Breaking ground for the greywater wetland
With the first phase of
the powerline
terrace complete, I
decided to move on to our next experimental project --- a greywater
wetland. When I started planning
this project in
October, I was considering installing a liner to turn the wetland into
a pond, but various readers' experiences talked me into keeping it
simple. Chances are, the ground will gley itself after a while
and will hold enough water to keep wetland plants happy. The less
long-term maintenance the wetland requires, the better, and unlined,
earth-filled wetlands seem to be winners there.
I was feeling more
loosey-goosey than usual, so I just dug and dug and dug with no real
plan for the finished product. Will I install a bricked-in outlet
at the top to keep water from eroding the soil there?
Probably. Will I use logs to divide the flow into a sinuous
pattern and dig deeper areas to make multiple pools? Maybe.
Will I try to make the final slope more than the current 0.5%?
Not sure.
Other things I'm
pondering include building a little deck over the upper end to turn
into a laundry station so wash water can dump straight down into the
wetland (and so Mark doesn't have to mow around the wringer
washer). I definitely want to mash down the walls into a gentle
slope so they will be easy to mow over. We'll see what decisions
the day brings.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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