Re-route gray water to your garden - DIY
For you green neophytes, gray water is the stuff draining out of your shower, your washing machine, your kitchen sink and your dishwasher. All of it typically goes one place: The waste water treatment plant. From there, depending on where you live, it may end up in the Pacific Ocean, the Amazon River, the Mississippi River or Hudson Bay. (It seems likely that Beijing's gray water ends up in the Yellow River, but perhaps it's going to the Red Sea.)
I digress. If you were my grandmother you would first tell me to focus and second take the dish tub out to the garden and pour the dish water on the peonies. Most of us don't use our gray water for watering the garden.
Susan Carpenter of the Los Angeles Times says it is not only possible, it's relatively painless to re-use hundreds of gallons of safe water for non-consumption purposes. Carpenter recommends using only the water from your washing machine and/or dishwasher. She says those systems actually pump the water through plumbing instead of relying on gravity to drain the water.
That helps you get the water out of the house and into the garden. They are also don't require a filtration system that would be needed for water from a shower or kitchen sink.
Diverting the water does require some know-how, but she suggests checking out Oasis Design and a group called the Greywater Guerrillas. These are both California-based organizations, but they provide consumers with guides and classes on diverting gray water. And while not all of the tools and tubes she needed were eco-friendly, the result was 10 to 50 gallons a week of water for her yard. All of it perfectly good and totally used.
[via LA Times]
Comments [1]
Tips for a Green Thanksgiving
10 Tips for Making Your Home More Energy Efficient
Green Gift Ideas: Beauty Gift Sets
