Water

Archived Posts from this Category

January 21, 2012

Water for my garden!

Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life, Water | Tags: , |
Leave a Comment 
Rain gauge at 2.5 inches from yesterday's storm.

Rain gauge at 2.5 inches from yesterday's storm.

That was a nice storm yesterday, the first good one since early October, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve been watering my winter crops with rainwater from that early storm, using about 200 gallons so far. It’s unusual to need to irrigate in the winter, but I’m glad I’ve got my rainwater collection system.

Yesterday’s storm (with a few drops from Thursday) totaled nearly 2.5 inches. That was enough to completely fill my rain barrels, giving me another 260 gallons of water for irrigation.

A side note about the rain gauge: I put this up a month ago, as part of dealing with leftovers from my parents’ home. This was a Christmas gift to my dad many years ago and I’m happy to provide it a new home. It took me a while to figure out where to put it, since I didn’t want it to be “influenced” by trees or buildings. The only good place I found is on my grape trellis I installed in 2010. Now, it’s very accessible and a welcome addition to my garden.

 

February 9, 2011

Moving my rainwater around

Posted by ramblinrobert under Agroecology, My garden, my life, Urban agriculture, Water | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

Last year I had a pretty primitive system of rainwater collection and storage, just four garbage cans and five-gallon buckets for collecting rainwater. This year I’ve advanced considerably, with three rainwater catchment barrels in place and a fourth ready to be chained into the system. For more on this year’s new setup, see my earlier post, My rainwater catchment system. Now that I’m collecting more water, and collecting it on the lowest part of my property, I’ve been wanting to figure out a better system for using the water and moving it to where it is needed.

A friend came by a few weeks ago to see my setup and told me how he moves around his laundry grey water. He has a small pump, a Simer M40, that I liked because it has two hose bibs, making both input and output easy to use in the garden. I found one used on eBay and it arrived today. With warm weather the past week and wind on top of that, I needed to irrigate. Plus, we have a storm coming in next week and I want my catchment barrels to be empty and ready to collect more rainwater with the next storm.

So, I tested out the pump, both for irrigation and to empty out the barrels. The pump is small, so it doesn’t put out a lot of pressure. But, there is enough pressure to hook up my hose and water my plants. The real test came when I moved over two catchment barrels of water to garbage cans elsewhere in my yard. The pump was slow, taking 12 minutes to fill each garbage can and drain half of a catchment barrel. But, it worked and I was able to do other yard work while the transfer took place. I now have 130 gallons of water stored in garbage cans and will have capacity to collect another 260 gallons of water with the coming spring storms. I like this setup! I’m thinking I might even get another container, a 200 gallon surplus food container, to put under my front window, then I can store water to irrigate my front yard once or twice during the summer. The pump could be used to move rainwater from a collection site to that tank.

 

November 19, 2010

My rainwater catchment system

Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life, Water | Tags: , , |
[3] Comments 

Last year I experimented with saving rainwater for irrigation. I bought four 32 gallon garbage cans and filled them up from five-gallon buckets I used as collectors. It worked, but was pretty inefficient, to say the least. However, at the end of the season, I noticed that my neighbors’ little one-stall garage, which backs up to the property line, drained into my yard. (more…)

 

July 2, 2010

SIPs, part 2

Posted by ramblinrobert under Land, My garden, my life, Urban agriculture, Water | Tags: , |
Leave a Comment 

Here are a few shots of the planters themselves, to show how they are constructed. The green planters were made following my friend’s instructions, by cutting out a section of the plastic tub’s lid the size and shape of the tub’s interior about five inches off the bottom (the height of the pond baskets that drop into the water reservoir). While this results in a large tub, it is very time-consuming to do this.

Me second approach (more…)

 

July 2, 2010

Another experiment–SIPs

Posted by ramblinrobert under Land, My garden, my life, Urban agriculture, Water | Tags: , |
Leave a Comment 

Last winter I took a series of gardening classes and one in particular intrigued me. The instructor, another Master Gardener in my county (in fact, she was the one that told me about the training program) taught one class on how to make self-irrigating planters. I love the acronym–SIPs–although I have to say these planters don’t really SIP. They use at least as much water as a regular planter, but more of that water is going into production because losses from soil evaporation are virtually nil.

