Rainwater Harvesting for Off-Grid Homes

[irishspirit]

Water may well become more sought after than gold. While a person can go without food for weeks on end, a person can only go without water for a matter of days, so while gold is nice and shelter is important, water is probably our most crucial natural resource. So it makes sense to put in a system whereby you can be assured that you will always have your own source of water. After-all, isn't off-grid living all about independence and becoming self reliant?

What the heck is a water catchment or rainwater harvesting system anyway? Well, it is a system that collects rainwater either from the roof of your home or from other areas usually surrounding the home. It then filters the water and voila you have free, un-flouridated water that you can use like any other water. You can practically throw away those water bills right now!

There are many ways of getting water but rainwater harvesting is by far the easiest and most cost effective way of collecting water. Once the water catchment system is erected it pretty much runs by itself. Moreover, it requires little if any power to use. Additionally, rainwater is more pure than water that has fallen to the ground containing less calcium and minerals and almost always exceeds the quality of groundwater. Another benefit of rainwater harvesting is the avoidance of chlorination and fluoridation treatments.

http://brie-hoffman.hubpages.com/hub...tchment-System

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[Scott]

We need more of this information

Thanks Irish

Scott

[VajraYaya]

With huge amounts of radiation still coming from Fukushima, I wouldn't he doing ANYTHING with rainwater for a while.

[rmauersr]

Water harvested from rain barrels must be filtered before drinking. Consider the result of birds flying over a roof, dropping excrement.

Berkey and Katadyn make a variety of filters that could be used as a solution. Some are designed for portability, or cabin use, and many applications in between. The least expensive portable Berkey is currently available at Amazon for $17.99 plus shipping. This one is good for 160 refills of dirty water. Replacement filters are available.

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If you are buying a larger Berkey to supply a family of five drinking water, the cost of replacement filters allow you to purify your drinking water for less than $17.00 a year. Using the two filters supplied with the larger Berkey, filters will supply a family of five for 6 years or 6000 gallons. ref: Berkey FAQ

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You will live 5-7 days without water, but function effectively for only about 48 to 72 hours without it. Water is critical when it comes to survival. more…

[billbaty]

Hi,

We collect rainwater and process all of our own drinking water. We have 9,500 gallon capacity and have dedicated a 1,000 gal tank for drinking and cooking. I top off this 1,000 every time it rains and figure that at around 3 gallons per day average usage, the 1,000 gallons will last for almost a year. The rest of our water is for a small orchard, gardens and a small fish pond.

We started off with a 2,500 gal tank and added 1,000 gal tanks as we could afford them. If you are thinking about collecting water and it seems too costly, just start slow with one tank and add to it as you are able.

The formulas for water catchment are (approximately) Each square foot of roof space will collect .62 gallons (a little more than 1/2 gallon) of water per inch of rain. So, for example, if your roof is 20 foot x 30 foot, that will be 600 foot of catchment area. 600 x .62 = 372 gallons of water per 1 inch of rain. Our area gets about 28 inches of rain per year. If our roof was 600 square feet then we could collect 10,416 gallons of water per year. 600 is fairly small. Our roof is about 1400 square foof so we could possibly collect 24,304 gallons of water per year.

Send me a message if you want any other information.

All the best,

bill

[Raven]

Well, it is a system that collects rainwater either from the roof of your home or from other areas usually surrounding the home.

everyone I know in Germany has a rainwater tank either under their house, in their backyard or in form of
a barrel somewhere around their property. We use it for watering gardens and washing cars etc.

[Operator]

and figure that at around 3 gallons per day average usage, the 1,000 gallons will last for almost a year.

Thanks for the useful info ... great thread!
How do you treat the water for consumption after such a long storage ?
I learned that they need to keep the water constantly moving in the main storage tanks here on the island.

[music]

I have used nothing but rain water for most of my life, and have never treated it (until recently – the location I am at now is very wet, and the water can get “green” from micro-organisms, so is filtered for drinking purposes). Rain water is the best water there is. It is slightly acidic (not generally a problem), but using concrete tanks for storage raises the pH generally to about 7. In my opinion, slightly acidic water is more body friendly than slightly alkali water.

