Exciting new local developments in greywater usage
Ever wondered where the water goes after you take a shower? It probably goes down the drain and mixes with sewage and all the junk that you pour down the drain, then ends up at a treatment plant, where chemicals are used to clean the water before it's released into the ocean. For years, sustainability experts have bemoaned the fact that shower and laundry runoff, called greywater, is not re-purposed to water plants. There are lots of good reasons to do this - to save water, save money, reduce infrastructure costs, and decrease chemical use.
A couple years ago, I built an outdoor shower in my suburban backyard. I love my outdoor shower. Its runoff keeps my tree ferns and pink ginger and bananas lush; these subtropical plants thrive on water that would otherwise be wasted. I pretend that I’m in Hawaii when I’m taking a shower in my greywater garden. It never ceases to please me to watch the runoff fill little mulch-filled troughs and go straight to my thirsty plants. Hard to believe that something so innocuous was, until recently, illegal.
But times have changed. Policy advocates and officials have finally re-written the section of the California building code pertaining to greywater, making it legal. It's about time.
The City of Santa Barbara has taken a leading role in the process, and is now promoting a permit-less laundry to landscape system, encouraging people to re-use soapy laundry water in a simple system fine-tuned by our own local greywater expert, Art Ludwig. His website,Oasis Design, is a wealth of information about greywater and its uses.
Arcadia Studio is excited about this opportunity to be part of California’s efforts to reduce the use of potable water in the landscape, and we're eager to incorporate these sensibilities into our designs.