Gray Water System Extraordinaire

The picture above is not a gray water system gone wild. In the arid parts of Texas you sometimes hear people say, ” It rained 17 inches in these parts last year and I was here the day it rained.” The picture was taken on “The Day.” Our gray water system at Luna Azul did a very nice job of keeping a portion of the garden moist. We designed it to support three rows of vegetables like tomatoes, lettuce and peppers. It is recommended that gray water not be used for plants, like turnips, carrots or potatoes that produce the food in direct contact with the water. The water from the kitchen sink(no garbage disposal), lavatory, shower and washing machine went into the gray water system.

Beginning at the house you can see where the system comes together and goes underground. We used 2″ schedule 4o pvc and at each fixture included a vent. The diagonal pipe is coming over from the washing machine and the red handle you see is on a ball valve to a garden hose connection which would allow you to have drainage if the main system was not flowing. We never had to use it but you can imagine that if the conditions in the first photo persisted, the system in the garden might fill up and without the emergency valve you would be in a fix. From the house we ran a 4″ PVC pipe at a 1/4″/ft slope (2%) to a special fitting that allows you to switch from regular PVC pipe to french drain or perforated PVC pipe. We wrapped this quite tightly with filter fabric (geotextile fabric) designed to allow water to flow out of the pipes but not let dirt or critters into the system. It is not good to look down into the drain and have who-knows-what looking back at you. We placed the pipe on concrete blocks to create more of a reservoir. When we were through we just carefully backfilled the same dirt that we had dug out. If there is too much clay in the dirt I would recommend that you mix some sand in with it so the water will disperse through the soil. Besides if there is no sand in the soil the lettuce is not nearly as crunchy.

Ya gotta have some minerals in your diet, right! So that was our gray water system. It worked like a charm. Between it and our rain water collection system (later) y wait really cut down on the amount of watering we had to do. Water is pretty precious in those parts and it seemed a shame to waste any. You never know how long you are going to have to wait for another “That Day”. And no, the tomatoes did not taste like Tide or Zest either. If you have any questions feel free to ask. ~ Jim

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