Grey Water

We got the nice people at Hey! Tanks LA to come and fit a grey water system to our house. The idea being that we have a ridiculously high water bill (higher than our gas and electricity bill), and that we have a lot of water that we throw down the drain (get it? Down the drain? Hahaha), so instead of throwing it away, we'll put it into the garden and turn it into avocados and guavas and oranges and bananas. (Well, sort of indirectly).

You have to be a teeny bit careful with grey water - not all plants like it, as it tends to be a bit salty - handily fruit trees like it a lot. You don't want to spray it around, it should stay under the ground, which means that you can't use it to water grass - because you can't spread it out that wide (well, without some more specialized stuff).

Another slight complication is that you don't always want your grey water to go into the yard - if you've put a load of bleach into the washing machine, for example, or if you've washed the dog in insecticidal shampoo it might be better having those nice people at the Hyperion treatment plant. So you put in a valve, so you can send the water down the regular drain.

The first stage was doing the plumbing under the house, which I attempt to show in these rather unclear photos. (It was dark, which made focusing a challenge). The first picture shows the valve, which is where all the pipes meet. The pipe goes out into the yard to the left when the valve is on, and to the right do the regular drain when the valve is off (it's currently off, 'cos they haven't do the outside part yet). It's not obvious, but the steel pipe at the bottom that appears to go into the valve has actually been cut, so it's not attached.

The second photo is from slightly further back - you can see how the original steel pipe in the foreground (which comes from the downstairs bath and shower) has been cut, and now heads to the valve, and back again. At the back is the pipe that comes from the washing machine, and I forget where the pipe is that comes from the upstairs bathroom. But it's somewhere near there.

The water from the kitchen joins onto the main pipe later - kitchen water (sink and dishwasher) tends to be a bit more unpleasant than other water, so it's not a good idea to use in the yard (or garden - I keep forgetting which word I prefer).

Views

You probably know that LA is famous for being a bit hazy and possible even polluted. Very, very occasionally, it is clear, and I've been waiting since we moved into the house (in March) to take a photo of the other side of the LA valley. Finally, the stars were in alignment, the air was clear, I had a new lens for my camera (a relatively ancient M42 lens, which cost about $50 from Ebay, and combined with a $10 adaptor gives the magnification [if not quite the quality] of something that would cost somewhere over $1000 if I wanted a new lens that fitted my camera without an adapter.

Here's the first one of the Hollywood sign. (It was slightly too early in the morning, and there's a bit of shadow on the H and the second O). It's cropped a bit.




Here's the second, which is not cropped, of the Griffith Observatory (click to make super dupe rbig:


It's a shame there weren't any people around there - I'm not sure if we'd have been able to see them. Google maps thinks the observatory is just over 8 miles away.

We got a new table

We bought an Amish table and chairs I don't know if the Amish bit means it was made by people without zippers, or if that was just the style. It did take forever to get made and delivered, and it seemed to come on a truck, not a horse and buggy.

We got it from JMX International - who were very, very patient about sending us samples and answering our questions every week for about 5 months. The chairs and table were made by different workshops, and they had to do an elaborate procedure to get the chairs sent to the table place to make sure the colors matched.