Texas Water Day: Rainwater and graywater harvesting

I was able to spend about an hour at Texas Water Day today, a day-long event at the Capitol o' Texas focused on water conservation. I missed all the speechifying but was able to stop in and chat with the booth people and complain about the size of the urinals at the capitol to random attendees (we're talking ginormous, at least the ones in the annex...). Sorry, no photos. Guys get freaked out when you're taking photos in the bathroom...

I was also able to chat with several folks about other important matters. The City of Austin conservation folks were there, and we yimmered and yammered about pressurized rainwater harvesting and graywater.

On the rainwater harvesting side, we discussed the requirements for reverse pressure zones (RPZs), licensed plumbers, and permits (things I'm not convinced are necessary for a system not even remotely connected to the city's system). The boothpeople told me that the city is considering exempting certain pressurized systems (say below 30 psi, quite a bit below the city's pressure) from the RPZ/licensed plumber/permit requirements. That would be a nice improvement. They're still scared of a fully pressurized system being accidentally or purposely connected to the city water and getting (insert ominous voice here) "water of unknown quality" in their system (of course someone purposely doing this would not be getting a permit to do so...). But I can see why they have concerns. Two fully-pressured systems on site increase the odds of someone screwing up, especially subsequent homeowners (and plumbers) that don't fully appreciate or understand the system.

We also talked about on-site graywater use. The boothers said that the city is in the process (any day now!) of revising those rules under a new "Laundry to Lawn" program where you can just run your waste laundry water out into your yard without the subsurface storage and drainfield requirements. Yippee!!! Too late for us (we didn't build in separate plumbing for graywater), but for subsequent graywater adopters, this is good news.

More about graywater:

       News article about graywater and rules use in Austin.

       City council resolution on graywater.

       Here's a proposal from the City's Graywater External Stakeholders Committee. 

       Some people have said "TO HELL WITH THE RULES!!!".
            They are the few, the proud, the Greywater Guerrillas.

I also ran into a pal I used to work with that is a turf expert, a subject she studied at Texas A and M. There's a lot of people I know that went to college and did nothing but grass, but this young lady truly went to college and studied nothing but grass! After talking about the house and landscaping (and getting reminded that she was a turf expert), she recommended Thunder Turf by Native American Seed. The bride and I have talked about using Habiturf, but it's expensive as hell. My turf-grrl friend said Thunder Turf was the way to go. She even texted me later: "Thunder Turf = Good Stuff".

Several weeks ago I was yapping at an event in Junction, Texas, and went to an after-event wine swig that turned out to be hosted by the proprietors of, you guessed it, Native American Seed! These folks live water conservation and even had their Texas Raincatcher Award, an award passed out by the Texas Water Development Board, proudly mounted on the wall in the living room. We drank wine and talked about grass, rainwater harvesting, and rain gardens. That, my friends, is a good evening (even without the wine).

Anyway, the universe seems to be lining up: THUNDER!!!  TURF!!!

The cool bit of swag I picked up at Texas Water Day was a shower timer from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality:

I've actually been wondering how long we (ahem...) I spend in the shower. Now I can do some timing! That old-skool grains-of-sand timer above allows five minutes for rub-a-dubbing.

Let the experiments begin!

week 31: the eaves (and tiles) of march

We've been out of town the past several days, so we approached the house today with great anticipation, and we were not disappointed: The eaves are in! The eaves are in! And they looking stunning!

eaves

It appears that they decided that the un-V-grooved sides of the boards were good enough to be facing outwards, and thank goodness: Not sure the V-grooves would look as good as this. Wow wow wow!

We decided to upgrade the eaves beneath the overhangs above the back door and master bedroom door. It was a wise decision: Really ties the front part of the house with the back part:

We can now see the blurring of inside and outside that occurs via the ceiling (and you can see the art wall covered in the same material):

Nice! We had originally thought about using blue-stained pine for the art wall, but because it was going to be a pain to get and might not look good (got to be careful when mixing woods...), we went with cypress. A wise choice since it clearly ties the ceiling and wall together.

The bride noted that the cypress nicely compliments the limestone. Yep.