In any case, a friend and I built a couple planters each one day. As I readied to plant them I realized (more…)

 

January 28, 2010

Urban Agroindustry

Posted by ramblinrobert under Agroecology, Business, Industrial agriculture, Land, Urban agriculture, Water | Tags: , , , , , |
[3] Comments 

What would urban agriculture look like if it were industrialized? Everything on this site approaches urban agriculture from an ecological perspective. As urban agriculture becomes more popular, we find entrepreneurs looking at opportunities in the field. Some of those entrepreneurs will follow the current trends towards local, sustainable agriculture. But, others will see the opportunities and approach urban agriculture from the industrial approach. What will their agriculture look like?

(more…)

 

January 1, 2010

Final results of 2009 water saving test

Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life, Water | Tags: , , |
Leave a Comment 

I began saving water late in January 2009 to see how much water I could save by doing simple things like saving laundry rinse water and collecting my morning shower water while it warmed up. I also started saving rainwater in my five-gallon buckets. The results are in.

Some observations about my experiment:

  1. My biggest water savings came in two ways: a few large savings and many small savings. My largest source (44%) was from daily collection of about 1 gallon of shower water while the water warmed up. My second largest source (33%) was from laundry rinse water, collected five gallons at a time with a bucket in my laundry tub. So, it’s important to note that small savings do add up, and that it doesn’t require large “chunks” of water to save. (more…)
 

November 21, 2009

California gets up to speed on greywater

Posted by ramblinrobert under Politics and policy, Water | Tags: , , |
1 Comment 

A year and a half ago, I wrote about using greywater. In that post, I said that one of the problems facing homeowners was building codes that were outdated and did not allow for greywater systems. I’ll point out problems when I see them, but I’ll also give credit when it is due. I’m happy to report that the California Legislature has seen the light and modified state law to allow greywater systems. I offer a big thank you to the City of Santa Barbara for pushing this issue in Sacramento. Now California is catching up with a few other western state like Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Personally, I’m happy that the greywater system I’m thinking of putting in can now be put in legally. I’ll be able to save and use more greywater and it will be much easier, also. No more five-gallon buckets from the laundry room!

For more information on the legislation in California, visit this site. There are very helpful descriptions of what is allowed under the law and what is not. This is important, because there are a few safety precautions to take when designing and using greywater systems. For an introduction on greywater,  go to the Wikipedia article. An excellent resource for greywater is the Greywater Guerillas. Their website has loads of information and photographs on greywater systems and also includes information on other cutting edge water conservation technologies such as rainwater catchment and composting toilets. For more information on greywater systems, go here. (You’ll notice this last site is in Australia. As is often the case, other countries, particularly Australia and many Europeans countries, are far ahead  of the United States on environmental issues.)

In the U.S., Art Ludwig is the Godfather of Greywater and author of The New Create an Oasis with Greywater and Builder’s Greywater Guide. Art’s environmental design company, Oasis Design, includes plans for a Laundry to Landscape greywater system. For a laundry detergent developed by Art to be suitable for greywater use in irrigation, go to Bio Pac. If you’re in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, the Ecology Center in Berkeley sells it by the gallon.

 

February 27, 2009

More on gray water

Posted by ramblinrobert under Water
[2] Comments 

A friend saw my last post on gray water and had some interesting suggestions of her own that are worth sharing, as well as a plumbing issue they’ve been dealing with. In addition, she provided a link to one of the best (and short) summaries I’ve seen on gray water. Thanks, M2! Read on….

(more…)

 

February 11, 2009

Gardening during a drought

Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life, Water
1 Comment 

Last year I experimented with using grey water for irrigation (see 10 gallons of grey water). The drought is continuing, so I’m starting much sooner and also planning to track my water savings and sources during 2009. You can follow along at Saving water, 2009.

It’s important to note that using grey water for irrigation is not new. Government agencies have been using it for years to water landscaping, especially along highways, and golf courses have also been using it for some time. This latter may not be the highest and best use of grey water, but it’s better than using clean water.

It’s also important to note that this practice may need to become a way of life. One of the global warming predictions a few years back for northern California was that we would have wetter but warmer winters. The upshot of this is that less snowpack is expected. Because we have learned to use snowpack as a reservoir, this will pose problems because less water will be stored and available later in the season. Last week I heard someone comment on this year’s snowpack, saying that while the snowpack was low, precipitation was actually up for the year. This provides some evidence that those predictions of a few years ago may be correct. The end result is that we probably will have to use our water resources more efficiently, including grey water, in coming years.

 

Next Page »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.