Very Local Produce

Clearing the community path and separating seedlings

Nothing feels more like Spring than planting a garden, and at the New Norris House that's exactly what happened this weekend. Mary, Eric, and I spent some time doing general yard maintenance, and we also planted the raised vegetable beds. The beds were designed and built by students last summer, and we used stockpiled dirt from the house foundation excavation to fill the beds. We also added any vegetative waste produced from clearing the invasive plants, and let the soil sit all winter long. Now it is a beautiful, rich soil filled with worms and ready to produce!

We planted rainbow swiss chard, red cabbage, cauliflower, heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, carrots, fennel, arugula, gourds, and cucumbers. We also planted zinnias for cut flowers and to attract pollinators. In a few months we should have a huge harvest. Keep your fingers crossed and maybe we can add a County Fair Biggest Vegetable Award to our accomplishments!

We began by properly spacing all the plants before digging any holes

See the rich, dark soil under the hay?

As part of our efforts to collect and re-use the rainwater that falls on our site, our vegetable beds will be irrigated via a 200 gallon cistern located at the low end of the beds. The irrigation cistern is currently full of rainwater and ready to be used. We're looking forward to a summer of sustainable farming - right in the backyard!

Rainwater System and LEED Certification

Here is a link to an article published last month in PHC News. The article focuses on the rainwater harvesting system at the New Norris House. Credits have been earned in all LEED for Homes categories and we expect to earn 12 out of 15 credits in the Water Efficiency (WE) Category. 4 of these points come from WE 1.1 - Rainwater Harvesting System. Our rainwater harvesting system features technology from BRAE, a subsidiary of Watts Water Technologies.

The graph above charts the water collection potential of our cistern. The blue line represents the past 10 years average rainfall for each month. Currently, we are permitted to use the harvested rainwater for non-potable sources in the home. With two residents and high-efficiency water fixtures this leads to an average of 37.4 gallons of treated rainwater used per day. Over the next 12 months we will be analyzing the treated rainwater for contaminants. If the water is deemed safe for potable use, we may see as much as 90 gallons being used per day in the home.

Phase IV Water Monitoring

Now that our water systems are up and running, it's time to begin the monitoring and analysis process. My task as a graduate assistant is to formalize a sampling and analysis protocol for testing water quality on both the supply side and the waste water side.

A little about me: My name is Valerie Friedmann and I am in my third year of studies as a graduate student in landscape architecture at UTK. My role in the New Norris House project began as a landscape architecture student consultant in the spring of 2010. I began by refining the conceptual landscape design, and continued working on the project to see it through the construction and installation phases. Last summer, I worked with a group of UTK students to finalize construction documents, order materials, and construct the landscape elements. Now that our landscape system is online with the home's rainwater overflow and greywater discharge systems, I am very excited to determine the efficacy of the landscape systems in mediating the quality of the greywater and the flow, velocity, and erosion potential of the rainwater.

Back to the monitoring process:

On the water supply side, our design includes a rainwater harvesting system that collects rainwater from the roof of the home and stores it in a 400 gallon cistern. The water is filtered and treated with UV and used for non-potable sources in the home. We have a temporary permit to allow rainwater to be used in the home, and we are testing to compare the rainwater composition pre- and post-treatment to the City of Norris municipal water supply.

Our goal is 01) to learn if the rainwater quality we are collecting and treating would produce water that is safe for use as a potable source and 02) how the water quality compares to the city's water quality. The City of Norris revised its ordinances to allow the systems to work and be plumbed as such in the New Norris Home while UTK owns the home. Results may allow extension of the permit to a future owner, and perhaps other town residents. A second test we are interested in concerns the greywater. We have designed and installed a greywater treatment garden, and we would like to sample the greywater as it leaves the house and at various distances from where it enters the greywater treatment bed. The goal here is to see if pollutants from the greywater are successfully being mediated in the bed. We currently have a temporary State Operation Permit from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) that allows us to collect, treat and release greywater in the beds; this will expire after three years or when UTK sells the property. TDEC has been very supportive and is interested in the results of the study and its potential to effect future state policies.

Image Credit: Ken McCown

We are currently working with TDEC officials and UTK professors from the Department of Biosystems Engineering to develop our testing protocol for both rainwater and greywater analysis. I will be posting updates on our process and results throughout the semester, so stay tuned!

Summer Landscape Mini-Term Recap

What a summer! Even though it was a HOT, muddy, dirty process the time spent building the New Norris House landscape is one that I will always remember fondly. I even miss the manual labor, but maybe that's because I'm in an air conditioned room right now...

During the landscape mini-term we accomplished so much. We finished building and installed plants on the terraced bioretention beds.

We excavated for, and built, the raised vegetable beds and installed the 200 gallon irrigation cistern.


We successfully installed the stormwater overflow from the irrigation cistern to the bioretention beds and installed the pipe that brings the house's greywater into the greywater bioretention bed. We also built a gravel plinth for forest-side seating, installed over 200 linear feet of aluminum bed edging, dug beds for the perennial plantings, worked with a local contractor to finish the site grading, installed a stepping stone path connecting the sidewalk to the existing walking trails behind our property, weeded, watered and installed erosion control measures.


Some of us even got a lesson in how to operate landscape machinery!


