We are trying to design a greywater system for a proposed residence in the City of Santa Barbara for which there are a number of vexing complexities.

The site is a nearly 30 acre parcel in the San Roque foothills.  The house is proposed for a knoll at the top, but a lot of the terrain is fairly steep hillside underpinned by Rincon Formation geology.  The landscape design, while largely shaped by the high fire zone requirements, has many elements (fruit trees) that would benefit greatly from greywater irrigation.   Given the complexities and limitations of the site, any greywater applied to landscaping would need to be carefully calibrated to the water requirements of the target plants to avoid over saturation of the surrounding soil.  Excess collection of greywater would need to be shed to sewer or, ideally, strategically spread to other areas of the large parcel.

It is easy to imagine smart irrigation control systems that carefully match real time plant water requirements to irrigation application, but I am not aware of any grey water control systems that are capable of balancing the irregular supply of greywater to the finite and shifting water demands of specific landscape plants.   Any greywater production that exceeds requirements would need to be passed on daily in order to comply with greywater storage prohibitions.

Are you familiar with any greywater systems that are capable of modulating these kinds of supply and demand constraints?   I haven’t come across anything with that level of sophistication.

Please let me know if you have any thoughts.