Water
Every drop counts.
Recycling a precious resource in your home.
In the Southwest, water is a precious resource, it makes sense to utilize rainwater and grey water for landscape vegetation.
Grey Water.
Rainwater Collection.
Grey water is an often under used resource. If planned correctly, plumbing from individual fixtures can be brought to outside mulch basins to water existing or new landscape plantings. Generally wetter zones are nearest the home and can include plants or trees which require more water. This also has the added benefit of reducing fire danger. As you move further away from the house zones become drier and consist mostly of native vegetation. Diverter valves can be used to direct water to different basins or zones. This can be a fairly low tech system with the proper planning.
Rainwater harvesting is another resource we can use for general landscape watering. Roof designs can be used to funnel rainwater into a central holding tank or each roof section could collect its own rainwater. Surprisingly we can collect 600 gallons of water off of a 1000 square foot roof with 1 inch of rain. So during a good monsoon season we could potentially collect many thousands of gallons. Holding tanks could gravity feed landscape zones or submersible pumps could be installed to pump water to upslope vegetation. It’s also possible to filter rainwater to make it potable for consumption. There are restrictions however to rainwater harvesting if you live on the west side of the continental divide.