We love Graywater
Dear all,
It's story time again!
I will first take you back in time for this one:
Graywater (spelling hotly debated says the internet) was a big part of my childhood as some of you know. My Dad Danny, who grew up here just like me, was a local licensed plumber+electrician. He was also many other things, including, but not limited to, a reader, an avid gardener, devoted plant collector, and committed smoker of Marlboro Reds. He rigged up a lot of cowboy style Graywater systems around our home.
With this Graywater, we watered his massive collection of orchids that he started building as a child here in the 1950's. We watered our grass with it. We watered our Freddy Begonias from the guy who used to sell them at the County Bowl way back when the "lawn" there was a lawn and Santa Barbara was so different than it is now. We watered our prehistoric plants, our carnivorous plants, our staghorns that were the size of small cars, our persimmon tree, our bougainvillea, our massive aloe. We watered everything with Graywater and our yard was pretty breathtaking. It was crazy beautiful and everything was always green. My dad liked to say "What's the secret to a beautiful garden...? Water...!" And it's so simple and so true.
Now fast forward to June of 2022:
My mother in law Peggy Kellow is so sweet and likes to save Kiel and me articles that she finds in Sunset Magazine. They are topics or items that she thinks would be interesting or helpful to us. It's something she has always done. A little recipe here, an article there. She usually will bookmark the page in the magazine and give it to us, or she will cut out the little section. It is so dang sweet of her and it's honestly made me a fan of Sunset as the years have gone by. She has subscribed to the magazine forever, she is so loyal like that. I really love that about her.
In June of 2022 she came across this article on Graywater that inspired me, and renewed my commitment to Graywater. I had always hoped to do a newsletter / blog post showcasing how this architect and his wife can shamelessly, beautifully, Versailles-ishly (new word), have a lush garden in a state that is facing serious water shortages. It is my personal dream to have a tropical style garden with misters going and exotic plants, but I am conflicted, because I also am passionate about saving water. So when I read this article, and here was this couple that had this beautifully green garden brought to you by none other than Graywater, I was excited. It wasn't like my Dad's. It was fancy, it was in Sunset Mag, it was in San Francisco, it was a high profile shiny Architect's own home. I thought "Maybe I too as an adult can freely water my plants and have an epic garden without guilt/green shame and without lugging buckets from here to there?"
After that article I made it a goal to offer Graywater system design as a part of our design services menu at Kellow Construction. I did quite a bit of research and put together everything we would need as a company to say to our clients "Hey do you know about this? We can help you have an epically green garden and save a lot of water and money all at once." And then now our clients can even say "My graywater system was inspired by none other than Sunset Mag."
So far (sadly) I must admit that we haven't had any takers on Graywater. BUT we also haven't marketed it or highlighted it a whole lot either. So I am here to bring it up once again and remind everyone of a few things:
1. Graywater is chic and featured in Sunset Magazine and is cooler than ever. You can brag to your friends about it and keep this worthy wet trend hot.
2. Graywater saves significant amounts of water and money. Here are links to water rates for Montecito, Santa Barbara and Goleta.
3. The City and Counties of Santa Barbara both offer various levels of clean, totally legitimate, permitted systems of Graywater to choose from that Kellow Construction can design for you as a part of your project and handle for you from start to finish. As a part of your design, we can even calc out your estimated savings in gallons and dollars depending on what level of graywater system makes the most sense for your project! How cool!
4. Graywater systems are relatively inexpensive to set up especially if you are already remodeling your home and installing new fixtures!
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If you are in the industry please consider exploration of graywater for your clients and projects. Remind people about this far too overlooked possibility. It is our job as leaders in the building industry to make things like Graywater and green building practices become normalized. Let's step it up people!
Here is a link to the SB City permit packet guide for Graywater and SB County guide as well. If there is enough interest I would also consider teaching an industry centered, efficient, low time commitment class, on how all of us in the building industry can work together to treat our water like the treasured resource it is.
Anyways that's all out of me. I hope this has inspired you in some way. Let me know what you think and as always, thank you for reading!
Most sincerely,
Emily Kellow