Water-Wise Home

Water is a precious resource. Our awareness of its importance is often undervalued since it's so easy to turn on the tap from multiple places in your home and get safe water to drink. Now that we are going into another year of extreme drought people are having to pay attention to how much water they use. Mandatory reductions of  25% in usage are becoming more common. Help your family do it's part to reduce water municipal water usage.

Your task
Devise a plan to reduce your family's use of municipal water usage and implement the plan. You'll create a:

• a short term plan to reduce consumption by 25%
• a long term plan to reduce reliance on municipal water by 40% by designing either a greywater, rainwater catchment, or rain garden.

Here is a link to the project description.

Get Baseline Data
1.  get a water bill - from your parents/guardian  OR
2.  use the on-line water calculator

Short Term Plan
Here is a support page to help your organize your plan. Key is to focus on data!
1.  List all of the ways you and your family use water.
2.  Determine how you are going to reduce your bill by 25%. Pick THREE  uses of water and how you are going to reduce them by 25%. Use math to justify your work. Ex. I flush the toilet 4 times a day. I will flush it one less time. 1/4 = 25% less. You could figure out how many minutes you are in the shower, how much water flows per minute and how much you need to shorten the shower time to save 25%.
3.  Make a list of suggestions of how your family can reduce their usage. You can also include things that your family is already doing to conserve water. Focus on supporting your strategies with data including how many gallons and what percent of water you are conserving for that particular activity.

Include:

• Gallons/day - from your bill OR water calculator
• Number of people in your household
• Gallons/person/day
• What would the gallons/person/day be with a 25% reduction?
• List some strategies on how to reduce water. NOTE: If your family is already water conservation rock stars, then you can focus on what your family already does! :) The key is to focus on data! Support your strategies with data. How much are you saving in gallons and as a percent of your current use for that activity?

​Long Term Plan
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Measurements at Marin Map!

Option 1: Rainwater Catchment
Math requirement: This requires calculating the area of an irregular shape (your roof) and the volume of a cylinder.

Here is a support page for the Rainwater Catchment Option.
Here is a sheet on that goes into more details on how to do rainwater calculations.
Include:

• Diagram of your house with measurements of the roof’s area. All recorded to the nearest foot. (Extra credit: Have a scale drawing of your roof.) NOTE: You can get this measurement from INSIDE your house or walking around the PERIMETER of your house. DO NOT GO ON THE ROOF to get these measurements.
• Inches of rainfall in Marin & specify if it is an average or current year’s amount
• Total cubic feet of rainfall: Show formula, your numbers & total (cu. ft)
• Total gallons of rainfall: Show formula, your numbers & total (gallons)
• Dimensions of your raintank: Show formula, your values
• Design a cylinder rainwater tank that could capture all of the rainwater that falls on our classroom in a year.

Option 2: Greywater - Laundry to Landscape (L2L)

Diagram of Ms. Newburn's shower to landscape branched drain system.

Math requirement: Adding and multiplying fractions.

Basic information about Laundry to Landscape (L2L) systems:

• These can be installed without a building permit since you are not cutting into plumbing.
• This installations are easiest if your washing machine on an external wall and a ground floor.
• The washing machine is on a pump so you don't need to be extremely worried about water getting stuck in a pump and stagnate. However, you want to pump on relatively even landscape or downhill. Most washing machine pumps are not suited to pump uphill. 
• For detailed instructions on how to install a Laundry to Landscape system read Water-Wise Home by Laura Allen or visit the GreywaterAction.org website. They can connect you with local installers, if you are interested in installing a system. 

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​Here is the project support page. 

1. How much water does each load of laundry use?
2. How many loads of laundry does your family do per week?
3. Which trees or parts of your landscape could be watered by your laundry water?
4. What laundry detergent do you currently use? Can you use it for a greywater system? If not, what could you use instead?
5. Draw out a scale drawing of how the water will come from your laundry to the landscape. What will get watered? (Trees are an easy thing to water with greywater from your washing machine.)

Option 3: Rain Garden

Still want a lawn? Find some California native grasses that are suitable.

Water Use it Wisely - tips and usage information