With storm water regulations getting more and more strict, keeping drainage and storm water on-site has become more and more important. The best way to handle storm water on a site is grade the side to maximize natural infiltration into the soil.

Sometimes a site is too small, or the grades are too restrictive to allow for infiltration without some assistance. Typically this is done with a dry well. But the traditional dry well has its limitations. A dry well (dispersion field, dissipater field) is an excavated area constructed to allow for the infiltration of water, typically filled with 3/4″ crushed gravel. The main problem with dry wells is that half the volume of the well is filled with gravel, thereby limiting the amount of water that can enter the system and infiltrate into the soil. Take this example:

If you have a dry well that is 8′ long x 4′ wide x 2′ deep filled with gravel its capacity is only about 240 gallons of water at any one time. Let’s say you were trying to drain a 1,000 sq.ft. roof into the dry well. In a 1″ storm the roof would discharge about 550 gallons of water.

Fortunately, with the increased focus on stormwater management, there are some newer products that help with this problem.

Cudo Cube, based out of Sonoma County, offers a great customizable modular product that is 2′x2′x2′ and can store about 50 gallons of water as well. The Cudo system can also be customized for maintenance access, discharge point, and filtration. The units can be combined to create large drainage fields.

NDS has a couple of products that allow for easier drainage installations. The Flo-Well is a customizable plastic drum that holds about 50  gallons of water and can be plumbed into a drainage system or off a downspout. These units can also be connected together.

NDS also makes the new EZFlow french drainage pipe, that incorporates a traditional black corrugated pipe with a synthetic drainage medium that looks like a packing peanut. A 10″ EZFlow (4″ pipe with 6″ of drainage peanuts) can store about 2 gallons of water per linear foot.

ADS also has a number of products designed for stormwater and leachfields on a larger scale. Their AdvanEdge product is another useful alternative to French drains to help drain against retaining walls, into dry fields or under wet areas.

In the past few years there have been interesting developments in alternatives to grout and traditional joint fillers for flagstone and paver installations.

Ecosystems Grout sells a Eurogrout product that claims to allow water to permeate through the surface of the material, making it great for permeable pavement installations where rainwater is captured below the pavement, rather than redirected into a traditional drainage system.

These grout alternatives can also give a low maintenance more rustic appearance to an installation than traditional grout.

Image from the Ecosystems Website

For more:
Visit the Ecosystems Website

After attending a recent Marin County Bay Friendly Landscaper training session, I was so thoroughly impressed with the curriculum of the Bay Friendly Program and the quality of the speakers for the training session. The Bay Friendly Landscape guidelines form a compelling framework for sustainable landscape construction and maintenance. The one area where the training could be enhanced is with a greater emphasis on the history of the Bay and why Bay Friendly efforts are so important. For anyone who hasn’t seen the 4 part documentary “Saving the Bay,” which aired on KQED, it is an indispensible primer for the ecological, cultural, and social history of the San Francisco Bay. With this in mind, here is one landscaper’s Open Letter to the San Francisco Bay-

Dear Bay,

First off, we would just like to say we are sorry. Sorry for what we did to your forests and your streams. Sorry to the Grizzly, the Prong Horned Antelope, and the rest of your creatures that roamed long ago. Sorry to Salmon, that we canned by the bargeful. Sorry to the soil, that continues to slip away- only to wait another 10,000 years to form. Sorry to the great San Francisco Bay, estuary of estuaries, harbor of harbors.

We are sorry for the Baylands we filled, the marshes we drained, the streams and rivers we dammed and damned. Sorry for the pollution, the dumps, the garbage, the sewage. Sorry for our brake pads, that with every morning drive hit the road, and from the road flow to the Bay.

We say that we have changed. We say that we will be your friend, or at least that we will be Friendly. You have the benefit of time and experience. You wait with a watchful eye, marking the tides of moon and man.

Before we start on our new way, before we change our ways, let us acknowledge what we and our forefathers have done. See and acknowledge our mistakes, understand what we did wrong. Say we are sorry. Then we can embark on a better way.

There was another green roof article in this month’s NorthBay Biz, Up on the Roof, profiling the rooftop installation at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and a couple of projects in the North Bay that is worth a look.

After our earlier profile of the Watershapes article of the same name, a new rule for all those green industry columnists, you must title your articles something other than Up on the Roof.

For more and more landscape projects a key consideration is the hot topic of sustainable best practices, environmental impact, and how best to green projects.

This drive to green everything from carpets to cars isn’t unique to the landscape industry, its one of the major driving forces in both new marketing campaigns and genuine efforts to reduce and mitigate environmental impacts.

