Going green with grey water takes some doing
It takes determination and resourcefulness to make every drop of water count. We cannot afford to waste the dwindling water reserves we have during what may become a serious drought.Credit: Sue Visser
We need to change our habits in and around the home to save significant amounts of water every day. According to statistics, the people of a city like Cape Town use 240 litres of purified (potable) water per person per day. Not everybody has a garden, where they say over 35% of this water goes. Not everybody owns a car, even though it takes over 30 litres to wash it with a hose pipe. So where does most of our water really go? Down the toilet – down the drain! Can we become more water wise in the home? Yes we can! We all know about washing, brushing and flushing more efficiently but few of us made a serious commitment to recycling the water we use within the home. At least half of the water we waste can be used to water the garden and flush the toilet.
Modified plumbing can direct water from the shower, bath and washing machine to the
garden. A new invention intercepts the bath or shower outlet pipe and provides an attachment for the garden hose. This automates the process and we are having these nifty gadgets installed by a very enterprising gentlemen. Not every drain pipe is at the correct level but some of them are ideally situated above a sloped area of the garden or even a bucket. Bath water can be kept and used to fill watering cans as needed to flush toilets and water plants. We can have fun exploring ingenious ways to distribute this water using recycled items, especially large plastic bottles, pieces of tubing and (now redundant) hose pipes.
Credit: Sue Visser The internet abounds with bright ideas and we can come up with clever ideas to make it easier to water our gardens without sprinklers or hose pipes. Delicate new plants can be covered by domes, made of plastic water bottles cut in half to create a bottle garden effect. This also protects them from snails - a great way to make sure you are the only one who eats the baby basil and mint.
Old water bottles save a lot of time when watering larger plants. Fill them with water and make a tiny hole near the top. Plunge the bottles in a large bucket to fill them up or use them to drain a fish pond. When inverted, the water drips slowly down into the soil and this prevents the run-off that is the curse of the watering can. More ingenious is to make a hole at the bottom of a large 20 litre water bottle or bucket. Insert a 3 way hose fitting into the hole and seal it with a glue gun. Attach two short hoses to it and you have a two-way grey water distributor. We load our bath water from upstairs into this device using a watering can. Apart from the fitness and muscle training we get it helps to keep the most arid areas of our little garden dripping wet.
Adapt your planting and watering habits
To keep a garden reasonably green during the hot summer months we need to become more water wise. A burnt up lawn and parched garden is the grim alternative. We have to use as little water as possible and make it go further than ever before. The best alternative to filling buckets and watering cans with potable (drinking) water is to redirect “grey” water from the bath, shower and washing machine. When you can’t sprinkle water everywhere the ground becomes very parched in neglected areas and healthy, once luscious plants begin to die in front of you. It is a sad situation and we need to facilitate the watering process by directing the water to the roots of the plants and preventing a run-off. Where we live, the roads and gutters alongside communal gardens and flower beds often receive more water than the plants do!
Where is the mulch, why does the water run into the road?Credit: Sue Visser
To my amusement I noticed the same to be true when buckets of water are now splashed at the plants that grow in their dome-shaped sandy flower beds. This is a very time-consuming and costly way to water the roads and the wind blows the sand all over the p