heavy soap are not good for soil. However, our greywater guru, Art Ludwig, does say that kitchen sink water is nutrient rich, and suggests workarounds that allow sink water re-use, like grease traps or plumbing the sink so only the rinse water goes to the garden.

Greywater Fed Tomato Plant Takes Over The World

Homegrown Neighbor Here:

So a few months ago Mr. Homegrown helped me install a simple 'laundry to landscape' greywater system. Most of the plants that get watered by the system didn't get much water before and were just barely surviving. There are several fruit trees, a rhubarb plant and an assortment of perennial herbs lining a narrow strip of land along the side of the house. Now, the plants getting fed by the greywater are going bonkers.

Last week the area became impassable it was so overgrown. The path along the side of the house had disappeared. I have the laundry water going to the sewer half the time because I don't want to overwater. That and my roommate bought some non-greywater friendly soap. So I really only run one or two loads of laundry a week into the yard. But that has been more than enough.

Yesterday I hacked my way through the overgrowth and tried to train the rampant cherry tomato plant. The tomatoes are delicious. I eat them constantly when I'm in the yard and pawn them off on friends and family whenever I can. Still, there are tomatoes in areas that I can no longer get too. The tomato plant has killed my apple tree I think. I can't see the apple tree under it anymore. The tomato plant is about eight feet tall and equally wide. It is reaching for the roof, using the poor buried apple tree as its support. I tried to photograph the madness, but it just looks like an indeterminable tangle and doesn't really show what is going on.

But now I have reclaimed a path along the side of the house. If just an occasional load of laundry can provide such a boost to this little patch of land, I wonder what all of the other water used in the house could do. I would have to get rid of all of the low-water and native plantings and go tropical! It just goes to show how much water we use in our homes every day and don't really think about where it goes. Eventually I would love for all of the water from our showers and sinks to go to the yard as well, but for now, the washing machine is creating a little tropical oasis and that's plenty.

Laundry to Landscape 2.0

I just installed a "laundry to landscape" greywater system at the house of Lora "Homegrown Neighbor" Hall using greywater guru Art Ludwig's free open-source plans. It was a cinch. And, thanks to a revision in the California plumbing code last year, it's legal with no permit required.

I started in the laundry room by rigging up a three way diverter valve so that Lora can route the greywater back to the sewer if it's been raining too much or if she's bleaching her Prada (not likey, by the way). The diverter, somewhat of an exotic plumbing part, was ordered off of Ludwig's website. At $47 it was the most expensive part of the system, but it's well built.

Next, I rigged up two check valves, essentially a one-way gate, one to prevent greywater from siphoning back into the washing machine and another to act as a vent. You could also just use a six foot section of pipe as a vent, but Lora's overhanging roof made that impossible.

The most labor intensive part of the process was digging the trench for the pipe out in the garden. Lora decided how many outlets she wanted in the garden and we consulted the "calculator" on Ludwig's site (more of a chart than a calculator, actually, since he's done the math for you). The calculator basically gives a range of outlet sizes and numbers so that you can get an even flow to the outlets but not risk burning out the washing machine's pump. With nine outlets Ludwig suggests a 3/8-inch hole. We simply drilled 3/8-inch holes in the bottom of the PVC pipe that we ran out into the garden. The outlets flow into mini-mulch basins along the side of some perennial shrubs and a few small fruit trees.

Altogether it took just a few hours. Lora ran a load of clothes immediately and it worked perfectly. It was one of the easiest home improvement projects I've done. No cursing whatsoever! Now Lora can't wait to do the laundry. She, of course, uses only Oasis Biocompatible Laundry Detergent. Note that many "eco" detergents will kill terrestrial plants--I'll do a blog post on this shortly, as I discovered one major manufacturer claiming that a detergent was safe for greywater only to discover that it contained several different sodium compounds, definitely bad for soil!

