The Water-Wise Home: How to Conserve, Capture, and Reuse Water in Your Home and Landscape

by Laura Allen

Overview

Save the earth’s most precious resource while also saving yourself money. Laura Allen provides expert strategies for using water smartly and efficiently while fulfilling all of your home and garden needs. Learn how to create a water-wise landscape, reuse greywater, harvest rainwater, and even set up a waterless composting toilet. Offering proven techniques in clear and accessible language, The Water-Wise Home makes it easy to help the environment and lower your household operating costs through conserving water.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612121697
Publisher:	Storey Publishing, LLC
Publication date:	01/27/2015
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,109,458
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 10.70(h) x 2.50(d)

About the Author

Laura Allen is the author of The Water-Wise Home and cofounder of Greywater Action, a collaborative of educators who teach residents and tradespeople about affordable and simple household water systems that dramatically reduce water use and foster sustainable cultures of water. She leads classes and workshops, including the first training program for professional greywater installers, and participates in writing state government greywater and composting toilet codes. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Water-Wise Basics

Chapter 1 Why Conserve Water?
Reasons to Conserve Water - Where Does Your Water Come From? - What's a Water-Wise Home?

Chapter 2 What's Wrong with Our Water Systems?
The Good News and Bad News - Sources of Water - Why Is Water Scarce? - Sewage Treatment and Stormwater Pollution - When Rain Pollutes: Stormwater - A Better Water Future

Chapter 3 Saving Water in the Home and Landscape
Cultivating a Water-Conserving Ethic - Fix the Leaks! - The Mini Makeover - Does Your Landscape Have a Drinking Problem? - Designing a Water-Wise Landscape - Irrigation Systems - Greywater, Rainwater, and Waterless Toilets

Part 2 Water Wise Solutions

Chapter 4 Greywater Reuse: Planning Your Home System
Identify Your Greywater Sources - Your Home's Drain, Waste, and Vent System - Estimate Your Greywater Flows - Find the Flow Rates of Faucets, Showerheads, and Washing Machines - Soil Structure and Type - Identify Your Soil with a Soil Ribbon Test - Mulch Basins - Choosing Plants for Greywater Irrigation - How Much Water Do My Plants Want? - System Design Consideration - Plant-Friendly Soaps - When Greywater Is Not a Great Idea - Using Greywater to Flush - Health and Safety Considerations - Codes and Regulations

Chapter 5 Installing Your Greywater System
Choosing a Greywater System - Laundry-to-Landscape (L2L) System - Installing an L2L Irrigation System - Irrigation Options - Branch Drain Gravity-Fed System (Without Storage) - Installing a Branched Drain System - How to Wire an Actuator - Greywater System with Tank and Pump - Building a Pumped System - Manufactured Greywater Systems - Other Types of Greywater Systems - Plumbing Basics for Greywater Installation

Chapter 6 Rainwater Harvesting: Planning Your System
How Will You Use the Rainwater? - Keeping Rainwater in Your Landscape: Permeable Hardscape and Rain Gardens - Roofwater Collection - Basci Components of a Catchment System - Using Rain Indoors - Rainwater Containers - Codes and Regulations

Chapter 7 Building Rainwater Harvesting Systems
Planning and Designing a Rain Garden - Constructing a Rain Garden - Roofwater Collection Systems - Converting a Single 55-Gallon Barrel - Connecting Rain Barrels Together: A Daisy Chain - Installing an Aboveground Plastic Rainwater Tank - Irrigation Systems

Chapter 8 Waterless and Composting Toilets
Composting Is Composting - Toilet Types - Composting Toilets and the Law - Using Urine as Fertilizer - Choosing a Composting Toilet - Building a Sawdust Bucket Toilet - Building a Urine-Diverting Toilet - Compost Piles and Bins -Building a Barrel Composting Chamber with Netting

Resources
Acknowledgements
Index

Editorial Reviews

12/15/2014
Allen, cofounder of Greywater Action, a collaborative that educates those building sustainable water culture and infrastructure, outlines the U.S. water shortfall, along with techniques for saving and reusing water for the benefits of trees, wildlife, and one’s bank account. The average American family uses 400 gallons of water a day. Homeowners who want to conserve can get their feet wet in the essentials of drought-proofing the home, understanding the failures in current municipal water systems, and installing pipes for house waste as well as rainwater. The author explains how to determine the faults in one’s home water-delivery system before immersing the reader in the less appealing aspects of water conservation (sharing bath water or converting the swimming pool into a harvesting tank). Complete instructions are offered for using rain barrels, tanks, and cisterns, before moving on to more complicated processes, such as installing an indoor gray-water greenhouse with a composting toilet. Awash with information, the beginner may feel a bit intimidated by the prospect of fertilizing with urine by book’s end, but the projects address all skill levels and degrees of commitment. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"If every home were fully retrofitted with all the projects in this book, we would be well on our way to water security and watershed recovery." — Brock Dolman, director of Occidental Arts and Ecology Center's WATER Institute

"This book is the real deal. Laura Allen lives, practices, and teaches what she writes about. I’ve used her water-harvesting systems and composting toilets, along with those of many of her students, colleagues, and mentors — they all work wonderfully! Read this book, and yours could too." — Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond

From the Publisher