Larry's Grey Water Recycling ... Part I... Getting Started

I started thinking about how to cut my water use around the house over a year ago. Since I live in Southern California, have a large yard and three daughters, I know my water usage will only go up. I did some heavy duty research on the web gathering information on how others were doing it, products on the market, and state/county laws on the subject. The amount of data I dredged up was overwhelming and took some time to cut through, but in the end I was able to establish a few rules to go by. But first let me clarify what grey water is. Grey water is water that comes from sinks, showers/tubs and washing machines. The water/waste from your toilet is called “black water” and you don’t want to mess with that. So on to the list:

1. Do not attempt to recycle the water from your kitchen sink as it contains grease, oils, food scraps, harsh cleaners, etc. It is just to involved and expensive to recycle.
2. Do not attempt to recycle the water from your washing machine as it contains a heavy amount of lint that clogs the filters in your recycling system in days. It may also contain harsh cleaners like bleach. Your better off just purchase a new low water use machine.
3. Don’t attempt to store the water long term because it will become brackish and smell like hell.
4. Avoid the use of large quantities of harsh cleaning chemicals in your bathrooms has they will affect the health of your plants.
5. Reduce the size of your planted areas and use drought resistant plants.
6. Reduce the size of your grass lawns to small patch.

I started out by moving most of my front yard plants (the ones I liked) to the backyard. I then ordered a truck load of decomposed granite and covered the entire front lawn about 3 inches deep. It is actually deeper in various areas because I made hills and valleys so the whole thing looks like a high desert area. Next I planted various high desert drought tolerant plants and cacti and modified the existing sprinkler system so it was all on one circuit (one valve) and uses rotary type spray heads. The water stream from them is less likely to be blown away in the wind. So now I water the front once a week with two short cycles to prevent run-off.




Now the backyard mainly consist of flower beds, a garden and a small patch of grass. Remember, you have to reduce the size of your lawns to small patches if you want to control water use. Grass is just a big water pig even with the low water variety. The kids have their own play area covered in fake mulch (ground up rubber tires). The flower beds are watered through “sweating” type irrigation hoses that are made from recycled tires (Lowes and Home Depot have them).



:-) Larry

Watch for: Part II - Plumbing Modifications
Next time: Scrapbooking Layouts Germany 2008