Ludwig gives both a version of this project in PVC and another in HDPE plastic. I chose to work with the politically incorrect PVC since I couldn't find the groovier 1-inch HDPE in less than 300 foot rolls. If any of you know of a source where you can get 1-inch HDPE by the foot, please let me know in the comments.

If you'd like to do this yourself the plans are all on Ludwigs site under Laundry to Landscape. In addition to the plans there is a parts list for both the PVC and HDPE versions and the aforementioned calculator.  If you don't think you can do it yourself (remember it's easy!) you could conceivably hand the plans to a handyman. A plumber would be too expensive, in my opinion.

See also Ludwig's book The New Create an Oasis with Greywater.

Laundry to Landscape Legal in LA

Ludwig's "Laundry to Landscape"

California's new greywater code, passed in August of last year, was a big step in the right direction. The revised code legalized simple "laundry to landscape" systems of the sort promoted by greywater guru Art Ludwig and allowed their installation without a permit. Here's a pdf from the City of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety confirming that you don't need a permit within LA city limits for "a graywater system in a one or two-family dwelling that is supplied only by a clothes-washer and/or a single-fixture system." Though, confusingly, it also goes on to say, "Any alteration to the building or plumbing, electrical or mechanical system

requires a permit." I guess we shouldn't expect clarity from a department that can't seem to get around to regulating thousands of illegal billboards. But I digress. I'm calling my laundry to landscape greywater installation legal!

Hopefully all California cites will respect the state code. Ludwig says,

"Trying to sell permits to California graywater users is like trying to sell a $100 search engine that you have to register for to people who use google. Any standard that can’t compete with “free” and “zero time for compliance” is doomed to irrelevance.

The only way government agencies can compete is to offer "free", “zero time for compliance” legal systems that are better, and can be installed by professionals instead of having to do it yourself.

This involves surrendering the illusion of control, in trade for actually making things better on the ground."

By foregoing permits, city government can play a role in encouraging greywater. Legalizing the practice makes it possible for professional plumbers to do the installations in addition to plucky DIYers. Kinda like prostitution in Holland--keep it out in the open and you'l have less . . . shoddy plumbing.

See Art Ludwig's excellent website to see how to install your own laundry to landscape system. His book, Create an Oasis with Greywater is also highly recommended. And, if you've got a laundry to landscape system, make sure to use Oasis Biocompatible Detergent.

Homegrown Evolution Podcast Episode #1

Subscribe to the Homegrown Evolution podcast in itunes here.

Download the mp3 on archive.org.

On this first episode of the Homegrown Evolution podcast we talk food preservation with author Ashley English who blogs at small-measure.blogspot.com. English will have two books out next year on food preservation and chickens, part of a series entitled "Homemade Living," (Lark Books). She also has a weekly column every Friday on Design*Sponge at www.designspongeonline.com/category/small-measures.

In the second part of the show we talk to Wing Tam, assistant division manager for the Watershed Protection Program in the City of Los Angeles' Bureau of Sanitation about a new rainwater harvesting pilot project. You can find out more about the program at www.larainwaterharvesting.org. We conclude with a reaction to this new program from river activist Joe Linton, author of Down by the Los Angeles River and one of the bloggers behind lacreekfreak.wordpress.com.

As we say on the podcast, we prefer gardening to staring at computer screens and putting a podcast together involves a hell of a lot of the latter. Don't look for frequent updates, but we'll probably put out another one in the fall. Please excuse the mike popping and other technical flaws, as we're still working out the technical side. We hope you'll enjoy the podcast while, say, gardening or prepping food for canning. We're all about open source, so feel free to redistribute or rebroadcast.

Music on the program is from archive.org:

A bluegrass cover of DEVO's Mongoloid by the Hotfoot Quartet. Bob Frank, guitar and lead vocal, Jim Blum, upright bass and vocals; Paul Kovac, banjo and vocals; Bob Smakula, mandolin and vocals. Available here.

Also from archive.org, a collection of surf music.

Going Gray!

