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The water we use for showers, baths, laundry and light domestic cleaning tasks can be reused to irrigate our landscape. This reusable water, called ‘greywater’ can — through a simple and low-maintenance, gravity-fed or pumped system — direct used water out of the home and into the garden, where it is delivered directly to the roots of trees and other perennial vegetation.
Working with Los Angeles-based firm The Greywater Corps, The BirdHouse designed a branched-drain greywater system to recycle gently used water from its two on-site residences for use in irrigating the garden.
Consider that, even in our drought-prone environment, we’re using potable water to feed our plants. This water has undergone extensive and energy-intensive processing in order to be fit for our consumption. While that is appropriate for direct human needs such as drinking, cooking, and cleaning, plants do not require such pristine water to thrive.
That’s why we use greywater at The BirdHouse Community Garden! Our system collects water from laundry machines, bathroom sinks, and showers on the property, which it pumps to a series of 27 distribution points located near the base of our fruit trees. The distribution points are divided into North and South Zones, and the system alternates between the two zones on a seven-day cycle. This cycling allows for the trees to have a good, deep soak for one week, followed by a week where the roots are able to dry and absorb oxygen, an essential cycle for trees.
Greywater is delivered a minimum of two inches beneath mulch and into the soil, where the abundant microbial life sets to work disassembling the greywater’s constituent biochemical parts; the plants are able to make especially good use of the high levels of nitrogen (the most common element sought in industrial fertilizer) and phosphorous, as well as biological materials, like cast-off skin cells from shower drains.
An efficient greywater system can feed ornamental and edible landscape plants with no danger of toxicity to humans. And so long as non-toxic cleaning products are used in the connected appliances, they pose no threat to the landscape either.
Understand that used toilet water is considered ‘black water’ sewage and never enters this greywater system.
It is directed into the sewer for standard municipal treatment.
Reusing greywater offers many benefits…(courtesy of the Greywater Corps)
Very little is required of the system’s users. Simply learning which products are compatible with the greywater system, in addition to an annual maintenance check-up, is all that is required.
Additionally, there is the assurance that the greywater system can be “turned off”, i.e. diverted to the sewer, at any time. Bleach, for instance, is incompatible with the greywater landscape system, as it will kill biological organisms in the soil, and even the plants themselves. To bleach a load of white linens, for instance, one need only flip a switch to divert the laundry system to the sewer.
