Grey Water

     I am loving summer and greatly enjoying the bounty of my garden. I really enjoy going out every morning and picking the kale and lettuce for my lunch salad. The one thing I don't like is my water bill. Before we put in the garden we used very little water but it has almost doubled this year. Of course we are getting food out of the deal but I do feel guilty sometimes when I see all the water we use in the house and in the yard. And of course, this got me thinking.
     Many (many) years ago when I was an environmental education volunteer in the Peace Corps I learned a bit about ways to reduce water conservation, composting toilets and the like. I was oddly fascinated by these concepts but since I was not going into the waste management field when I returned home I didn't give them much thought. That is, until I bought a house and saw my water bill. Suddenly water conservation doesn't seem like just an environmental issue but an economic one as well. Now, I could bore you with lots of facts about water usage or anecdotes about what it is like to live in a place where water is limited but I think a good pie chart might be more useful.

     This image was taken off LaFayette University's website although I think they got it off of Google to begin with. Anyway, this delicious pie chart gives you the average percentages of what we use water for in our homes. Flushing the toilet is the biggest followed by clothes washing, showering and just water coming from the faucets. If you add it all up it comes out to 70.5 gallons a day.
     Now is when I could say what other people around the world use per day and try and shame Americans into changing their habits. But that won't work. I think we all know by now that here in the US we use way more resources than anyone else. The point of this post is not to shame anyone but to put out ideas for how we can improve our lives which just so happen to also be environmentally friendly and save us money. That being said, let me explain gray water vs. black water.
     As most literate people can see from the chart, gray water is composed of what comes out of the shower, bath, down the faucets and from washing clothes. It is called this because most of the time it actually is gray. Usually there is not many toxins in gray water. Especially if you use eco-friendly soaps and detergents this water may be a little greasy and gross but with some simple filtration it can easily be reused. (More on that later)
    Black water on the other hand is what comes out of the toilet and in this case the dish washer and kitchen sink. I learned about black water in Fiji where there were not many dishwashers so that one is new to me. Anyway, although the water may not actually be black it is called black water because it can carry pathogens and be dangerous. So black like death.

     Now we get to the fun part. What can you do with this water? The vast majority of American homes have it carried away to the local water treatment plant or into their own septic system. Used once and then gone. But what if you could reuse it? Yuck, I know, right? But it is not as crazy as it sounds. Take a look at this little devise.

     This is the Sloan Aqus Greywater System. And I think it is adorable. A reusable filter keeps out the hair and larger gunk while chlorine helps to get rid of the germs. Then the clean(er) water is used to flush the toilet. Although the water is not clean enough to drink, I really don't care because I don't drink out of my toilet, it is totally safe to flush the toilet with. Here is another diagram which might help you wrap your head around this concept.

     Simple idea, right? How is it that not every home in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada has one of these? If you refer back to the pie chart you will see that on average this could save 18 gallons of water a day. Water rates vary but with a price tag of less than $200 I think this little guy could pay for himself pretty quickly. This is a really simple and easy form of reusing grey water. Whenever you can replace clean water with grey water then you are saving money and resources. I am happy to clean out a filter every so often if I can save 6, 570 gallons of water a year or about 25% of my water bill.

     In my next post I will talk about even more gray water systems. What if you could reuse all that water from your shower and clothes washer to water your garden? Talk about money in your pocket!
    

Upholstery Adventure

     Since I am a crafty person the idea of reupholstering furniture has always appealed to me. I love giving new life to old things and what better way than redoing furniture so that it fits perfectly into my decor? So when I stumbled upon the book Style, Stitch, Staple at the library I decided now was my time to learn. After a short trip to the Goodwill I had my first project, an ottoman.

     This ottoman cost $15 but it was rectangular so it would be an easy first experiment.

 Step one: Demolition.

     Having never ripped apart a piece of furniture before I must say I was a little surprised to find that this was just a wooden box with some padding on top covered in fabric. The top of the box was screwed on so I easily unscrewed it so I could do my tufting work.