Got a nice note and some pics from Ben in Portland:

"I bought your book and it has become my mission manual. We own a house in Portland, OR, and I just today did my first project out of the book - routing the shower drain into the garden. It cost about $60 for all the pipe, glue, a 2" hole saw to drill through the wall, and a new drain kit (my old drain was decroded as crap). Our house is only 750 sq. ft. (plenty for me, my gf, and our 3 dogs), and luckily our bathroom is right next to the garden plot I've had for about 3 years now. We've got a ton of squash going, which as you know takes a good bit of water, so I thought our not-so-gray shower water would be much appreciated by the little yellow bastards. Another benefit is that we won't have to deal with the recurring shower clogs which have been forcing us to use drano.

The drain setup was super simple from a plumbing perspective, so all I did was cut off the old drainpipe, replace the drain assembly, and route a new pipe out to the garden. It took three 22 degree couplers, one 4 foot and one 10 foot section of pipe. the pictures sort of show what the finished piping looks like. I know it looks like I had to rip through the floor to get to the drain, but that's just because whoever installed our shower years ago did a terrible job.

I drilled holes every 6 inches or so in the pipe that goes out into the garden. I may need to cover them with mesh (I'd appreciate your advice here) and dig some trenches to route the water into the rest of the garden, but for now it's working great!

Thanks for your wonderful book and website. I will send you more pictures as i do more projects!


-Ben"

California's New Greywater Code: Common Sense Legalized!

On the left is our yard which is irrigated by the washing machine. On the right, the neighbor's yard which is never watered.

This Tuesday the California Building Standards Commission legalized our formally outlaw greywater system. For several years now, we've sent our washing machine waste water out to fruit trees in the front yard. The new regulations are a rare common sense moment for our otherwise troubled state government. Let's hope our current hard times spur more innovation like this. Originally slated to go into effect in 2010, the plumbing code was updated as an emergency measure to deal with drought conditions that have plagued the southwestern US for years. Under the new California greywater code:

1. In most cases you won't need a permit.

2. Allows discharge into a simple mulch basin rather than the expensive and complicated sub-surface emitters required under the old regulations.

3. No exspensive pumps or filters required!

Here's the new code as amended (pdf).

Unfortunately the code can be superseded by local municipalities. Plumbers unions opposed loosening the code, no doubt fearing the loss of business. Combined with NIMBYs, they could put pressure on city governments to keep greywater illegal. It's time for us Californians to be vigilant and start letter campaigns should cities try to restrict our new right to use our greywater.

As for the practical side of this new law, I'd suggest that anyone interested in installing a greywater system keep it simple and low cost. I can't think of any better resource than Art Ludwig's book The New Create an Oasis with Greywater: Choosing, Building and Using Greywater Systems and his website oasisdesign.net. Take note of Ludwig's free open-source laundry to landscape plan.

And don't forget, Homegrown Evolution is offering a DIY Greywater class on Sunday August 16th at 11 a.m. in Silver Lake (Los Angeles). Sign up here.

The Great Greywater Debate- PVC or Polyethylene?

PVC v. Polyethylene

Homegrown Neighbor here. I've been wanting a greywater system for a long time. My old house does not exactly make access to the pipes easy, so I'm starting with just the washing machine. The neighbor, Mr. Homegrown, is anxious to try out a new design from Oasis.

So we have been trying to get all the pieces and get it done- and here is where we get stuck. The system can either use polyethylene tubing or pvc. PVC is ubiquitous, cheap and toxic. Just how toxic, I don't know exactly, but I've never chewed on any pieces just to be on the safe side. PVC is toxic to manufacture as well. This makes polyethylene the more ecological approach. But it is very hard to find in the size we need for the greywater system. And you have to buy a minimum amount- about 250 feet is the smallest we have found so far. For my yard, we probably only need about 40 feet. Plus, you have to mail order it. If we go the pvc route, it would cost far less and we could buy all the pieces at the local hardware store. We also want the system to be replicable so that we can share it with others and encourage them to use greywater. Searching for the parts for the polyethylene version is confusing - pvc is easy and accessible. This is the challenge. So what do people think- should we go with pvc or polyethylene?