So far, the plants are doing fantastic. The bioretention beds are lush and the perennial beds are off to a great start. We have plans for native shrub and tree planting in the fall, but for now it is so nice to be able to see what started as just an idea on paper growing and thriving in reality. Thank you to everyone who helped make the mini-term such a huge success!

Rainwater System

I am pleased to announce that our rainwater system, although dry as a bone currently, is physically in place. Many thanks to our sub-contractors with Scott's Plumbing who have been hard at work for the past 3 days to complete the installation.

Several items still remain to be completed, however, before we can start washing clothes and flushing toilets with reclaimed water. First, the gutters need to go on. Second, city ordinances still need to be officially adopted that make what we are doing legal in the City of Norris. And third, the system needs to be primed and commissioned!

We are estimating this work to be done by mid-June. The legal process to adopt new city ordinances requires several readings and subsequent approvals, as well as a final public hearing.

Installation in progress. Cistern [bottom left], pump and controller [middle], and filters [right]

Multiple water meters installed in-line will allow us to measure how much rainwater is used in the house and how much city water had to be supplied to supplement. Other important factors include total rainfall (used to calculate how much rain passed through the system and was diverted as storm-water), as well as the total city water use (to indicate how much water was used specifically by potable fixtures.

Tuesday Tour

This morning, Professor Stuth, Valerie Friedmann, and myself were joined by a group of representatives from the Tennessee Yards and Neighborhoods program. TYN is a task force, operating through the University of Tennessee Extension Service, whose mission is to "to help communities across the state meet their landscaping needs while also helping to conserve and protect our state's water resources." Their interest in the NNH project came as a result of Valerie's inquiries about rainwater and grey water processing to the Biosystems Engineering department. Dr. Andrea Ludwig, an Ecological Engineer and recent addition to the University staff, not only led us in the right direction with designing our rainwater and grey water beds, but also wanted to take an active role in promoting our project as a prime example of how the TYN program's mission could be utilized in a residential landscape. It is true to say that we love all of the interest and expertise we can get!

Our enthusiastic and knowledgeable guests included Dr. Ludwig, Beth Babbit (state coordinator for the Tennessee Master Gardener's Program/urban horticulture specialist/old friend of mine), David Vandergriff (Knox County Extension Agent for Horticulture and Urban Forestry), and Ruth Ann Hanahan (Senior Research Associate for the Water Resources Center). All four visitors were pleased with our work, our methodologies, and our ecologically-sensitive approach, and thankfully, all four had a whole lot of insight and information to share. Tricia gave an exceptional introduction to the history of the Norris community, the events that led to the creation of the New Norris House, and the design features of the home itself. Valerie then discussed the layout of the landscape, covering in detail the design philosophy, usage of water on site, and the construction methodology. I gave an overview of the planting strategies for the infiltration beds, woodland edge, and lawn areas. We definitely received four thumbs up for our hard work to date, and laid the foundation for a working relationship of project promotion and information exchange!

The Tennessee Yards and Neighborhoods website:

http://tnyardsandneighborhoods.tennessee.edu/Pages/default.aspx

Dr. Andrea Ludwig and Valerie Friedmann review the landscape

construction drawings as I gaze into the distance and contemplate

my love of Little Bluestem, bacon, and intelligent women.

Stormwater Management and Bioretention Cells

Checking the soil infiltration rate on site

Nowadays, there is a lot of talk about stormwater management. What does this actually mean? Also, how much impact can treating stormwater on site really have at the small scale of the New Norris House? In today’s blog we will take a look at these two questions.

“Bioretention cell” is the formal name for what we informally call a rain garden. Bioretention is the actual process in which stormwater is retained in a treatment area where its contaminants and sediments can be filtered out. Generally, the treatment area consists of an area of large stone or riprap where the inflow pipe or swale directs the stormwater. This area, known as a forebay, serves to slow the velocity and evenly distribute the flow of the water to help prevent erosion. The stormwater then filters into the ponding area, which is composed of a soil mix of approximately 80% sand, 20% organic material and native soil. The sand in the soil encourages rapid infiltration into the ponding area, and the organic material and clay in the native soil increases the soils water storage capacity and creates surface area that encourages the growth of microorganisms. Soil microorganisms aid in the breakdown of organic material, therefore making nutrients readily available to plants. Plant roots and organic materials in the soil help to further filter the water and hold it in place until it is able to infiltrate into the underlying soil or is evapotranspired through the plants.

In order to understand the impact that bioretention cells potentially have, we should understand what they help to prevent. When stormwater is channelized and piped into storm sewers or large-scale treatment plants, it results in an overall reduction of groundwater recharge. This leads to the long-term lowering of groundwater tables and the loss of stream flows during dry weather months. Also, when water isn’t allowed to slowly filter into the ground, it loses the chance to have the sediments and pollutants it may have picked up filtered out by soil microorganisms. Furthermore, when we plan new developments without providing areas for bioretention, the chance of “flash” flooding becomes greater.

Although the New Norris House site may seem like a small area, the benefits of treating our stormwater on site are actually quite significant. The roof area will receive over 31,000 gallons of rainwater on an average year—that is about 520 bathtubs of water that we will treat in the bioretention beds. And, hopefully, through our educational tours and community outreach, the impact of our rain gardens will become even greater.