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While droughts are a natural feature of California’s climate, human-induced warming has made them even drier. After Eric Haas, 62, moved to Oakland in 2007, California was in a drought so severe a statewide emergency was declared. After experiencing drought conditions for several years, the California professor had a rainwater and greywater capture system installed at his highly efficient urban home to do his part to conserve water.
I joined the Peace Corps after college in 1985, and was a math and science teacher in Buchanan, Liberia. There, I started to realize that large parts of the world don’t live with all the energy consumption and materialism that we do in the US.
I started seeing people’s innovative ways of keeping their houses warm or cool and how they would get their water. I had to carry my own water at times and be very conscious where it came from. These experiences started cementing this idea that life could take into account the environment you lived in. Relatively simple ideas could make a huge difference in the comfort and quality of your house. You adapt and your lifestyle can adapt.
I met my wife in Caracas, Venezuela, where we were both teachers, and when our family settled in Oakland, California, in 2007, part of the decision in buying a house was whether it was somewhere I could finally focus on water conservation and other low-carbon-footprint projects like installing solar panels, insulation and high-efficiency appliances.
I hired Dig Cooperative Inc, a local contractor known for pioneering water-conservation systems across the greater Bay Area, to install a rainwater and greywater collection system at our home. I have about 4,000 gallons of water I can collect, which translates to about 7in of rain coming off the roof. Filtered rainwater is used to fill the toilets and washing machine and water most of our plants. It can also be saved on site for emergency use in case of a fire or an earthquake.
The greywater system takes our “used” shower, bathroom sink and washing machine water and diverts it to the backyard to water our vegetable gardens and six fruit trees. An average household of four can produce over 30,000 gallons of greywater a year! However, we have low-water-use appliances and low-flow faucets, so we use a lot less water than average, and it is still plenty for our garden and trees.
During 2024, the typical household in our area used an average of 124 gallons of water a day. We used an average of 39 gallons of water a day, less than a third.
It wasn’t hard and the whole project took about a week. Rain barrels needed to be purchased and set up and the ground had to be leveled. I have a relatively small and simple house and connecting the rainwater and greywater system into the existing plumbing just took a day or two.
The whole project cost about $15,000. We still have a water bill because the shower, sink and dishwasher water use regular city water, but it’s a fraction of what it used to be. Water is not very expensive here, less than $0.01 a gallon, once you subtract out the standard service fees. Compared to the average water user, I save about $220 a year on my water bill. So, my rainwater and greywater systems do more for my local environment than they do for my wallet.
Since moving to Oakland, I’ve noticed a lot of climate-related changes. Before, nobody had air-conditioning, and I never even thought about it. Now it’s almost a necessity on select days. When I first put in the system, there was enough rain periodically in California’s dry season to fill up the tanks enough that I never had to go back to city water for the first several years. Now it only lasts for about 10 months. The dry season is so dry and when we’ve got extra rain in the rainy season my tanks overflow and drain into the sewer because they’re full.
We have to approach our water use differently in California. We can’t keep pumping water out of aquifers because it doesn’t replenish as quickly as we use it up. We’ve seen all sorts of damage in various parts of California, like lakes that don’t exist any more or land that’s dropped in elevation. Our overuse of water now impacts our quality of life. We have water-restriction days where they ask you not to use as much water, including not flushing our toilets every time, and we’re encouraged not to have a lawn even if we wanted one. We see the very clear direct impact and we’ve known about it for decades.
Having a rainwater and greywater system is relatively easy to do, especially if you’re planning it for any type of new construction or even retrofitting. If more people added home rainwater and greywater home systems, we could save our own money and save money on infrastructure: they save money for municipal processing of water, for the delivery of water and for the runoff that comes after our now extra-heavy rains. You can still have a really nice garden. We have a hot tub, we have a regular shower, but because those things are connected into this larger system, we have a much smaller impact.
I feel like I’m doing something real and concrete, and every time I hear the greywater pump go on or when I hear the pump from our rainwater system go on to fill up the washing machine or toilet, that’s water that I’m not taking from the system and that matters.
Every time it rains, I love to go out and look at the gutters and see how much it’s pouring into the system. It brings me joy to interact with the natural environment in this small way in my urban house.
My DIY climate hack is a series about everyday people across the US using their own ingenuity to tackle the climate crisis in their neighborhoods, homes and backyards. If you would like to share your story, email us at diyclimate@theguardian.com
I figured out how to use two-thirds less water — and it only took a week to set up
