Chop Wood, Carry Water - Irrigating with bath water
“Chop Wood, Carry Water:” this was an expression my coworker Kari used during those moments when she was feeling enlightened. As enlightened as you can get, say, when proofreading an incredibly unfunny TV sitcom script at 2am, that is.She was referring to the Zen Buddhist expression, “Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water.” Although I believe it’s meant to illustrate that you’ll be doing the same work whether or not you are “At One With the Universe,” I often think of it when I’m doing the hard part of being green.
What, exactly, is the hard part?
Well, Grasshopper, let me tell you about my gray water system.
The idea to make a simple method came to me during a summer drought when I found myself looking over a garden as dry as an AA meeting in Salt Lake City. My two kids were inside splashing around in cool, fresh tub water.
“Hey,” I said aloud to myself and the House Finch eating from our feeder, “What if I could get the water in that tub all the way out to the garden?” Remembering my friend Kari’s expression, I got out the bucket and started my first gray water system.
This informal technique lasted exactly one night. Turns out carrying water is not only very heavy, but it gets all over the floor when you try to carry it through your house, which does not lead to marital bliss.
The next time the kids were taking a bath, I was a little more prepared.
“How about a hose?” I suggested to the House Finch who’d come back for a splash in the birdbath. I ran into the house armed with my garden hose and stuck it in the recently vacated tub. (”Wonder where those kids are?” I puzzled for a moment before forgetting about my wet and quite-possibly-naked children running loose in the house.)
This method, I thought, was going to work brilliantly. For one, it’s easy, just stick one end of the hose in the tub and the other in the garden.
Easy with the exception, of course, that water won’t just move itself through the hose. The water needs encouraging.
This comes in the form of siphoning. Those of you who have heard horror stories about siphoning gas out of cars can rest easy. The worst you can do is get a mouthful of your children’s bathwater.
I accomplished this feat by cleaning off the end of the hose and encouraging the water to come from the tub to the garden by sucking on the end like mad. Lots of sucking.
If you have emphysema, asthma, or breathe heavily while going up a flight of stairs, I do not suggest this plan for watering your plants.
But it worked! Gallons of “Water that Would Otherwise Be Wasted” flowed into my yard, sending me into fits of Free To Be You and Me songs.
Only on subsequent siphonings did I learn this Ancient Chinese Secret (okay, not so ancient, not so Chinese, but that guy from the Calgon commercial would have been proud): Lay the hose out, one end in the garden and one in the tub, then fill the tub side end with water from a jug until the siphoning starts working. Or, easier, buy an automatic siphon hose that are available on-line for about $10 and hook it to your hose.
This is not a perfect system. I have to admit to giving up siphoning at times because of the effort. And my 50 feet long outdoor hose can be messy when I bring it in the house.
You also can’t siphon the bathwater for every single bath. We only do when whatever goes in the tub can go out in the garden, which means only biodegradable soaps and shampoos. We use Castile Soap, either Trader Joe’s or Dr. Bronner’s, which are both biodegradable and phosphate free. When we have to use dandruff shampoo or the stinky children’s bubble bath in the pink container, the water goes right down the drain.
If I’m watering the garden repeatedly this way, I alternate between areas, with most going to my water loving roses, which I’d decided to put on a low water diet years ago.
And, much like Grasshopper, you must learn to be patient during the actual process of siphoning. Easier said than done. Because the first few times you do this you’ll probably end up with a pool of water somewhere or itching to leave your house only to discover that you have 20 minutes worth of water to drain out of your tub. (I have to admit I always want the siphoning to be much quicker than it actually is.)
Which brings me back to the beginning. There are hard moments when it comes to being green: transporting and turning compost, reusing plastic baggies instead getting a new one, hopping on a bike instead of into your car…
But simply because things are difficult doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them.
Heck, if it was, we’d never have meaningful relationships, give to charity, raise children, or wear anything other than jogging suits to work.
I think when we chop wood and carry water we make sure the environment we have today will be available for our children and their grandchildren.
Which is exactly what I told my wife when she asked why a garden hose was hanging on the knobs of the hallway closet and dripping on our floor.
And no, she didn’t buy it. You may want to tell your spouse that it’s your latest piece of modern art. Let me know how that works out for you.
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Tim Donnelly - Ecoist
Maybe it was the green ecology lunch box he got in fourth grade, or the science teacher who drove an electric car and hit him in the head with her brass butterfly necklace every time she came to your desk, or simply all the time spent out in the woods… nature, science, and environmentalism have been with Tim all these years (with the possible exception of the college years.) He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two elementary school-aged children, Ryan and Abby, and a garden in a continuous state of progress.
Tags: bath water, enlightenment, gray water system, hose, irrigation