Mr. Homegrown here. So I just found a local source for 1-inch polyethylene: Aqua-Flo. Cost is in the neighborhood of 33¢ a foot depending on how much you get. It comes in 20 foot and 100 foot lengths. So I think we're gonna go with polyethylene. Incidentally, when I called Aqua-Flo they asked if I was going to make hula hoops.

A correction and update 7/25/09: The Aqua-Flo branch I went to does not have black 1-inch HDPE tubing in stock. Other branches have it, but only in 500 foot rolls that cost over $300. A roll that long would make sense for a contractor, but for DIY greywater installations it ain't practical. Aqua-Flo does carry a new HDPE product called Blu-lock. You can get 1-inch Blu-lock in-100 foot rolls for a reasonable price (more info to follow in another post). Blu-lock uses special proprietary fittings that are easier to assemble than conventional mainline drip tubing and, intriguingly, allow for disassembly. I'm going to test Blu-lock and will report back on the results.

Washing Machine Greywater Resources

Pantyhose filter

For those of you attending our Wednesday night greywater workshop at Good and for those of you who can't, here's a list of resources for using your washing machine as a irrigation source:

The New Create an Oasis with Greywater: Choosing, Building and Using Greywater Systemsby Art Ludwig. This is the bible of greywater. Follow Ludwig's instructions and you can't go wrong. Buy a copy via the link, and you'll help support Homegrown Evolution.

Ludwig's open source Laundry to Landscape system.

1" polyethylene tubing--an alternative to PVC pipe.

Oasis Biocompatible detergent, the only laundry detergent we can find that's appropriate for greywater use. It works great and, again, click through the link and we get a little support.

A selection of three way diverter valves. Note the 1" brass model for laundry systems. Use these diverters to shift between sending your greywater outside or back to the sewer. Great if you have to do a load of diapers. We don't have one, but we're both cheap and kinda extreme.

A local Los Angeles source for drums, the Apex Drum Company: www.apexdrum.com. Phone number: (323) 721-8994. Located at 6226 Ferguson Drive in the picturesque city of Commerce. You can also scavange drums, but make sure they didn't have nasty chemicals in them. See our greywater surge tank post for what kind of barrel we like to use. Note that you can also turn a surge tank into a rain barrel.

A description of our greywater fruit mini-orchard.

Our greywater surge tank version 1.0. We've since added a pantyhose filter as seen above to catch lint that can clog the tank and garden hose. It's just some threaded ABS waste pipe fittings screwed together with used pantyhose.

A liquid fertilizer of the type that you could add to your greywater surge tank during a wash cycle to fertilize your garden. You could also get a fish emulsion or sea kelp based liquid fertilizer from your local nursery.

Oaktown's Greywater Guerrillas, another source for inspiration.

Greywater Workshop at Good Magazine

We'll be doing a greywater workshop at Good Magazine this Wednesday May 27th from 7 to 9 p.m. Directions and RSVP info are here.

We're going to focus on what I consider to be the easiest way to reuse your greywater: hacking your washing machine. We'll take a look at a couple of approaches including our surge tank, pictured above, which we just got around to elevating with scrap lumber to get a gravity assist. We'll also look at Art Ludwig's direct "laundry to landscape" system.

Topics will also include:

• Greywater compatible detergents
• Choosing the best plants for greywater
• Creating mulch basins
• Greywater dos and don’ts
• Plumbing parts
  
• Water conservation and efficiency
• Greywater cocktails (just kidding)
  

Hope to see you all tomorrow!

A Bike Powered Washing Machine

Via Bike Blog NYC, the Mayapedal Washing Machine:



We dig the inclusion of a derailleur to make the washing experience shiftable (apologies to the fixed gear hipsters out there). Based in Guatemala, Mayapedal has welded up a bunch of clever "Bicimáquinas" or bike machines that you check out here.

