What happens with a graywater installation:

First you meet with a greywater system designer. The certification that was once offered, though quite good, wont be available for a few months.  So what you want is someone who has studied graywater, someone that understands all aspects of the process.  Plumbers often don't really know greywater  systems and landscapers are used to a whole different type of irrigation,  so if a landscaper is needed for the specialty jobs it would be good to have one who understands permaculture, and such things.  A greywater systems designer should inspect your current plumbing  to see if a greywater connection is feasible. Then inspecting the lay of the land, and the landscaping surrounding your house to see how the greywater would best be used.

 

Designing a graywater system is a very site-specific, user specific process. How you use the water in your home, and how the greywater would drain from your house, is very specific to you and your home.  Almost all yards are very unique, with different plants, and different slopes, and elevations.  So a designer needs to know, how you use your water,  how to interact with your current plumbing,  and how to get the graywater  from the house to the plants in a way that's safe and sustainable.

 

For the most part, besides a strong understanding of the whole process. What a graywater designer needs most  is a healthy respect for the role that gravity plays through the whole process.  Gravity is the only engine driving the whole thing and  must be respected through every inch the process. This is why it's very important to begin with a plumber that understands, and respects the graywater process. They need to interconnect with your current plumbing in a way that preserves the fall from the house to the garden as much as possible.  Most plumbers simply do things the good old standard way which can lessen the effectiveness of your system from the very beginning.  So your designer should refer right kind of plumber and make sure its plumbed in the best possible way.  Once the new graywater plumbing leaves the house, it's in the hands of the designer. Special, low impact piping, is installed underground, with a near obsessive concern for preserving the gravity flow from the house to the garden.  The amount of water expected is estimated from your water usage.  This information is used to establish how the graywater is split and what size piping is used to distribute it to different areas. This is why its called distribution plumbing.  Mulch basins are then dug to receive the water and spread it further to the plants to be watered.  This mulch [usually woodchips]  cleanse the water in a wonderful biological way, and they keep the greywater away from the surface where it belongs.

Once the system is in, its up to you. The right soaps, and little things like informing house guests of the situation, are all it takes.  You can rejuvenate your yard, recharge our river, and reconnect with the soil.  Your own soil, watered, and fed, nurtured by you every time you turn on the water. All without getting your hands dirty.  

Greenwater Therapy

Installing a gray water system is perhaps the greenest thing the average homeowner has done so far. It's a very effective way to help out with the big picture environmental issues, like water pollution, and greenhouse gases.  One of the best aspects of a graywater system, is how effects you personally.  What I call greenwater therapy.  In the best case scenario it changes how you relate to the immediate world around you.  Every time you use the water, every time you grab that low impact soap, or special detergent for the laundry, you are reminded that,  it's the water you personally use,  that’s nurturing your environment.  This strengthens the relationship to the land that our culture is so sorely lacking.  This relationship is further strengthened as we move out into the yard.  Instead of plants chosen and installed by someone else, irrigated by water from somewhere else, what’s created is your own outdoor space.

  Graywater irrigates in broad strokes.  It can't be pushed to drip lines that deliver water to each individual plant.  Instead it flows to irrigate certain areas creating lush spots.  These become your own personal lush spots,  perhaps a cool shady area to spend  time in on a warm day, or maybe an intelligently designed wind break to warm you on a cooler day. Then a couple of fruit trees, so your own water use provides you food.  This is a very personal relationship.  Perhaps the best use for the graywater irrigation would be a well designed oasis.  Designing and creating one special area of your yard to be green and gorgeous and yours. Not because you own it but because you personally feed, water, and use it on a daily basis.  Think of your yard changing, some areas become drier. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. Native species are introduced or move in on their own as some parts your property  become more natural, matching the surrounding landscape that attracted us so much to begin with.  As this happens the graywater  areas become lush, nurtured with water you’ve  personally handled.  These become your places, your oasis, for the hammock and the book,  with the little orchard providing food from your own land instead of from somebody else's land halfway across the country.  It's a more personal relationship, the oasis feeds the spirit, as the orchard feeds the belly, and  there you  are literally sitting  in the middle of it, enjoying the fruits of a more natural relationship with the world around you.

There is some lifestyle change involved in using a graywater system, mostly just the soaps you use in the sinks and laundry.  Many very effective products are available now that are better for you and much better for the environment.  We've been taught for years that putting stranger and stranger unnecessary things in our soaps is what's best.  That the more additives the better.  This was b.s. in the fifties and its the same today.  This chemical and that chemical,  blue specks, green dots, the list goes on forever.  What we've ended up with is a bunch of very dirty soaps purposely polluted with hundreds of different chemicals just so they would have something splashy to put on the label.  We need to outgrow this feeling that things get better with more additives, and replace it with the understanding that simpler more organic products are better. 

David Glover 10/15/09