8:50pm
Where I work, they’ve put in a new system for watering
the giant trees between a lab and an 8-floor parking garage. It uses grey
water, the non-potable but non-toxic water from your shower or from laundries.
They haven’t got the signage in yet, but I recognize it by its purple color.
All the tubing, both the flex tubing and the plastic pipes, are a bright purple.
This color pair, this purple and grey, join green as the new colors of urban
environmentalism.
I try to be a reasonably green citizen myself. But it can
be overdone. I learned this the hard way. Literally, hard.
I don’t buy single-use water bottles. In fact, I don’t
buy water in bottles at all. I’ve always thought privatizing water was a
criminal scam, and after watching “Tapped” on YouTube,
I also realized what a pollution source all those plastic bottles are. I can’t
imagine anyone buying it that way if they have any access to public water
systems…run by non-Republicans.
I have solar panels on my roof. It’s a small roof on a
small house, built back in 1939, but I covered about half the roof and all of
the garage with ‘em. It helps on the power bill, and also helps my conscience.
All the fixtures in the house have been replaced by
low-flow versions, as we replaced and upgraded old systems. Dishwasher and
clothes washer, both toilets, both showers. I even take ‘navy’ showers, turning
the water off while I soap up or wash down. It’s only on to wet me or to rinse
me. I’m in and out in 5 minutes or less, according to my water company’s free
5-minute hourglass, suction cupped on the shower door.
I even grey-watered the clothes washer and the main
bathtub. The used water ran out to the front yard. Yes, yard. But I let in run
wild. It lets the rain that’s soaked LA this winter month trickle to the
aquifer below us all. The lawn just has to deal with the summer heat on its
own. Fortunately, this kind of grey water system is legal in LA, and in all of
California, now.
Unfortunately, it made my sewer line back up.
With all this upgrading of systems, through a new kitchen
a couple decades ago, and a new bathroom ten years back, every piece of plumbing
in the house got replaced. Except the line out to the sewer. But it never gave
us any trouble. Just two adults here, no diapers, no more feminine products, so
everything worked fine.
Then suddenly, it didn’t. I had an overflow into a shower
stall in one bathroom. Neighbor’s recommended Roto-guy comes out, opens the
sewer clear-out, and sludge just starts oozing out. He runs the rotor and then
flushes the line with water from my garden house, then does a camera
inspection. Old pipe, kinda bumpy, but otherwise all clear. Should be fine.
Whew.
Less than a year later, have to call him again. I can
smell shit. Outside. Following my nose, it’s near that sewer clear-out
again. Roto again, flush again, camera
again. We basically pick up our conversation from last time, including age of
houses, old-style plumbing, new trends in plumbing, and grey-water systems. And
we figured something out.
Not enough water is going down the house’s old sewer line
to make sure everything makes it to the city sewer. Between lo-flow everything,
from shower heads to, well, to the heads in both bathrooms, there’s nowhere
near the amount of water the original designers expected when they put in the
diameter of pipe, and the slope angle of the line as it runs to the main sewer.
Hell, when the original 1939 toilet in the house broke, it was illegal to sell
me the same kind to replace it. Almost three gallons a flush. In California?
Hell no.
Add in the grey water system. Or more precisely, take out
the water from the grey water system. The bathtub doesn’t flush down through
the sewer line anymore. And the forced pressure from the clothes washer’s water
going down the same line doesn’t happen anymore either.
Apparently, I’d overshot the mark on water efficiency and
cost reduction. Getting my sewer line roto’d isn’t cheap. Neither was having the last piece of plumbing
I could access replaced. It was the part of that old steel pipe that ran under
the crawlspace below the house. The one the plumber kept running a video camera
down. Buried a few inches below ground, starting to leak, with enough mineral and
rust build-up inside it that stuff would keep catching on it instead of flowing
through it. That part got replaced with a long, single, smooth run of modern plastic
pipe. As of now, the only piece of 1939 left in my plumbing is the last forty
feet that run under the garage floor into the sewer in the back alley. Too
tough to dig up, but I might get it epoxy-lined, to get the same smoothness,
and a new seal against wear.
I also changed my grey-water schedule from full-time to
alternating months. Even months, water the lawn. Odd months, flush the sewer
line. That all seems to have done the trick. No probs in over two years.
Recently, I had to pull out the grey water system for the clothes
washer. Did you know people die in house fires caused by them never checking
their lint traps? Yeah, I didn’t know either. I clear mine after every load. But that
part of my grey water system was sacrificed so that those morons don’t die. Not
a fair trade, in my opinion. But that story’s for another essay.
9:37pm
9:52pm
No comments:
Post a Comment