Gray Water -> Green Grass

photo by Matt McGee

My big Burning Man idea for this year is using a temporary lawn to recycle our camp gray water. This was an idea that was being tossed around between my sister, dad and I late last summer, but really didn't have the time to execute it last year, but this year I'm pretty sure it's going to happen.

The basic idea is to build modular nursery flats of sub-irrigated, nearly hydroponic tropical grass that is sturdy and able to aspirate plenty of nutrient-rich gray water. Then all the flats will be connected to main lines which will run from our gray water storage tank. The big unknown is how much water at 12' x 12' lawn will be able to soak up and how quickly will it use up water? Will we have extra grey water that the grass won't be able to use or will we be begging other camps for their gray water to keep it alive? Big questions. so we're starting some test flats this month.

This weekend we did some shopping for a growing medium. We got some excellent advice at SF Hydro who are used to providing supplies for other types of grass growing operations. We settled on clay pebbles, coconut husks and soil mixture, proportions yet to be determined. Then for irrigation we went out to Urban Farmer and explained our project and got set up with a drip system that we could place in the flats under the grass and get the water directly to root system. Looking forward to setting it all up and seeing what works.