McQuire & Orams house
Retrofitting a suburban house for water conservation and reuse...
Summary
The McQuire and Orams family lives in a standard suburban house in West Brunswick, Melbourne. They have implemented a range of simple strategies to conserve and reuse water around the home.
Background
The family started to divert used household water to the garden around 1992, at the same time that they were developing a permaculture-style garden with many fruit and nut trees, vines, vegetables and herbs. The benefits of water reuse were that the plants would benefit from the water, and the soil and microorganisms would help to clean the water. Since those early years they have continued to search for new and better ways of reducing water consumption and reusing water.