Grey Water Systems: Shower, Bathroom Sink, and Laundry Conversion!

Good morning everyone. Today we're going to be doing something really cool where we're taking the shower water and the sink water. I'm going to show you exactly what we're doing with it. This is the first gray water thing that we're doing here at the homestead. So normally what you would do with gray water is you would do laundry first. That's the more sensible one usually. We've got the laundry machines right there. We're going to be doing that, but I figured why not go big? So let me show you exactly where all of this water is going to go. So you guys remember we have our rainwater capture, we have our HVAC system, but the shower water is going to come out here. It's going to go all the way across to the citrus hedge and we're going to water two basins. So we're going to make two basins. One basin will be right here for these four plants. One basin will be right there for those four plants. And so the shower water is going to become our citrus irrigation. And yes, I know some of the citrus don't look that good. But some of them look amazing. This guy right here, he's looking very good. That's the Valencia orange and the Caracara. These look great. But the user doesn't look that good. Hold on, let's take a look. Oof. Not the best thing to see, I will admit. Typically this is going to be an overwatering issue or a stress issue. So I'm just going to see if it comes back. I mean, see these yellowing leaves just pop right off the plant, which is not a good feeling. But we'll hopefully get that to come back. As you can see, the work has begun in a way. We've gotten some tools out. We've got some gear out, some hole saws. We're going to need those. But over here in the front, see if we can find her. Brooke is here from Catching H2O. She's going to be helping me out. Take a look. All these fittings, PVC glue, all that kind of stuff. She's probably over here. So here's Brooke from Catching H2O, already hard at work over here. We've got quite the tools. I already explained kind of generally what we're doing, but on like a nuts and bolts level, how does this actually work? Yeah. So what we're going to do right now is I'm going to start with the shower and bathroom sink water. This is gray water and it's legal to use gray water in the state of California and in San Diego. So what we're going to do is install a three-way valve in the plumbing under the house, which is where we can capture the water under the shower as it's draining. And the three-way valve allows you to turn the water back to the sewer. You know, if you need to like clean your shower with bleach or it's raining a lot and you don't want to discharge gray water into the, into everything, the saturated ground it's that's also part of code is you need to be able to turn it back to the, to the sewer. So by installing this three-way valve, we're going to have the water coming in and then be able to be diverted either to the sewer or the gray water line, which is going to run under the house and to the other side to the citrus trees. But obviously you're not going to want to crawl under the house every time you switch. So, so we're going to install an actuator. This is just like a spa and pool valve. And so this is very common material. So we're going to install this actuator on the valve, which will, it's low voltage. So it'll be tied to a transformer and a switch that's going to be located in the bathroom so that you can flip from gray water to. In a very pleasant way for the homeowner. Yes. Yeah. Without having to crawl into the house. So just using ABS parts. Standard plumbing. Standard. Everything is standard here. Yeah. The only difference is that we're draining it outside instead of into the sewer system. And then when we get to the end, you'll see this piece, which is not as standard or readily available. It's a double L fitting and we're going to use it to create what's called a branched drain gray water system. So the water will be draining to this point. We're going to install this level and then water will pool out. 50% of the water will come out this way and 50% this way. So we can split it into the two basins feeding the eight trees. For four trees each. Yep. Perfect. Okay. Well step one is getting under there I guess and getting into it. So we have the rough spot for both of the trenches, four trees right there and four trees right there. So we're going to dig 12 inches deep and about maybe two foot wide or so. But before we do that, we actually have to, this is a dump pile for the dirt by the way, before we do that, we have to clear out this area, which Jacques is working on because we've got to get the piping out from the underneath of the house. It's going to go underneath here and run all the way out. But since this concrete is coming out for pavers at some point in the future, probably going to use this hammer to just like jackhammer a little section out so we don't have to dig under it for no reason. So here's trench number one. We're still going to run it by Brooke and see what she says. But we've gone about two feet wide. We've gone about 12 inches deep and you want to kind of score the sides so it's not like a flat wall. But man, number one, I need to work out more. But number two, it's a lot of dirt. I mean it really is a lot of dirt. The other one over here is a little bit less far along. Okay, so Jacques found a salamander underneath the dragon fruit. Where is it? Do you see it? Oh, it's right there. Look at that. Tiny little guy. There it is. Wow. I did not expect that. And some worms. And some worms. So secret just put pots on the ground and put mulch below it and you'll get something. That's so cool. Let's see how this goes. So we've got a crack all the way through. So now, and this is already cracked. You can see the grass. So if we got a pry bar on either side, this whole piece should just pop right up. We could hit it with a mallet too if we want, right? Yeah. So we got the, um, we got the trench done. We got this stuck a couple of times. All good. But eventually we did it with sledgehammer and pneumatic and uh, look at this. I mean this Bermuda, look at the Bermuda. So the Bermuda there was a crack right here. We went in naturally against the crack and you can see the Bermuda coming up from below the concrete pad and just like attaching to the inside of the wall and like searching straight up. Insatiable plant. All right. It's been a