Saturday 13 December 2014

Urban Rainwater Harvesting - "Slow It, Spread It & Sink It!"

Hello!  Have you ever thought about harvesting rain water in your urban property instead of draining it out of your property? How about recycling your 'grey water' in the garden? 

  • "Why is it that we get rid of all this free - high quality, fresh rain water as quick as possible from our landscape and then we pull a distant water, with a decreased water quality, back to our use which comes with a high expense?" -Brad Lancaster

What can we do at home to harvest that high quality rain water?  How can we recycle a 'grey water' (water used in a kitchen, in a washing machine and in the shower) to save energy and the environment? 

                "Plant The Rain Before Planting Trees" - Brad Lancaster

There are ways to save and recycle water.  But there is also a way of re-hydrating the ground and keep our gardens hydrated longer.
 
  • By using earth works to slow down a flow of water and soak it into the landscape instead of draining it out of your property. 
  • When pruning your plants in the garden instead of dumping them, 'chop and drop' plant clippings in your garden creating a mulch which protects the soil from drying out, also recycles nutrients back in the ground and creates a 'heaven' for "happy micro-organisms".  Like it is in the natural forest. 
After doing a little bit of research I found this interesting and informative video from Permasolutions titled with Brad Lancaster: "Urban Water Harvesting Systems".

I especially liked triple S's - the way Brad talks about re-hydrating our landscapes - "Slowing, Spreading & Sinking the flow of water, instead of Pave It, Pipe It & Pollute It."

As he says "We all can choose our story - What is yours?"  Ours at the moment is 160 litres of water per day for two of us (the average water usage in our city 197 litres/person/day) and decreasing...

Enjoy the video!

http://youtu.be/WymWRDd1OOg 


Hope you enjoyed this post.  Do you have any water saving ideas that would benefit all of us in our home and garden?  Let us know in the comment box below :-) 

Heli & Allan Iso-Aho

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