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 grey water thing that we're doing here at the Homestead.
So normally what you would do with grey water is you would do laundry first.
That's the more sensible one usually.
We've got the laundry machines through 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's 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 and 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. Some of them look amazing.
This guy right here, he's looking very good. That's the Valencia orange.
And the cara cara, these look great. But the Yuzu 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.
Brook 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 Brook 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 gonna do right now is I'm going to start with the
shower and bathroom sink water.
This is grey water and it's legal to use grey
water in the state of California and in San Diego.
So what we're going to do is put,
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 a 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 grey water 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 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 grey 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
flip the switch. 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 grey water to.
In a very pleasant way for the homeowner. Yes. Yeah,
without having to crawl under 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 grey water system.
So the water will be draining to this point.
We're going to install this level and
then water will pull 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. Yup.
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 cause we 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's 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 Brook 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.
So the other one over here is a little bit less far along. Okay,
so Jacques found a salamander underneath the dragonfruit.
Where is it? There it is. I don't want to break 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 in the ground and put mulch below 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 get a pry bar on either side,
this whole piece should just pop right out.
We could hit it with a mallet too if we want. Right? Yeah.
So we got the, 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
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 has 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 and 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 grey water today too,
which is fantastic.
And this is where this one's going to come out and it's going to irrigate this
artichoke 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,
gonna finish it up by drilling it in on this side. Oh yeah.
Did I get it? Oh, here 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 grey 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 Jacques? Like 15 inches wide?
I think like 18 inches wide. Less than a foot, about a foot deep. 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 Jacques.
So we need a Jacques appreciation comment again on the, 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 is 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 patch.
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. However,
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.
Whoo.
By the way,
this is what we're doing for our giant cabbage San Juan Cabbagestrano.
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 backfilled 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 gotta 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 got to,
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 grey 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 grey water.
It has been a really long day. I am pretty tired. I got to say,
we gotta 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, Brook from Catching H2O,
her info is going to be down below.
There's going to be more coming with Brook 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.