Nobody who lives in the country is in the least bit concerned about animal excrement on their roof. I have drunk unfiltered and untreated water for many, many years, and have never suffered any ill effect. In fact, the material of your roof surface is more an issue than incidental bird kaka, and even then, the concentrations are minimal, and the water is far superior to treated town water. To be on the safe side regarding foreign particulate matter in your water, wait until after rain or pumping to draw water to give the matter time to settle in the sediment layer at the bottom of your tank.

Everyone who can should have a rainwater collecting system, as well as at least 3 months of dried foodstuffs, and items such as colloidal silver, tea-tree oil, olive leaf extract, etc. Some means of solar power collection would also be good, and one good way of heating water without solar panels is to coil black poly-pipe inside a large compost heap – the temperature of the water produced is quite amazing

[billbaty]

Hi,

Our drinking/cooking water really isn't stored all that long. We use about 1,000 gallons per year, so that's about 250 gallons per quarter. I top of the drinking water storage tank throughout the year so, not only is it being refreshed but it also insures that we always have about a one year supply of water on hand. -We top it off from our main catchment tank. Our other 8,500 gallons of storage is used for watering fruit trees and the rest of the garden and household plants, oh, and the pond.

Our drinking water is filtered twice with sediment filters before it reaches our house. We then run it through a berky before consumption. Many people in this part of the country, Texas, used to have a basement cistern and never filtered their rainwater. On top of the kitchen counter was a door that they would open and lower a bucket to bring water up from the cistern. A friend of mine used to visit his grandparents who had this type of setup and my friend would always remark how wonderful the water tasted.

I've heard about circulating the water but it hasn't seemed necessary to us, especially when using a berky. Sometimes when watering the garden, I drink from the outer tanks which is un-berkyed and it tastes good to me. One thing about rainwater is that it is essentially distilled water. Nobody usually has a need to filter snow and rainwater is just about as good, depending on the cleanliness of one's roof and tanks.

All the best,

Bill

Thanks for the useful info ... great thread!
How do you treat the water for consumption after such a long storage ?
I learned that they need to keep the water constantly moving in the main storage tanks here on the island.

[Anchor]

On the Anchor farm, the water is all rainwater. It comes off the roofs and is piped with 90mm storm-water pipes, which siphon into two tanks. The house tank is concrete and is 80,000L, the irrigation tank is poly and is 20,000L. The Irrigation tank can also be filled from a bore, which I have recently installed a solar pump in; but ever since I did that it has rained a lot and the tanks are overflowing. The lowest the house tank ever got was half full.

Pump
The house-water tank is pumped by a 24VDC demand pressure pump array of my own making. I installed three pumps in parallel for redundancy and better performance, two are switched on one is off, every two months the one that is off is cycled through so they all wear at the same rate. There is also a 40L pressure vessel in the plumbing.The pressure vessel is a large cylinder with a butyl diaphragm with compressed air in the top - water is pumped in the bottom. What this does is keep the house water under sufficient pressure until about 20-25L have been drawn off, and then the pressure is low enough that the pumps kick in and refill the system. This increase the duty cycle of the pump and reduces the wear on the pressure switches.

The pumps are powered by a 2 x 100Ah 12 V AGM rechargeable batteries, and is charged by two 85W solar panels on the roof and a morning star charge controller. The solar panels are over-sized to ensure that even in the winter the batteries stay charged each day and make them last a long time. Each pump uses about 4-5 Amperes when running. We can have two showers going and a toilet cistern flushing and still not outpace the pumps ability to keep the water flowing. This solar system is independent of all the others I have - and is probably the most robust. Basically I hate not having running water Must be the Cancerian in me.