Make a Rain Barrel

There's a lot of advice floating around the internets about how to make a rain barrel. Most barrel pundits suggest drilling a hole in the bottom of a barrel and installing a faucet, a kind of connection called a "bulkhead fitting". Unfortunately such improvised fittings have a tendency to leak. My favorite way to make a rain barrel is to take a 55 gallon drum, use the preexisting fittings on the top and turn it upside down, a process explained nicely here (complete with a list of parts), by B. Chenkin who will also sell you a kit at Aquabarrel.com.

To get started, you get a ubiquitous 55 gallon drum with two threaded "bung" holes that look like this:

A good source for this kind of barrel is your local car wash. Just make sure that the barrel you scavenge didn't have nasty chemicals in it. You punch out the center of one of the bungs, as shown, and insert a threaded PVC fitting. A few more PVC parts from the sprinkler section of your hardware store, a brass hose fitting with a valve, and you'll have this:


Glue that up with some PVC cement, wrap the threads with teflon tape, and you're almost ready to collect rainwater. But first, turn the barrel upside down, drill a hole for the down spout another hole to insert an overflow pipe made out of a threaded 3" waste pipe fitting:

The last step is to prop the barrel up on some wood or concrete blocks to give some clearance for your hose connection and some extra elevation for a gravity assist to help push the water through a garden hose.

The overflow connection is another reason I like Chenkin's design. It's important to keep rainwater away from your foundation especially when, like us, you live on a hill. The picture at top shows our barrel installed with the overflow pipe connected to a pipe that runs down to the street. Los Angeles' building code required us to run our rainwater out to the street, where it helps wash pollution into the LA River and the ocean (see creekfreak for more on LA's pesky water issues). At least we'll be channeling some of that water, via the barrel, to our new fruit trees. Those of you with flat yards could simply connect up an overflow pipe that would take the water at least ten feet from the foundation.

In Southern California, where rain never falls between May and October, a 55 gallon drum won't meet much of our irrigation needs, though Chenkin's design does allow you to chain multiple barrels together. What we really need is an enormous cistern, something with a capacity in the neighborhood of around 10,000 gallons. Ideally houses here, as in the ancient Roman world, would have been built with huge underground holding tanks. A small rain barrel like this makes more sense for those of you who live in places with rain throughout the year, where a small amount of collected rainwater could be used to bridge a gap in rainstorms. I put this rain barrel together as a test and because I was tired of looking a blue drum that sat in the backyard for a year giving our patio a methamphetamine lab vibe.

Again, for complete instructions and a list of parts visit Chenkin's ehow page or, if you're not adept at perusing the isles of the local hardware store, buy a kit from him through Aquabarrel.

[Editors note: due to spamming (are rain barrel enthusiasts really that excited about internet pharmaceuticals?) we've had to shut down comments for this post.]

Rainwater Harvesting and Beyond

If you live in a dry climate like we do here in Los Angeles your bookshelf should have a copy of one of Brad Lancaster's amazing books. Through very simple techniques, most of which can be executed with a shovel and a free afternoon, Lancaster shows you how to turn a barren landscape into a Garden of Eden. Lancaster empasizes earthworks which capture and channel water where you want it to go, instead of uselessly sending it down the gutter.

For those of you in Southern California, Lancaster will be delivering a free talk at the Santa Monica Public Library Monday September 15th at 6:30 p.m. More info via Westside Permaculture Gatherings.

If you're not in SoCal, you can get more information about Lancaster's work and order a copy of one of his books on his website, www.harvestingrainwater.com.

Greywater Guerrillas in LA this Weekend

With the prospect of at least ten more years of drought here in California, greywater is a hot topic. This weekend Oak-town's fabulous Greywater Guerrillas are heading down to Los Angeles for a weekend of talks and workshops. If you're not in Southern California, make sure to check out their informative website and their new book Dam Nation. We especially enjoy the GG's project examples.

Here's the 411 on their LA appearances:

Saturday July 19th: Hands-On Greywater Installation Workshop.