little bit, but we've trenched out this entire piping. We haven't actually tied the pipe together cause you have to make sure it drops about a quarter inch every foot. So there's a pretty significant drop from this point over to this point. And now we're going to break through this. We're actually digging this trench a little deeper as well as that one. So that's the next step. Okay. We are actually doing the laundry gray water today too, um, which is fantastic. And this is where this one's going to come out and it's going to irrigate this hard and silk patch or whatever else ends up being here over the course of many, many years. So we just have to drill the hole. So the hole's half drilled on the other side. I'm going to finish it up by drilling it in on this side. Did I get it? Oh, there we go. I'm off a little bit though, huh? We have the plumbing coming out. It's going to drop down into this little channel and then it's going to this sort of J. And this J is just the channel for the laundry gray water. The laundry runs on a pump. So it will pump it out into this little channel here. So you don't need to be extremely particular. We just went maybe, what did you say Jock, like 15 inches wide? I think like 18 inches wide, less than a third, about a thirteenth. Yeah. Yeah. You don't need to be too stressed about it and it's just going to trickle out. I do laundry maybe once or twice a week at a maximum. So it's not going to be a ton of water, but it is going to be some water to save. We've been doing a lot of digging. Actually, mostly it's been Jock. So we need a Jock appreciation comment again on the video. Cause my energy has been extremely low today. But I do want to show you, you know, what's going on over here. We have this plumbing. It's like roughly fit out. Got my straw hat on. And it's coming out and it's boop, coming into here. It'll go into here and then it'll jump in through there into there. The laundry system is installed as far as the irrigation goes. So you can see there's going to be one, two, and then a third point right there. And then we're going to put these little caps on so that no debris gets in them. But it's pretty simple in the laundry. I'm actually running a load of laundry right now just to see how it works. So there's the shower right there. And then the water comes down. You have a little P-trap here. And then right there is the three-way valve with the actuator on top, which is wired up through the house into the bathroom. So I can turn the switch on in the bathroom. But take a look. If you flip it, it'll either go this way towards the sewer or it'll go this way and out towards the citrus pad. So it's really handy to have that wire up there cause obviously I'm not coming underneath my house to turn it on or off. All right, we actually have it working guys. This is crazy. So there's one of them. It comes out and it does a perfect 50-50 split right there. So you can see it coming out right there. And then it also runs down this channel here and it fills up right here as well. So we actually have the entire shower system up and running. As you can see, the shadows are long. It's been a long day, but it's looking really good. All right, it is the evening. It's getting to be the evening. Actually look at the sunset. Look at this. Is that not amazing? Oh my God. Woo. By the way, this is what we're doing for our giant cabbage, San Juan cabbage strano. We are very much protecting him from the heat. But you guys don't care about that. You want to see the final system setup. Final thoughts here. What we're going to do here, this is perfectly fine, but what we can do is we can cut in to here, to here, to here in between these artichokes and we can actually distribute this water a little bit more effectively. All this will get back filled with mulch because you don't want to put dirt in there. It'll clog it up. So you want to put mulch in there. And then the mulch acts as sort of a wicking layer. What you got over here, so this actually was the most challenging part. I got to be honest with you guys. This was quite challenging. So what you have to do is you've got to drop at least an eighth of an inch per foot, which means, you know, over the course of 40 feet or so, you're dropping quite significantly as you can see. And then what we do is we come out here and you pop in. Now I will show you really quickly how this works. So this is a simple setup really. So let's get this out. You gotta, there we go. So it's a perfect splitter. So 50% of the water goes out that top right there. You can see it dripping. And then 50% splits down into this pipe, which also has to run an eighth inch drop on the grade out to here. So what's really cool is we have, look, one all the way down, eight of the citrus trees. But right here we can do at least another eight trees. So we have 16 trees watered solely, almost solely on the shower. I'm not sure if I showed you guys, but this is how the laundry gray water works. So you have your water, it pumps up into here from the laundry. And then if I go like this and turn it down, it's going to route it out down here into the sewer or we call it the black water. And then this way, boom, it's going to come down here, run down and go into that artichoke patch that you just saw. But there's one final thing I need to show you in this mess of a home. Home tour coming soon. Don't worry. But take a look at this. Easily my favorite feature and where I will be ending today's video. This little toggle here. Now watch, if I turn it up, I don't know if you can hear that, but there's an actuator going down below there that is actually turning it to black water. So if I turn this on right now and it runs out, it's going to run straight into the sewer. And if I turn it back this way, it's going to run to the gray water. It's been a really long day. I am pretty tired. I got to say, we got to give shout outs to Jacques in the comments. He came over and he blasted through a lot of this digging and helped me out a lot. Then of course, Brooke from Catching H2O. Her info is going to be down below. There's going to be more coming with Brooke. So stay tuned for that. But right now in one day, we have water coming from our laundry and our shower going straight into the Epic Homestead landscape. And that feels pretty good. So I'm really stoked. I'm actually going to use this shower now. So that's not going on the video. Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.