As I attended a workshop and last month’s North Coast dinner meeting by Trathan Heckman of Daily Acts here in Petaluma, it became clear to me that this idea of sustainability is really all encompassing. Trathan’s work and presentations on gray water systems, local agriculture,  and community and back yard gardens brought this home. Our choices make a difference- from the decisions we make on things like irrigation and plantings, to what we eat and where it’s grown.

As Thanksgiving approaches and we give thanks, we can also consider the sustainability of the meal itself. We can support local economies and local agriculture, and also sustainable agricultural practices. Consider instead of a typical mass produced supermarket turkey for example, an alternative Heritage Turkey, bred in a free range environment, with reduced environmental impacts (or for even less enviornmental impact, skip the turkey). Good Shepherd Poultry and a growing number of other small turkey farmers are working to re-introduce heritage birds and raise turkeys more sustainably.

If you haven’t had a chance to see the excellent four part documentary on KQED channel 9, Saving the Bay, it is a great history of the amazing natural feat of San Francisco Bay and it’s trials and tribulations. This program is a thought provoking piece for all residents of the Bay Area. The Bay and its history is also important to take into consideration when doing landscape projects, and how landscape work effects the Bay (water use, drainage, sediment run-off, herbicides, pesticides, and wildlife effects).

As part of our new demonstration garden at our office here in Petaluma we installed a native turfgrass lawn with subsurface irrigation. This represents a leap forward in water efficiency and sustainability, but now the question is, how do we mow it?

We wanted a lawn mower that would be cost effective, and we just needed it for office use. Getting the administrators out to mow the front lawn is similar to the idea of the company CEO using the copy machine from time to time.

After searching on Amazon.com and with help of user reviews we settled on 24 volt battery powered mower by Earthwise. So far we have been impressed. Power is good, and the deck height accommodates the 2-6″ recommended mowing height for the Native Bentgrass lawn. Plus the mower requires no gas, and doesn’t have the polluting emissions of a small engine lawn mower. The only problem we found in our search was that some reviewers complained about the possibility of damaging the battery if left to charge too long.

While it wouldn’t work for a commercial application this seems like an ideal mower for a homeowner with a small to mid-size lawn.

I attended a demonstration in Petaluma by Daily Acts,  a Sonoma County non-profit, of their graywater system, which was the first permitted residential system in Sonoma County. The workshop was  given by Trathen Heckman of Daily Acts and Brock Dolman of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center Water Institute.  Both have been involved with graywater legislation that it is making  its way through the state legislature and regulations by Sonoma County.

The simplest graywater system is a laundry to landscape system, which recycles graywater from the washing machine out into the landscape.
This system is easy to install with a few simple parts including a 3 way diverter valve, vacuum breaker and 1″ distribution laterals out into the landscape. In Sonoma County it can all be done with a simple plumbing permit, and without the need for more elaborate design, permitting and plumbing of a more extensive graywater system.

For More:

The Daily Acts website has a wealth of resources on graywater and a host of other projects as does the OAEC Water Institute website.
Greywater Guerrillas-  has great information, workshops and more
Oasisdesign.net- more graywater design information

Video on Trathen’s Graywater installation in Petaluma:

Rubber mulch is gaining popularity in landscapes as an alternative material to woodchips for play areas and for landscape mulching. Rubber mulch has a higher absorption rate for playgrounds and a good life span when compared to wood mulch. There are some issues with the material, and its important to take into consideration the type of mulch being used. Not all mulches come from the same source and there are some concerns with toxicity of some recycled rubber products.

As with other alternatives like glass mulch, rubber mulch is going to cost 2-3x the cost of wood mulch, depending on the quantity installed.

The Cover Source, out of San Ramon is a good local reseller of rubber mulch that ships straight from the manufacturer is bulk quantites for landscape use.

I just had a meeting with our local rep from Hunter Irrigation. We use Hunter Controllers frequently on our projects. They have just launched a new smart controller module, Solar Sync, which adjusts programing for solar exposure, temperature, and rainfall. The multifunction sensor has a sensor for sunlight, can detect freezing temperatures, and turn the controller off in case of rain.

Unlike Hunter’s fancier ET system, the Solar Sync is cost effective and easy to program, with a simple module that adjusts the percent application of irrigation. Just program the controller for what normal watering would be during the hottest month of the year, make a few minor adjustments and the Solar Sync does the rest. Say it is 50 degrees on average during the month March, Solar Sync may only apply 10-20% of the normal maximum watering. The module recalculates the percent application each night, ensuring that plants are watered appropriately.

For more visit Hunter’s Solar Sync page