Shades of greywater

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With the help of our awesome friends, Jen & Nina, the FrankenFruit (left) and Christmas Lamb Haas Avocado (right) made their way to the southern end of our lot for optimal sun.  Sadly, our 50' hoses did not stretch the length of the lot and watering was a hit or miss process involving the "jet" setting.  So when the pumpkin seeds from a failed solar baking experiment germinated in the compost mulch, I let them go, thinking the ground cover might provide a microclimate that prevented water evaporation...  I cringe to admit that I might have even planted zucchini down there...  But even with limited watering, things got huge, with stalks overtaking the lower branches of the trees.  I also learned that these gourd things are heavy feeders, apt to compete with the trees for water and other resources.  Our haphazard watering process had also unleashed a crop of spikey weeds which climbed to heights of 4' before we could don gloves to cut them down.  Zombie Rose Hedge re-emerged in all of its extra thorny heirloom glory, further dissuading us from taking care of the trees.

The idea of using the less-toxic water we create in the house was appealing; if it went into sewers, it would probably end up in the ocean and need to be desalinated before it would be potable again.  Stuff like the water MacGyver uses to speed cool homebrew had no solvents in it all all.  Why not keep it closer to home?  That said, we have a tendency to over-engineer things (see: shower curtain experiments).  We'd put this project off, thinking we'd need to wait for the bathroom and laundry plumbing renovations to go in with diverters, giving us plenty of time to plan elaborate greywater bogs and aqueducts, complete with ducks, koi, and catfish.  We ignored the tactical designs included in this book for the more involved ones...  (the golf balls are part of the Fertile Chicken project, the clicker is a token of Rho's status as "teacher's pet" his first day of Puppy K, and the zucchini-- heavy feeder, 'nuff said).  

But desperate times call for simpler measures.  The former owner had been kind enough to leave us with not one, but two broken water softeners.  The first one made its way into the dumpster with the help of surgery with a sawzall.  MacGyver emptied the second one this morning, leaving us with a cistern.  We had some left over cinderblocks from our composting stall that we used to build a base and increase the height differential of the tank.  It was just the perfect height to nuzzle up to the former dryer vent hole on the back porch.  No DIY project is complete without a trip to Home Depot...  

We picked up a spare 100' hose, a washer, a spigot, some gaskets, silicon sealant, and a 10' extension for our current washing machine hose.  All in, about $80, $30 of which was the hose and $15 was an impulse purchase of a spigot manifold.  

MacGyver nearly suffocated himself mounting a spigot on the bottom of the water softener cum-cistern.  It needs to be at the bottom because we aren't using a pump and if it were higher, it wouldn't drain fully.  He also indulged me by taping on a sheet of mesh to help filter the lint out of the water (MaGyver had mentioned this was a barrier to her using greywater).     

We tested it by filling it a third of the way by hose-- that's a lot of hosewater, so it took some time to fill.  MacGyver is bolder than me, attempting to "prime" it by sucking air out of the hose.  I think this "priming" step is optional once your system is set up and you know there are no kinks in the hose.  Any roller coaster loop-d-loops eat into your precious height differential as well.  It can only drain downhill (hence mounting the water softener cistern on cinderblocks).  

Then we tested the washer connection by running a load of laundry.  For detergent, I used this baggie of Soap Nuts which are supposed to be biodegradable.  There was a thin film of white foam on the top of the cistern after rinse.  I'm not sure if that was the Soap Nuts or residue from previous washings.  Clothes smelled clean when the load finished, so I guess it works fine.  I probably didn't need the mesh filter as it appears to be clear after the first load.  We'll see in a couple days if we've killed our plants in this adventure-- we're focusing mostly on fruit trees, not applying greywater directly onto crops we would eat (i.e. spinach, peppers, beans).  The Building an Oasis book has a lot of tips on how to filter greywater to limit risks of contaminating/killing your crops.    

Even though 1/3 of the cistern felt like a lot to fill with the hose, our washer uses more water than we gave it credit for.  If we'd put in a second rinse cycle or tried to hold the water to cool off before irrigating, we probably would have had an overflow situation.  With those caveats, this turned out to be a relatively quick and easy way to increase the amount of water we route to our thirsty fruit trees.    

In other news-- The Great Bean Bakeoff Results:

for folks comparing notes from further afield, we are growing in full sun raised beds in Zone 9b (SoCal) with a timer soaker hose irrigation system.  

Best Heirloom Bush Bean:  Royalty Purple.  Velvety purple pods are both prolific and easy to see.  You can tell that they are done cooking because their casing turns green (but the beans remain a pastel purple).  Bountiful proved to be anything but (that said, it was at a disadvantage hidden behind the Zucchini).  Painted Pony beans were pretty, but slow to germinate, if at all.  Burpee's Stringless feature sounds appealing, but the yield was underwhelming.  

Best Heirloom Pole Bean.  tie.  Cherokee was the prettiest, easy to spot purple.  Turkey Craw provided the most impressive yield.  In the future, pole beans are easier to work with than bush.