Humans can survive for 3 weeks without food but only 3 days without water.
We will focus on addressing issues of drainage, moving water, holding water, filtering water, and using gray water.
-rain barrel -gray water
Water
Harnessing the power of water
The traditional mode of thought for controlling water is to remove the water and send it away in pipes. Then we have the water shipped back to us in more pipes. Several areas have issues handling the volume of water that we are funneling away, resulting in backups of storm water pipes. When that happens water flows back out of the pipes and can add to flooding of homes even when they are not next to water sources. If that system is a combined storm water and usage pipe then you now have fecal content flooding out and in to homes.
By using the water that hits the land we can reduce the chance of this happening
On our property we are doing a few things to mitigate water issues and make the water work for us.
We have created berms or mounds to add texture to the property this gives a place to store water for later release, making it more resilient in times of drought.
The previous owners buried a drain pipe that went from the gutter and under the bed where it empties on the lawn. That is not a good use of the water so we changed it, by adding a berm to the right of the drain. This reduces the evaporation around the drain giving the water more time to soak into the mound and surrounding area.
The next thing we did was create a dry rock bed, this is similar to a dry creek bed but is fed by the gutter water.
Version 1
We dugout a trench about 5in deep and 1.5-2ft wide that hugs the new mound and the original bed that we mounded up with dirt and organic materials (wood chips). Then we filled it with small rocks and a few flag stones to give more standing areas (access to the herb garden).
Issues: Not deep enough, runs on to the sidewalk, and plants growing up in bed.
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