Time: 11am-3pm
Location: Silver Lake (You'll get an email with directions once registered)
Cost: $30-$40 sliding-scale
To register: email Matt Moses Space is very limited so register early!

Workshop will include a presentation on greywater reuse, the design process of the system we'll be building, and the construction of a greywater system from the washing machine to ornamental of plants. Activities will involve digging, measuring, cutting pipes, observing, and more!

Sunday July 20th: Presentation: How to Disengage from the Water Grid: With Greywater, Rainwater, and Composting Toilets.

Time: 7:30- 9:00
Location: LA Ecovillage 117 Bimini Place, Los Angeles, 90004
Cost: $10 (no one turned away)
For more info contact Lois at the LA Ecovillage 213/738-1254 (www.laecovillage.org)

How to Disengage from the Water Grid- with Rainwater, Greywater, and Composting Toilets. We will connect the water in our lives to local and global water struggles, look at rainwater as a resource, explore options of reusing greywater, and contemplate waterless (composting) toilets. From the apartment, to the house, to the city, ecological sanitation offers a path to a sustainable and just water future.

Monday, July 21; Greywater Design Workshop.

Location: 3983 East Blvd. Mar Vista, CA 90066
Time: 7-9pm
Cost: $25
To register: email Ray Cirino 818-834-7074

Greywater Design Workshop; Interested in reusing your greywater? Want to learn more about it and how to build your own system? Come to our design workshop. We'll present you with information on the most common, low-tech, low-cost, effective, residential greywater systems. Then we'll break into groups and help you plan a system for your own home. Participants will be emailed a greywater planning sheet, that you'll fill out and bring to the workshop.

Monday and Tuesday (July 21st and 22nd) Greywater Consultations.

If you are interested in having a consultation and/or system design for your own home, please contact Laura Allen at least one week before the consultation dates.

Planting a Mini-Orchard

Ignore the bucket in this illustration! See update below.

Update 3/13/2011: I met Brad Lancaster last night and he told me that he and Art Ludwig no longer use the upside down bucket described in this post. The reason is that detergents can build up in the hole. In my experience the bucket was also an unnecessary step. While I have a clay soil, the hillside drains fairly well. A properly sized mulch basin should suffice to allow greywater to infiltrate. Also, the new generation of washing machines use a lot less water than the old one that I still have. Other than the unnecessary bucket and the persimmon tree (died, for some unknown reason) this greywater application has worked very well. Our fruit trees are lush and happy.

With the news that Lake Mead could go dry by 2013 we figured it was about time to figure out how to grow food with very little water in a Mediterranean climate that gets on average 15 inches of rain a year (3 inches last year). Our water worries sparked the beginnings of our draught tolerant mini-orchard. Thankfully greywater and some tough, water sipping trees make it possible.

Step one was figuring out how to reuse our washing machine water (read our earlier post on the washing machine surge tank we built). Step two was matching that washing machine water output to the right kinds of plants for the mini-orchard. We settled on the three "Ps" -- pomegranate, persimmon, and pineapple guava, plus a mission fig tree to replace the substandard one we cut down (even though God Hates Figs!). The advantage with these four trees is that they can survive, once established, should we find ourselves unable to use any water due to the aforementioned bad-ass draught scenarios.

Our house sits on a small hill, with the front yard sloping down towards the street. We placed the trees at the top of the slope and made mulch basins like the one illustrated above. The outlet chamber consists of a upside down three gallon bucket with a bunch of holes punched in it. The purpose of the outlet chamber, which is buried in the mulch basin, is to help the greywater infiltrate our heavy clay soil. To use it we simply place the hose coming from the surge tank into the hole in the top of the outlet chamber. We cover this hole with a brick when not in use. The photo below shows the digging of the mulch basin and the installation of the outlet chamber in progress:

The completed mulch basin and (hard to see) pomegranate tree to the right. We used straw for mulch We use wood chips for mulch (replaced the straw):
These craptacular photos don't show the details very well, but the mulch basins were dug in such a way to also catch rainwater as it flows down the hill. Both rainwater and greywater work their way into the soil and slowly move down the hill over the course of many months. Since installing the greywater system we've seen previously sad plantings we did years ago of rosemary, wormwood and Mexican sage thrive. And we've got lots of nopalitos coming our way from the prickly pear plants.