Treatment
The water that enters the house by this system is filtered using a Davy water purification system. The water first passes through a 20 micron filter rated to 75lpm, I only needed 40lpm but I like to over-engineer as I think this makes the filters last longer (I've also had the system in for long enough that I know this to be true). Then the water passes a 1 micron filter made of poly-spun fibers, also rated at 75lpm (for the same reasons). I estimate that the filters would last about a year in normal household use, but they 20 micron one needs a wash every three months or so. I also have a small stock of replacements - good for about 5 years. Once all the particulates are removed they pass through a tube that has a powerful UV tubular bulb running down it that is powered from the house (also solar, but for another post). This one I really went overkill on, it is rated at 120lpm. As I never use that much - we would be hard pushed to even use 30lpm, this means the water flows very slowly down the tube. This thoroughly sterilizes any remaining living organisms rendering it completely safe for consumption. Yes, in my house you can drink the water from any of the cold taps! Even the toilet cisterns - LOL

Hot water
Nothing to do with rain.... however while I am writing about it - our hot water service is from a 300L hot water tank outside. That tank's content is pumped (again using house solar power) through a manifold on the roof connected to 30 evacuated heat tubes. These things are freaking brilliant. As soon as the sun comes out, even on a cold day, the water starts heating up. 9 months out of 12 the hot water tank is full of water at 75 degrees centigrade. This is so hot, it exceeds Australian plumbing regulations and has to be mixed with cold water as it enters the house (a tempering valve) to a final temperature of 50 degrees. In the winter an LPG fueled gas booster (Bosch, 20lpm) makes any of the water from the tank up to 60 degrees in case the sun has not shone enough - if the water is hot enough, the booster doesn't come on, and it only uses the minimum necessary gas to get to 60 degrees. We have two 45Kg LPG bottles, that is about 2 years worth for our usage! Our kitchen cook-top also is supplied by this gas.

This has all taken quite some time to put together and achieves the following long term benefits:

1) Very low energy costs for pumping (new batteries every 12-15 years or so and perhaps some spares for the pumps - I estimate $50 per annum)
2) Low treatment costs (uses solar power) consumables are not so cheap - maybe $120 per annum.
3) Very low cost, safe, hot water for 9 out of 12 months, gas bottle hire and use maybe $80 per annum.
4) Pure water, with no additives, not even chlorine.
5) No dependance on town water or water tankers.
6) Almost complete immunity from power supply disruptions.

[billbaty]

Hello,

Man! What a great system you have. I was wondering if you drilled the borehole yourself, or hired it done? Perhaps it was already there? I would like to drill my own borehole but I am unsure of all the small, affordable self-drilling systems. I'm sitting on 30 to 60 feet of limestone. I haven't priced companies for drilling. Thanks for your post.

All the best,

Bill

[QUOTE=Anchor;71082]On the Anchor farm, the water is all rainwater. It comes off the roofs and is piped with 90mm storm-water pipes, which siphon into two tanks. The house tank is concrete and is 80,000L, the irrigation tank is poly and is 20,000L. The Irrigation tank can also be filled from a bore, which I have recently installed a solar pump in; but ever since I did that it has rained a lot and the tanks are overflowing. The lowest the house tank ever got was half full.

[Anchor]

The bore was already done before I acquired the place.

[chrstian_indianapolis]

Hello everybody!

FYI- not sure if you are all from the US- but some states are starting to ban collecting rain water.............i know.....stupid right?

[Jenci]

Hello everybody!

FYI- not sure if you are all from the US- but some states are starting to ban collecting rain water.............i know.....stupid right?

I thought that has to be a joke, Chrstian but no, it appears to be true although it may not affect the small fish in Utah as it says in this report.




Jeanette

[flower]

Anchor will hopefully beable to join us in the second half of the show today.

I am hoping to talk about his water , as well as other tools he uses on the farm to reduce impact, increase yield and ofcourse reduce cost.

[Anchor]

I am sorry I did not make it to the show. I was in the land of nod. Its a long weekend here and so I was here on Friday working quite hard - and then when I fell asleep, nothing could wake me until just before 08:00 which is when the show ended.

Soz.

Its going to be hard for me to make the start of the show, at 06:00 on what is for me a Saturday morning when I am used to sleeping in after a tiring week.