Get your cake and eat it too.... have it all with gray water.

It was a sunny bright day in San Francisco the perfect day to forage for the bamboo need to make our kitchen gray water "art" fountain. I have long dreamed of a Swiss Family Robinson style gutter starting at our kitchen window and shooting off the deck. A runway to dump out the clean water that usually gets wasted down our kitchen drain.... half filled water glasses, sippy cups or water from washing veggies.

The French daughter of my dear friend was my partner in crime. When I pulled in front of the bamboo patch she realize we were not going to buy the bamboo. Now I thought long and hard about buying the bamboo from the hardware shore in Japantown but clearly the locally sourced (and free) was the more sustainable choice. We chose the thickest bamboo shoot which cut like butter with the saw. In just moments we had that thing in the car before anyone had time to ask any questions.

Cutting Bamboo lenthwise with a hatchet and hammer. from annelise breuning on Vimeo.

Next was figuring out how to split the bamboo, the internet had lots of ideas but I turned to the wisdom of my bamboo master farmer Greg Jones who operates a his own Bamboo farm in Kauai. His reply, "A hatchet and a hammer will work better, mama. Bang out the diaphragms with a hammer, then knife down the roughs." 
It worked like a god damn charm.

Greywater "art" fountain from annelise breuning on Vimeo.

Water rushing down greywater "art" fountain. from annelise breuning on Vimeo.

So check it out, here is our amazing "art" gray water fountain, designed to inspire kids and adults to think about our clean water. One of the delightful and unexpected features of the fountain is that you need to pour the water slowly to not overwhelm the gutter.  This fact necessitates that the user must take a moment of stillness to avoid spilling... a calm, quiet moment and if the house is quite you can hear the water rushing down the bamboo like a creek. Magical.