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˜This book is more or less a coherent distillation of most of what’s at this website [https://oasisdesign.net/greywater/].
Art Ludwig, Create An Oasis With Greywater: Choosing, Building, And Using Greywater Systems : Includes Branched Drains
It’s a large (8x10 or so) slim volume with a colorful cover and a greyscale interior.
It is written in a clear, direct vernacular style, with some technical terms but everything well-explained. What I liked best about the website, and found continued well in the book, was its no-nonsense approach to what won’t work. Here’s why you’d think you could do that, and here, vividly detailed, is exactly what will happen. It’s very good, and extremely readable, even entertaining. This includes “here’s what the law currently is in California, and here’s why everything the code tells you to do is absolutely wrong and you should under no circumstances do it.” But, for the record, and as the website details, since the book was published, the author actually got the law changed in California, and now the code is much better.
Do I think you could get most of this information from the website? Sure. Do I think this book would be a fantastic reference to have to hand as you plan out your actual greywater system? Absolutely. The best part, perhaps, is the mistakes he highlights that an experienced contractor or plumber would make, because they’re used to systems working differently. I would absolutely buy this book even after having gotten it out of the library and copied down everything I thought was important, just to have a thing to show a skeptical observer. It’s very good.
So– if you have ever stood at your sink guiltily watching perfectly clean cold water go down the drain as you wait for the water to heat up to wash your dishes or whatever, you should check out that website, and if you get any niggles of interest, check out this book. He’s got real-world examples of all kinds of systems, including both extremely dry places who need the greywater to sustain their landscape and are desperate to recapture every drop, and very wet places who just need the water to go somewhere that it won’t hurt anything.
My own potential installation is for a site too near a creek to install a septic system, where my primary concern is how to redirect water from showers away from the creek so as not to pollute, without having gross puddles of standing water anywhere, so I feared there’d be nothing useful for me in all the tales of desperately-dry California landscaping– but worry not, there was an Oregonian example with a situation very similar to mine and a very detailed solution illustrated nicely.
So, in short, a thumbs-up recommendation. Even if you don’t have anything concrete planned, it’s an interesting read, if only for the stories of the places he’s done installations.
˜This book is more or less a coherent distillation of most of what’s at this website [https://oasisdesign.net/greywater/].
Art Ludwig, Create An Oasis With Greywater: Choosing, Building, And Using Greywater Systems : Includes Branched Drains
It’s a large (8x10 or so) slim volume with a colorful cover and a greyscale interior.
It is written in a clear, direct vernacular style, with some technical terms but everything well-explained. What I liked best about the website, and found continued well in the book, was its no-nonsense approach to what won’t work. Here’s why you’d think you could do that, and here, vividly detailed, is exactly what will happen. It’s very good, and extremely readable, even entertaining. This includes “here’s what the law currently is in California, and here’s why everything the code tells you to do is absolutely wrong and you should under no circumstances do it.” But, for the record, and as the website details, since the book was published, the author actually got the law changed in California, and now the code is much better.
Do I think you could get most of this information from the website? Sure. Do I think this book would be a fantastic reference to have to hand as you plan out your actual greywater system? Absolutely. The best part, perhaps, is the mistakes he highlights that an experienced contractor or plumber would make, because they’re used to systems working differently. I would absolutely buy this book even after having gotten it out of the library and copied down everything I thought was important, just to have a thing to show a skeptical observer. It’s very good.
So– if you have ever stood at your sink guiltily watching perfectly clean cold water go down the drain as you wait for the water to heat up to wash your dishes or whatever, you should check out that website, and if you get any niggles of interest, check out this book. He’s got real-world examples of all kinds of systems, including both extremely dry places who need the greywater to sustain their landscape and are desperate to recapture every drop, and very wet places who just need the water to go somewhere that it won’t hurt anything.
My own potential installation is for a site too near a creek to install a septic system, where my primary concern is how to redirect water from showers away from the creek so as not to pollute, without having gross puddles of standing water anywhere, so I feared there’d be nothing useful for me in all the tales of desperately-dry California landscaping– but worry not, there was an Oregonian example with a situation very similar to mine and a very detailed solution illustrated nicely.
So, in short, a thumbs-up recommendation. Even if you don’t have anything concrete planned, it’s an interesting read, if only for the stories of the places he’s done installations.