That is pretty sweet. 

It didn't look like the wood had been sealed yet, so that will darken it up tad. But holy cow does that wood complete the house. 

tile

And the tile has started to go in! 

The bummer on the tile is that, when asked about how to arrange it, I said "running" (as they are placed above) when I meant "stacked" (like the limestone on the front of the house), a doubly stupid mistake since the builder said "Do you want running? Or do you want stacked like the limestone on the front of the house?" That'll teach me to be answering questions when multi-tasking at a hearing... Nonetheless, it looks good (just don't tell anyone about the booboo...). 

eyebrows

And here are some shots of the eyebrows with a better camera. They are pretty cool.

mirrors

And the mirrors for the powder pooper came. They're pretty nice!

coming up

Bookcases in living room: They were putting them in when we stopped by the house earlier today.

Finishing the drywall: Doesn't look like much happened with the drywall this past week, so they need to get after it.

Painting: If the drywall gets done, then the walls and ceiling will get painted. I'll be surprised if this happens this week...

Cabinets: The cabinets are here and ready to go in, but apparently need to wait for the drywall and painting to get done, so we shall see...

Landscaping: The builder hopes to start this week on the fencing. Need to also start work on the horno pad since the horno is on its way...

the third eye(brow) and oods

The bride stopped by the house again this evening to see if the third eyebrow was installed: It was! Also, the cypress was delivered and sitting under the carport. Yay!

we have eyebrows!

The bride stopped by the house this evening (easier to do these after the time change...) and found the eyebrows attached to the house! They look pretty good. No shots of the brow in the back; perhaps tomorrow...

week 30: eyebrows on the roof, drywalling

Slow progress on the drywalling, eyebrows on the roof, and misc. loose ends.

drywalling

Was hoping to see the skim coat on the walls this weekend, but just the taping and floating got done. Was noticing that the drywall compound was looking wettish last weekend, so wondering if the weather hasn't been dry enough (or perhaps the house is too closed in to let the moisture escape). When we visited this time, we noticed that several of the windows were cracked open, and the compound looked dry. Since stuff is supposed to be painted this week, they gotta get after it Monday!

Master bedroom.

Living room.

Bookcases.

Dining "room" and kitchen.

Detail of the metal post running into the ceiling.

Guest bathroom.

Windows in the upstairs bedroom.

The drywallers have done a great job. And to their credit, they're great at cleaning up the site, always a good sign, we've decided. There have been only three things we commented on to the builder: (1) the upper elevation on the windows in the over photo not being level, (2) the doorbell box being drywalled over, and (3) the fan in the master shower being crooked. They've taken care of #1 and it looks like they're trying to address #3:

Don't think we've shown the inside of garage all gussied up:

It'll be nice to have the garage all finished out!

eyebrows on the roof

If you recall, the design calls for what we've all been calling "eyebrows" over certain second story windows:

Eyebrows on the front of the house shown in yellow. There's one more round back.

The eyebrows are here, but they are currently on the roof:

The builder originally thought he would do these out of aluminum instead of the specified 3/8-inch plate steel, but the aluminum turned out to be too expensive (it must have been real bad since he didn't ask if we wanted to pay the delta). I was envisioning these things being metallic instead of white, but we'll go with white and see what they look like. Can alway paint them later something different if need be...

They look heavy as Rosanne Barr after a Luby's binge, so we'll see how they go up...

how much wood would a woodchuck chuck...

Whelp, turns out that we can't get the cypress without the v-notch (the one on the left in the photo below). Tried out a different source, but their cypress was uber-notty. So.... faced with lower quality cupping, but wide-planked, cedar and higher quality uncupping, but v-notched, cypress, we went with the v-notch. Compromises, compromises...

marking territory

The architects finally put up a sign!

if the car fits...

The bride parked her bug-a-boo under the car port. It fits!!! And she looks good with the house (the car too!).

closet design

We're not getting real complicated:

 scaping

Been spending some time figuring out the landscaping and looking for ways to cut costs. Here's where we're at:

Hopefully that puts a dent in the seven grand in stones...

moment of bliss

This could be my favorite shot (of a detail) of the house...