Buckets and Hoses

Graywater Gardening
From Buckets to Irrigation Systems

Buckets and Hoses

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Buckets

Buckets are cheap, and with care and effort can be used to water various areas of the garden. Points to consider are:

Limited amount of water

Most people only use 1 or 2 buckets in the shower. This will capture up to 4 gallons per person per day. Not enough for the whole garden (unless your balcony is the garden), but enough for prized plants.

Note a 10 minute shower (the shower would need to run this long to fill the buckets), running at 3 gallons per minute is 30 gallons of water, so 26 gallons of water is used to save 4 gallons.

The average person generates over 25 gallons of graywater per day in the shower, bath and laundry. So buckets are a great start, but only re-use about 10% of the graywater going down the drain.
Over watering

During water rationing, people often concentrate on a limited number of prized plants. Always check the soil moisture level before adding extra water. Killing plants by over watering is a common problem in drought affected areas.
Safety

Apart from back problems caused by frequent carrying of buckets in the house and in the garden, beware of spilled water / slipping dangers.

Hoses

Washer Machines

About 5 years ago major Australian hardware chains started selling 1" hose kits. The kit couldn't be simpler, a 1" hose, with a rubber connection on one end and simply open at the other. People simply connected the hose to the washer, and moved the hose around the garden from wash to wash.

In addition to the high risk of blowing up washer machine pumps (see laundry to landscape), with simple hoses such as these, the following were particular problems in Australia:

Over watering / Under watering

With simple hoses, all the water (often 40 gallons per wash) is dumped in one small area of the garden, resulting in over watering that area, with other areas going dry. Similar to bucket watering, people would concentrate water in their favorite areas, in the end killing with over watering.
Killing plants with high PH water

To avoid over watering favorite garden areas, people would move the simple hose between wash / rinse cycles, 'sharing' the water around the garden during the wash.

In theory this is fine. In practice  people develop a habit of always moving the hose around in the same pattern (eg. 1st water here, 1st rinse over there, and the 2nd rinse in the third spot). This is not good for your garden and will kill plants over time.

The issue is primarily the first load of water from the washer machine. Virtually all effective washing powders, 'eco-friendly' or not, need high PH water to wash the dirt from the clothes. The PH of this first amount of water is 10.5. As the washer processes each cycle, the PH of the water in drops.

If you were to temporarily store all of the water from one wash, the overall PH is generally between 9.0 and 9.5 which is ok for most gardens.
Always watering in one area with PH 10.5 water will kill plants. If you are going to move a hose around, move in a different pattern each day.

Waste Pipe Diverters / Hoses

These diverters come in many shapes and styles. They divert water from showers (pipe under the house) and laundry (often a vertical pipe on the outside wall). Gravity hoses can then be connected to the diverter valve.

Although shower water is basically PH neutral, and therefore removes PH risk, over watering becomes a significant issue, especially when diverting all shower water, and not moving the hose each day.

Over watering remains a significant risk for laundry pipe diverter and hose sets.

Further information about Irrigation Methods

Irrigating every day

Subsurface dripperlines

Laundry to landscape

Pumped hose / nozzle

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