For more information on these simple, water saving strategies see Brad Lancaster's excellent book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands.

Greywater Linkage

Outlaw water activists the Greywater Guerillas have added a nice set of examples to their website showing some creative greywater strategies. As figuring out how to get greywater out to your garden depends a lot on, say, if your shower is higher than your bamboo grove, it's great to see some real world examples.
Next step around our little crackhouse will be to figure out how to reuse our shower water. The GGs have given us some ideas . . .

Using Greywater from your Washing Machine

With our current bad drought conditions it makes no sense to pour perfectly good water down the sewer. So we just joined the greywater underground with our illegal washing machine surge tank, and the installation was a piece of cake.

We built our washing machine surge tank based on the design in Art Ludwig's book Create an Oasis with Greywater. The purpose of the surge tank is to prevent the built-in pump in the washing machine from burning out, which might happen if you tried to pump the water through pipes. The tank also slows down the flow of water going out to the garden, allowing more time for it to percolate into the soil. In addition the tank lets the water cool a bit, should we run a load in hot water.

Bottom of barrel showing fittings

Top of the barrel where the hose from the washing machine comes in

For the tank we picked up a used and cleaned 55 gallon plastic drum with two "bung holes", and plumbed it based on a design from Aquabarrel.com. The folks at Aquabarrel offer kits or a DIY video. We put our barrel together ourselves with a couple of common pvc fittings from the hardware store and omitted the overflow pipe, since our washing machine load will never exceed 55 gallons. The basic idea behind the Aquabarrel design is to turn the barrel upside down and use the preexisting threaded bung holes to connect up a garden hose. It took just a few minutes to complete, and our washing machine surge tank was ready to use. We highly recommend the Aquabarrel design, and you could combine a washing machine surge tank with a rain barrel with the addition of the overflow pipe and a fitting for the gutter.

When we do a load of laundry the waste water that collects in the barrel flows immediately out the garden hose and down towards the front slope of our little compound. Ludwig warns against keeping grewater around as it will quickly turn septic. We use Oasis Biocompatible detergent which is manufactured specifically for greywater systems. Regular "eco" detergents, while not harmful to aquatic plants, often contain substances that will kill terrestrial plants so you must use a greywater specific detergent.

Our next step will be to figure out some plantings that will take advantage of our laundry schedule, and to construct some simple earthworks and mulch basins to accommodate the water flow. Right now we just let the water percolate into the front slope, and our rosemary and Mexican sage look a lot healthier for it.

Plantain!

Homegrown Revolution neighbors Annelise and Eric intercepted us on our nightly dog walk and not only invited us up to their front porch for a glass of wine, but also sent us away with a couple of plantains harvested from their next door neighbor's tree. It's exactly what we'd like to see more of--folks growing food instead of lawns and everyone sharing the abundance.

While there's a lot of banana trees in Los Angeles they tend not to yield edible fruit since our climate is not quite hot and humid enough. But plantains, judging from the delicious taste of the ones we fried up, are a different story. They do require a lot of water to grow, but greywater expert Art Ludwig calls bananas (the same family as plantain) "the premiere plant for greywater in warm climates". You can bet that as soon as the building inspectors sign off and leave the scene of our newly retrofitted foundation at our crumbling 1920s vintage compound we're going to try to figure out a way to route the shower drain out to a new mini-grove of plantain.

We'll be our own banana republic and do the world a favor considering the amount of blood that has been spilled bringing bananas to North America. Witness Chiquita's recent admission to teaming up with right wing terrorist groups in Columbia.

In the meantime, for the Homegrown Revolution readers out there in warm climates here's the lowdown on growing bananas and plantain.