hogback
Solar Enthusiast
Just an fyi - I've been watering 17 fruit trees almost exclusively with greywater for four years. It's been long enough now that I feel confident in reporting that this is fine. We use oasis/biopak for handwashing dishes and laundry. Griffin remedy for shampoo (but other stuff gets mixed in at times). Everything but the toilet goes directly in storage - two 55gal drums for sedimentation then a 300gal tank. Inlets via bulkhead to ell with pipe to near bottom - outlet near top. This minimizes chunks getting to the next tank. Bottom exit on 300gal tank goes to valve manifold. We do wipe plates and pans with paper towels to limit loading from food/fat/grease. These are composted of course. The trees are all on a hill and are watered manually with individual valves when the 300gal is full. This does take paying attention to. Each tree has its own 3/4 poly tubing. A bit of a pain to deal with all of these when I weedwhack once or twice per year. I used to just sit by the valves and use a level gauge to give each tree 10-15gal. The last couple of years I turn on a valve and manually move it around the tree base for more even watering. This does take quite a bit of time and climbing up and down the hill a bunch of times, so not for those that don't really care about their trees and reusing water. The house faucets are often fairly clogged with calcium, so that does lower the flow a lot. If I maintained them better I think we'd use a chunk more water.
I originally had decent volume aerators in each tank, and dosed a certain kind of septic chemical for breakdown. I haven't done that in a couple of years and haven't run the aerators in as long. The 55gal tanks have lids with a single 1" hole on top. I have a mesh bag filled with activated carbon on top. Smell is not a problem. It actually smelled more when I aerated. I mean, you probably wouldn't want to entertain on a patio with the tanks 10' away though. Only a wee bit of smell in very hot weather. The large tank has a larger easy to remove lid. I dose this tank with sulfuric acid (not religiously) to drop the alkalinity to horticultural levels (100ppm as bicarbonate). Our well and spring water starts at 5-600ppm. I do stir in this solution, and there is a bit of smell at this point but it is no big deal. We generally use about 250-350 gallons/week going into this system. The trees need more than this in the summer, so I supplement every other week or so. If I know I need to irrigate more frequently, I will 'waste' a lot of water doing dishes and take longer showers.
Common greywater recommendation is to NOT store the water. I can tell you that a week is not a problem. Also it is common to not use kitchen sink water. This is also not a problem. Often greywater is run directly to a tree or small group of trees directly from a washing machine. Hardly any of my trees are at the same elevation so this wouldn't work. My way offers a lot more control. You also have a buffer so a pot of boiling pasta water doesn't get dumped on the roots. The trees are heavily mulched with woodchips. Chunks and bits certainly make it through the system, so smaller than 3/4" poly probably wouldn't work. I've seen some systems with more sedimentation tanks, and the water can be made almost clear. Valves at the manifold are not the best quality and probably won't last too much longer.
Not only do you reuse water, but there is WAY less load on the septic system. Further, a killer of leach fields is laundry lint, so this is avoided.
Once a year I drain the tanks and spray them out with a hose. In winter the final tank just runs to waste to a bunch of bay, poison oak, and coyote brush.
A good upgrade would be some sort of a 'half toroid' trough for each tree, with spaced holes, so I could dose the water quickly to each tree, and it would get watered evenly around the base. Then I wouldn't have to climb up and down the hill so much. Maybe some 6" corrugated flexible pipe? This isn't all bad though, as it gets you up close to the trees. For whatever reason, the more you interact with and observe your trees, the better they seem to do.
Caracara orange
Meyer lemon
Bearss lime
Rangpur lime
Kaffir lime
Owari satsuma mandarin
Reed avocado
Lamb hass avocado
Carmen hass avocado
Craig's Crimson cherry
Grafted/mixed fig
Elephant heart plum
Emerald beaut plum
Blenheim apricot
Braeburn apple
Pink pearl apple
Comice pear
Seckel pear
Thought this might inspire some of you. It really is a win win win if you want to put a smidgen of weekly work in to open the valves and sit there watching the level gauge.
I originally had decent volume aerators in each tank, and dosed a certain kind of septic chemical for breakdown. I haven't done that in a couple of years and haven't run the aerators in as long. The 55gal tanks have lids with a single 1" hole on top. I have a mesh bag filled with activated carbon on top. Smell is not a problem. It actually smelled more when I aerated. I mean, you probably wouldn't want to entertain on a patio with the tanks 10' away though. Only a wee bit of smell in very hot weather. The large tank has a larger easy to remove lid. I dose this tank with sulfuric acid (not religiously) to drop the alkalinity to horticultural levels (100ppm as bicarbonate). Our well and spring water starts at 5-600ppm. I do stir in this solution, and there is a bit of smell at this point but it is no big deal. We generally use about 250-350 gallons/week going into this system. The trees need more than this in the summer, so I supplement every other week or so. If I know I need to irrigate more frequently, I will 'waste' a lot of water doing dishes and take longer showers.
Common greywater recommendation is to NOT store the water. I can tell you that a week is not a problem. Also it is common to not use kitchen sink water. This is also not a problem. Often greywater is run directly to a tree or small group of trees directly from a washing machine. Hardly any of my trees are at the same elevation so this wouldn't work. My way offers a lot more control. You also have a buffer so a pot of boiling pasta water doesn't get dumped on the roots. The trees are heavily mulched with woodchips. Chunks and bits certainly make it through the system, so smaller than 3/4" poly probably wouldn't work. I've seen some systems with more sedimentation tanks, and the water can be made almost clear. Valves at the manifold are not the best quality and probably won't last too much longer.
Not only do you reuse water, but there is WAY less load on the septic system. Further, a killer of leach fields is laundry lint, so this is avoided.
Once a year I drain the tanks and spray them out with a hose. In winter the final tank just runs to waste to a bunch of bay, poison oak, and coyote brush.
A good upgrade would be some sort of a 'half toroid' trough for each tree, with spaced holes, so I could dose the water quickly to each tree, and it would get watered evenly around the base. Then I wouldn't have to climb up and down the hill so much. Maybe some 6" corrugated flexible pipe? This isn't all bad though, as it gets you up close to the trees. For whatever reason, the more you interact with and observe your trees, the better they seem to do.
Caracara orange
Meyer lemon
Bearss lime
Rangpur lime
Kaffir lime
Owari satsuma mandarin
Reed avocado
Lamb hass avocado
Carmen hass avocado
Craig's Crimson cherry
Grafted/mixed fig
Elephant heart plum
Emerald beaut plum
Blenheim apricot
Braeburn apple
Pink pearl apple
Comice pear
Seckel pear
Thought this might inspire some of you. It really is a win win win if you want to put a smidgen of weekly work in to open the valves and sit there watching the level gauge.
