As far as collection goes, there are a couple different options that I could choose from. If it were simple enough design, I would consider collecting rainwater in addition to waste water. For the rain water there must be a gutter collection kit you can make to collect the water into one central reservoir from all the gutters around the house. Some more obvious sources of unfiltered water could be the exhaust pipes from the dishwasher and washing machine. As long as you used environmentally friendly dish soap that is. If you were to use a biodegradable soap in all three of them I would wager that you would probably be able to clean the water enough to make my plants happy. But don’t hold me to it until after the research.
Storing the water would be difficult if there was a large supply that you were dealing with, especially on a daily basis. I imagine there is some sort of water tank is constructed just for this purpose or one that you could build out of say fiberglass or wood. You would need it to be very sturdy to last the winters. Also installing the right fittings to adapt it to your filter system and then later your irrigation system are rather important. If you had a large enough reservoir you could also probably also use it as a sort of thermal mass to keep a consistent temperature if used inside of a greenhouse, but that’s a different story. Now from the reservoir you would move on to the filtration unit. That would be some sort of PVC nightmare I imagine, but I have yet to find out the intimate details of the construction of such a unit. As far as I know there are a few different stages to the filtration process. All of those stages will probably want to be stacked on top of each other. This would allow gravity to pull the water down through each stage and into a clean collection tank at the bottom.
Irrigation has been done for thousands of years, so there are a couple different techniques that would suit my purposes here. My job is to sort through them and see what I can use. I know that the design I want to choose will have to be relatively simple so I can work on it with tools I have available. I also am looking for one that can be easily translated to the relatively large scale that I desire. There are different options when it comes to getting the water to the plants. Some systems use trenches filled with water to soak in. Others use sprinkler systems to spray over large areas. The last and most suited to my needs I believe would be a drip system. Some sort of tubing that would slowly release just enough water for my needs. I also want to incorporate some sort of valve that will allow me to adjust water flow dependent on what’s growing where.
Now we move on to the good stuff, the dirt. How should I arrange it to best utilize my nifty new irrigation system? Well if I were to use one of the drip irrigating methods, I would consider one of two methods. One would be relatively narrow and tall raised beds, with the drip line lying under the plant in the soil to get the water directly to the plants. Another method that I’m more familiar with would be to use shorter one foot tall raised beds. For those I would just lay the drip line on the plants at the base of the stem to apply the water. Either way the drip system will waste a lot less water than the trench and sprinkling setups due to its direct to plant application method. Well I had better get to researching to find out what’s going to work best for me and my garden!
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