Step two: Design choice 

     There were a couple different ideas in the book I had but I decided to go with tufted top. Since the book did not cover this exact kind of wooden box ottoman I went with my gut and did what I thought would end up looking good. You can see the faint pencil lines where I divided the top into four sections and then arraigned the buttons in a diamond design. I did this for two reasons. One, I thought it looked nice and two, I only had four buttons. I used antique shell buttons that I had gotten at some second hand store years ago. Being a bit of a pack rat helps when you like to do spur of the moment projects.
     I forgot to take pictures of my next step which was to drill two small wholes through the wood, right next to each other, where ever button would go. This was so I could have something to sew the buttons to through the fabric and stuffing.

Step three: Fabric choice

     I chose an organic purple hemp and cotton blend fabric. This fabric is thicker and sturdier that regular cotton fabric and the purple matches my living room which is purple and orange. You want to use a slightly heavier fabric when upholstering because you have to put a lot of tension on it and regular cotton fabric would just rip. Hemp is a durable and environmentally friendly fabric. So as you can see above I sewed the buttons through the fabric, padding and wood to make these fun tufts. This was the hardest part because the padding is pretty thick and I didn't have the special long needles like they recommend in the book. But I managed it.

Step four: Stapling

     After I screwed the top back onto the box I pulled the edges down and stapled them with an industrial stapler. A regular office stapler will not work for this but industrial staplers are readily available and pretty cheap. You can see that I pleated the corners. I thought this pleating went well with the tufting on the top. I could have sewn the corners or done a myriad of other things but this was really easy.

Step five: Cording

     For the sides of the ottoman I found (by feeling around) where I bottom of the padding on the top was. I then took a section of my fabric and wrapped the top edge over a piece of cording. Sorry I didn't take any pictures. I was having so much fun. Once the fabric edge was wrapped over the cording I put the raw edge to the ottoman and stapled as close to the cording as I could. This sounds complicated but it was actually pretty easy. The hardest part of this was figuring out how to load more staples into the industrial stapler when it ran out. In the picture you can see the seam where the two ends of the fabric meet. I simple folded one edge over the other and glued it down. I do have some pretty rickrack or edging material to put under the cording so you can't see the staples but I have managed to misplace my glue...

Step six: Feet

     The feet are just scrap wood squares painted black and glued on with wood glue. I also put on some fabric squares on the bottom so we don't damage the floor too badly. Then to finish it off I just folded the fabric edges under the bottom and staples them down. It is no masterpiece but it is comfy to put your feet on.

     Unfortunately, the animals love it too and Matt and I really haven't gotten to use it all that much.

     In the end I had a really great time reupholstering this ottoman and I hope to do another project soon. Since I already had the fabric and buttons the project only set me back the cost of the ottoman ($15), the cording (about $1), the decorative edging which I have yet to put on (about $4) and a couple of hours of my time. I am sad to report however that the ottoman is so loved that the cat has turned it entirely gray with his fur. Maybe my next project should be upholstered in slick and easy to clean plastic.

     If you want to check out the book I learned this from it is called Style, Stitch, Staple and is a great beginner resource. I hope this has inspired you to rip up something in your house. If you do, send me a photo and let me know how it goes. selbygunter@yahoo.com

The pit of dispair is no longer a pit!

     In a previous post I showed pictures of the french drain that Matt was making and how we ended up with a trench along our walkway and a pit at one end.Well I am supper happy to announce that it is done! I will no longer twist my ankle on my way to do laundry and we can move onto the next drawn out difficult project. Here is a finished photo.

And here is another.

     As you may have noticed there is still a lot of black plastic covering the ground. Well, that is because now that the french drain is done we want to make a patio. The section that Banjo is facing will be a lovely stone patio which will probably be done next spring. The black plastic behind him and down to my right will be more garden space. Also to be done next spring.
     What will you do this summer, then you ask since we won't be working on these projects? Well, the foundation needs some work and once that is done then we might get the gumption to finish the flooring inside. There is still a debate going on as to whether or not we should redo the cabinetry. I think money will end up being the deciding factor on that one.