Thirty people attend tour of Windsor homes reusing rain and greywater for irrigation

Thirty people toured  two Windsor residences Saturday to learn about using  captured rainwater and reusing greywater from laundry to irrigate  gardens and landscaping  during the Windsor Waterwise Home Tour: Rainwater and Greywater Systems.

The tour of homes owned by Christopher Peck and Genevieve Taylor, and Terry and Cathy Taylor, was sponsored by the Town of Windsor and Petaluma-based Daily Acts, the nonprofit environmental group that promotes sustainable living practices.

Tour participants learned how  Christopher and Genevieve  are capturing storm water runoff from the street and diverting it  through a swale to a nearby creek.  They also learned how the couple uses mulch and gravel in an underground trench to filter captured rainfall for landscape irrigation in their backyard.

At the Taylors’ Keith Court home, Terry explained how their four plastic tanks  capture about 1,400-1,500 gallons of rainfall from the roofs of two structures. The water is used to irrigate plants and vegetables for about six weeks in the summer.

The Taylors also  use greywater from their washing machine for irrigation. A three-way valve diverts the greywater from the sewage system and keeps greywater with chlorine out of irrigation usage.

Daily Acts has been conducting lawn transformations at Windsor parks for three years, and has helped Windsor residents install Laundry-to-Landscape greywater systems.

“We are eager to share the stories of those Windsor citizens who have transformed their landscape to harvest this incredible water resource,” Axelrod said of the “slow it, spread it, sink it” strategies.

For more information or to register, visit dailyacts.org.

– James Lanaras