Rain water collection system

tfer

anybody have one installed ? how does it work and how much does it cost, when water rates come in im sure these will get very popular

Naux

I think they'll become popular when the water bills start to roll in!. I enquired about a year ago from a company in the North and it was 5k not including groundworks.

I am not putting one in my house at this point. However I am going to make sure that it will be easy enough to retrofit one in a number of years. I have avoided using any lead in my roof construction and I'm going to talk to the plumber about having a system that will be easily adaptable.

gigawatt

cant you do it the old fashioned way ie a water butt under the gutter pipe? lol

JuniorB

priced one lately, 4k supply only..

justflow1983

It depends on what you're going to use the water for.

At its most basic, it just goes from your gutters to a tank and you use it to water plants, clean your driveway, etc.

A "greywater" system treats and reuses rainwater, and also water from sinks, showers, and washing machines (no toilets) and treats it to the point where it can be used for washing clothes, flushing toilets, etc. It requires extra plumbing in your house. These can use chemical filters, mechanical scrubbers, or biological systems like a reed bed outside. This is plant-based version is often called a Living Machine, but that is a proprietary term from a British supplier.

A water recycling system takes this one step further, and treats the water to a drinkable level so that you can just run it back through your regular pipes and use it for everything. We were unable to get one of these approved by DCC, so we're using greywater on a scheme. If you use a digester to start the process you can even reprocess toilet waste ("blackwater") into potable water, but I can't think of many authorities anywhere that would approve this (although Sidwell Friends Middle School, where the older Obama daughter goes, uses such a system but they don't use the result as drinking water).

There is a supplier in Ireland for plant/reed based greywater systems. PM me if you want the name, they're excellent and they have the advantage of knowing when not to go too "Natural."

icbarros

This article shows the three basic types of rainwater harvesting systems available:
Why Harvest Rainwater?

Tefral

Its worth checking out this:

http://www.bnm.ie/environmental/index.jsp?&1nID=113&2nID=128&3nID=134&nID=153&aID=264