It took us about 5 months to complete, but only because we were slow at taking on “the next step” of the project from time to time, but finally, our graywater project is completed. We now have an alternate drain line for our laundry that runs under the house, out the back and to a hillside. Every time we do our laundry now, we are watering a different level of the hillside’s many fruit trees and shrubs. (Nearly everything we have planted there will provide us with food, too.) It’s awesome!

Here’s a breakdown of the project. First of all, major props go out to Devin Slavin of Abundance in Balance for overseeing, planning and helping us execute this project. He helped not only do it, but do it right.

Before Photos

As you can see, the hillside has some terraces in it and plenty of slope. Using this slope to our advantage for watering was what made this project seem like such an obvious thing to do.

Infrastructure

We had to fence off the new future planting area from our oh-so-bad dog (he would simply have to dig things up to see what we put in of course). I used simple chicken wire and stakes to do this as our dog, thankfully, isn’t a jumper.

I had to tear a wall out in the room our laundry is in to get the alternate drain line in, but that wasn’t so bad. Climbing under the house and routing the ABS pipe out a vent to the crawl space and then over some steps to the back slope was more challenging. We’ve since had the floor replaced in the laundry room and I’ve put new wallboard in, too. Now we can choose to route water to the backyard, or to the sewer if there was ever a need.

Devin made a great little valve system that allows us to turn on one level at a time. We simply flip a couple of switches with each laundry load and this allows us to get water to any of the four different levels on the hillside.

Devin spent a day carefully grading the four different levels in the terraces so that the water would flow properly. This is a low pressure system that relies on gravity to disperse all of the water. If the water is allowed to sit in one place, it becomes blackwater, not graywater. Yuck!

We used polyethylene tubing for the water lines. This tubing, while more expensive, is way better environmentally than PVC and it’s flexible nature makes it pretty simple to work with, too. It also withstands UV rays better. Most of this bright yellow tubing is covered up by 4 to 5 inches of mulch, too.

After Photos

We planted several different fruit trees and berry bushes, with everything having a gopher basket, too. There are “tee” connectors that feed water to each of these plants that we easily spliced into the yellow lines. We then got mulch from a community garden nearby and put layers of it all around.

We spent a fair amount on this project, but knowing that our hillside is now well landscaped, a source of food, and really easy to maintain, made it all worthwhile. We’re very happy with the results.