The Great Greywater Debate- PVC or Polyethylene?

PVC v. Polyethylene

Homegrown Neighbor here. I’ve been wanting a greywater system for a long time. My old house does not exactly make access to the pipes easy, so I’m starting with just the washing machine. The neighbor, Mr. Homegrown, is anxious to try out a new design from Oasis.

So we have been trying to get all the pieces and get it done- and here is where we get stuck. The system can either use polyethylene tubing or pvc. PVC is ubiquitous, cheap and toxic. Just how toxic, I don’t know exactly, but I’ve never chewed on any pieces just to be on the safe side. PVC is toxic to manufacture as well. This makes polyethylene the more ecological approach. But it is very hard to find in the size we need for the greywater system. And you have to buy a minimum amount- about 250 feet is the smallest we have found so far. For my yard, we probably only need about 40 feet. Plus, you have to mail order it. If we go the pvc route, it would cost far less and we could buy all the pieces at the local hardware store. We also want the system to be replicable so that we can share it with others and encourage them to use greywater. Searching for the parts for the polyethylene version is confusing – pvc is easy and accessible. This is the challenge. So what do people think- should we go with pvc or polyethylene?

Mr. Homegrown here. So I just found a local source for 1-inch polyethylene: Aqua-Flo. Cost is in the neighborhood of 33ยข a foot depending on how much you get. It comes in 20 foot and 100 foot lengths. So I think we’re gonna go with polyethylene. Incidentally, when I called Aqua-Flo they asked if I was going to make hula hoops.


A correction and update 7/25/09: The Aqua-Flo branch I went to does not have black 1-inch HDPE tubing in stock. Other branches have it, but only in 500 foot rolls that cost over $300. A roll that long would make sense for a contractor, but for DIY greywater installations it ain’t practical. Aqua-Flo does carry a new HDPE product called Blu-lock. You can get 1-inch Blu-lock in-100 foot rolls for a reasonable price (more info to follow in another post). Blu-lock uses special proprietary fittings that are easier to assemble than conventional mainline drip tubing and, intriguingly, allow for disassembly. I’m going to test Blu-lock and will report back on the results.

Behold the Glassy Winged Sharpshooter (Homalodisca coagulata)


I finally spotted my first glassy winged sharpshooter (Homalodisca coagulata or GWS for short) sinking its vampire like feeding tube into one of my hops vines. The GWS transmits Pierce’s disease, fatal to many grape varieties including my flame seedless, a gardening frustration I blogged about last week. For your enjoyment I captured a 1/2-inch GWS specimen and scanned it. Note that the GWS was harmed in the process, for which I’m unapologetic.

While there are many varieties of native sharpshooters in California, the GWS is an interloper from the Southeast US and is much more mobile. The native varieties tend to hang out in riparian areas while the GWS enjoys jumping around backyards, citrus groves and vineyards, spreading a host of nasty plant diseases including almond leaf scorch and Citrus Variegated Chlorosis. The GWS is also responsible for spreading oleander leaf scorch. Astonishingly, 20% of home gardens in California contain oleander and 2,000 miles of highways in the state are landscaped with it. The University of California estimates that oleander leaf scorch could cause over $52 million in damage.

Dig the GWS’s built-in hypodermic syringe!

The discovery of a GWS in our yard has solved a mystery that has puzzled us for years. When sitting under the grape vine covering our arbor we’ve often felt little droplets of water, highly unusual in a place where it never rains past April. Turns out it was sharpshooter pee. Sharpshooters feed on the xylem, the water bearing veins of plants. As the xylem contains mostly water, the sharpshooter must process large quantities of material in order to survive. Excess water is puffed out their rear ends, a fascinating thing to see close up. The constant water puffing combined with their fast side to side movements make GWS seem more like machines than insects. Perhaps we could “monetize” this blog by teaming up with Hasbro and Michael Bay to create a line of glassy winged sharpshooter toys, video games and action movies.

Barring a GWS blockbuster we can instead offer our fellow plant and insect geeks an industrial film from the University of California that delves into the GWS in pornographic detail. Nice retro voiceover talent on that video UCTV (one of Mr. Homegrown’s former employers, fyi)!

If you like that video, you’ll also enjoy UCTV’s 90 minute Home Vineyard lecture. I’ll add one point to that talk: if you’ve got GWS, grow muscadine or native grape varieties. Don’t bother with table or wine grapes until the bright folks at UC figure out how to breed Pierce disease resistant vines.

Off the charts

Homegrown Neighbor here. My chicken, Chickenzilla, is at it again, producing several mammoth double-yolked eggs in the past few weeks. The brown egg on the right is more of a normal sized egg, weighing in at extra large on this antique egg scale. Chickenzilla’s egg is way beyond the measure of this scale, weighing in I’d guess at somewhere around extra, extra, extra large. Pretty good for an industrial meat chicken that isn’t supposed to be a good layer, much less survive past three months of age.

The antique egg scale, by the way, hails from Orange County, California. Orange County is now known more for Disneyland and exurban, sprawling tract home developments, but it was once a great agricultural county. This scale is a relic of its golden age of orange groves and ranches. I wonder if anyone in the OC has chickens anymore?

July Linkages

Mrs. Homegrown seen creating a “hyperlink” in between gardening and food preservation duties.

Over at Small Measure, author Ashley English is hosting a contest and giving away a jar of “lip-smacking Peach & Lavender Butter” to promote her upcoming series of homesteading books. Look for a new contest each month. English’s “Canning & Preserving”, published by Lark Books, will be available April 2010. The third and fourth books in the series, “Home Dairy” and “Beekeeping”, will be available in April 2011. Hopefully we’ll be having English on our new Homegrown Evolution Podcast that will debut when we can get our computer, seen above, to record audio.

A few blog posts ago we answered a question about soil testing. Visiting journalist Michael Tortorello tipped us off to the University of Minnesota’s Soil Testing Laboratory that will test out of state samples for their regular (low) fee. Their submission forms are located here. Also, readers of this blog will enjoy Tortorello’s articles, especially “The Return of the Root Cellar”.

Community building is something we consider essential for this, as of now, no-named movement. And yet, it seems we are better at meeting online than in person. Danah Boyd has an interesting article, “Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” (26 page pdf) about why kids flock to social networking sites. Hint: they don’t have anywhere else to meet.

Lastly, nothing says DIY like prison improvised escape tools.