Here are some ways to recycle all the water in your studio if you dont have a sink with a clay trap.
I dont have a water outlet in my studio so there’s always been a built-in disincentive to use a lot of water because I have to walk up a flight of steps to the laundry. Using a few buckets its possible to capture and reuse every last drop in the studio. As a side benefit of the process you can capture and reuse all clay residue washed off equipment or surfaces.
Equipment:
large basin container
2-3 buckets
2-3 large sturdy containers suitable for outdoor use
mesh to fit over buckets
The basic idea is to clean using a bucket of water and then let that bucket sit over night or longer and pour off the clean water at the top to reuse and harvest the clay at the bottom to recycle. Its usually necessary to have a few buckets on the go at the same time. This simple little system can be used for all water in the ceramic studio. You will need to have separate buckets for materials that shouldn’t be mixed e.g. different colours or types of clay. (In a one person studio I dont find this a problem as I’m usually using one kind of material at a time.) I also treat anything with toxic ingredients differently, more on this in a future post.
Fill the basin with clean water and rinse as much clay as possible off equipment and surfaces. Fill a bucket with water and do a second wash. If necessary repeat with a further bucket of water until clean. Leave the basin and buckets to stand undisturbed overnight at least. The clay will sink to the bottom. Pour off the clean water from the top to use for cleaning, starting the process again. Collect the clay slurry in the bottom of each bucket to recycle. The clay will be sloppy so dry it out by letting the water evaporate or pouring on to a plaster bat. I usually collect the slops in big container outside (under cover from rain) until I have enough clay to recycle and the slops have dried out. Label your buckets if you need separate collection streams for different materials.
It will probably be necessary to do a final rinse or wipe down with fresh water to get rid of that last pesky film of fine clay dust. This is worth doing to prevent dust inhalation and ingestion of any toxic materials. This final rinse water can also be captured and reused.
Things to do with the all the recycled water (that contain no potentially toxic residues):
rinsing or cleaning
watering the garden
re-hydrating clay
making a new clay body or slip
recycling dry clay scraps
Top tips:
do messy jobs like clay mixing and equipment cleaning outside so that there is less cleaning up to do in the studio
put mesh over buckets if you have pets and/or dont want leaves etc falling into them
leave clay cleaning water to stand undisturbed for 2-4 days so that it completely separates (longer than that it will get a little bit smelly so that depends on your tolerance)
if you use more than one clay body think about whether you need to collect them separately for recycling or not
Extras:
collect rainwater to use for making and re-hydrating clay
have a separate collection stream/container for glaze cleaning water (another blog post on this coming soon)
incorporate any clay water use into this system e.g. water used for joining, fettling, throwing