Grey water -> Duck Pond -> Subterranean garden irrigation...?

Hi team,

I've looked at every topic in the ducks and geese sub and, while I've gotten more excited about having ducks (and eating the geese that seem like they'll be more annoying than we bargained for), I haven't found anyone asking the same questions....so here I go.

We're getting 3 Cayuga ducks (and 3 geese whose breed I don't know) and reworking some infrastructure as a result.  The big ponds won't be ready for them in time, so we're getting a temporary small pond for the interim - a disused concrete cattle trough we're picking up for free.  I know nothing about ducks/duck pond maintenance except for watching friends of ours empty and fill their kiddie pool time and again and I don't really want to do that if I can avoid it.  What became clear in the sub is that trying to filter water to return to a small duck pond is mostly a fool's errand with the exception of quackaponics - which isn't a fit for us/the area in question.

We have access to a fresh spring on our property with some effort, but use rainwater and only store 2400 litres which was just exactly enough to get us through last summer. It wont be enough water this year without some major reworks, as we've finally gotten a washing machine (omg why did I wait so long) and we're adding said duck pond - so I'm compelled to rethink the way we use water especially as we've got about another month of rain and then we'll pretty much dry up until mid-April.  Ignoring several other optional functions for now, I'll start at the end and hope you can offer some thoughts/advice/ideas...because, again, this is theoretical, I just don't know and I'm trying to save a bit of labour and hopefully heaps of water.

My thought is to take the water from our washing machine, filter it (probably biochar and sheep's wool that I can later work into garden beds), have water free flow from that filter into the top of the temporary duck pond.  I may have to incorporate a surge tank to deal with the influx from the washing machine, but that's no big deal.  The outdoor shower won't be hard to add to that circuit, nor the bathroom sink but that's a game for later.

I'm in the process of digging in subterranean irrigation for our annual garden.  I'll dig a trench, add some wood chip, add 19mm alkathene pipe that I've punched drip holes into, and top it off with more wood chip creating evaporation free irrigation and a grid we can use to walk through the garden, plus a relatively easy set up so when it mucks up because I have no idea what I'm doing I'll be able to pull it up, clean it, and rebury it without too much effort.  

We'll sink the duck pond so it's about surface level with the surrounding area, then I'll lay the irrigation pipe in the garden at the level where I want to maintain the water in the  pond, run the irrigation pipe to the pond, down the outside, and connect it to an outlet at the bottom of the pond such that when we wash clothes the water runs from the washer to the filter and from the filter to the top of the duck pond whose increased level forces water out the bottom of the pond into the irrigation pipe and out into our garden.  No valves, no manual labour, no human intervention.

I'm clear about how to physically make all of that happen.

My big question is, presuming muck settles to the bottom of the pond, and presuming we time the majority of our grey water use for when the ducks aren't normally in the pond and things have a chance to resettle (super easy to do in the summer), do you reckon that'll be enough to keep the pond clean enough for them to stay happy and healthy?  Should I angle the bottom towards the outlet so muck naturally settles closer to it and is more likely to be carried into the garden?  Do you reckon it's worth a try or am I probably hoping for too much?  Any related ideas that might make this more workable without daily human intervention?

We've spent the last two years working on infrastructure and we're just a couple of projects away from being able to take basic necessities for granted so I'm just trying to work out how to add a complete system that will generally care for itself because having a moment to exhale is quite nice.

Thanks heaps fam.

Well. I can't honestly give you an educated answer, but to me, it sounds viable. I'm sure you're already using a critter/environmentally friendly washing soap (most of us graywater folks are very cognizant of that), so the only thing I can think of is keeping everything moving downhill, which I'm sure has also been figured into your plan. That leaves me with, heck yeh! It's worth a shot, and I'd love to read your posts about your progress and results! Good luck!!