Rainwater harvesting thread

Cork boy 55

A thread to discuss the harvesting of rainwater.
I am an urban dweller

Reasons why
(*) Water will soon be charged

(**) It's good for environment i.e. less treatment power and so on.

(***)The water supply is one of the most vulnerable of the government services to be hit in survival disater situations and also in everyday life
it does not take much to knock it out, interupt it, or dirty it.
Recently in Cork the water was off for over two weeks due to flooding of the water treatment plant and we have seen dirty water in Galway.

I have decided to begin harvesting rainwater,I am starting off in an amatuer cheap fashion and inteed to gradaully build up

So any good ideas/resoucres/websites/thoughts on who to harvest rainwater on a permanment basis.

Doc Ruby

Aldi is doing a water butt with rain collector for €40 tomorrow.

Cork boy 55

Doc Ruby wrote: »

Aldi is doing a water butt with rain collector for €40 tomorrow.

Might pick up one of them whats the ""downpipe filler kit"" on top of it?

I also have two old wheelie bins and a ton of buckets and stuff, thicking of converting them?

ted1

What do you plan on using the water for?

Cork boy 55

ted1 wrote: »

What do you plan on using the water for?

Doc Ruby

Yeah, Cork Boy 55 is on my team come ragnarok.

evilmonkee

Regarding the wheelie bin thing, I spoke of it in my opening post of this thread

eth0

It will be interesting what the feckers will come up with for charging water

will there be an allowance with no standing charge? this would seem very unlikely to me since they are desperate to lob an unavoidable 100+ euro charge in as many different forms as possible at every single household in the country. so I expect them to come up with a standing charge or some other fee on top of excess water usage.

what will the price per litre be?

if there is no standing charge then it would be happy days, use a solenoid valve or something to let more mains water into the tank if it drops below a certain level and use harvested rain water the rest of the time

Cork boy 55

evilmonkee wrote: »

Regarding the wheelie bin thing, I spoke of it in my opening post of this thread

ya i see that , ta
I might try the first few steps of that (1-10)
the top filter and the tap
have you done it yet?
Where would you buy the 20 mm threaded tank adapter and the ball value
(not into plumbing DIY TBH)
Not too pushed about the self cleaning that could be done in five minutes every few weeks and if you are using the water on the go its not such a big deal.

If you got a filter that covered all or most of the top of the wheelie bin
you could leave the lid open and avoid cutting it up.
like one the big square ones here

and maybe instead of the tap you could get some sort of ladle or bucket or scoop to get the water out thus avoiding more cutting bit messy
but leave the bin intact

evilmonkee

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

Where would you buy the 20 mm threaded tank adapter and the ball value
(not into plumbing DIY TBH)
...
but leave the bin intact

they're common components so any hardware store should sell them.

I had never thought about leaving the bin intact! In my mind, there won't be a point in time when a rainwater harvester will be useless, because of this I want to make it as best I can.
Also, using it on the go, most likely won't be enough to filter the bottom layer of silt out, unless you detach it from the gutter, which defeats the purpose really!

CamperMan

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

If you got a filter that covered all or most of the top of the wheelie bin
you could leave the lid open and avoid cutting it up.
like one the big square ones here

what about mosquitos? will they not get through the holes in the above baskets??

JKMcG

You could try a proper downpipe filter - they are not that expensive, really easy to install and very easy to clean out if needed. Try this one

Doc Ruby

A bit more near future than consumer market at the moment, but I though this was interesting.

Marc Parent, founder of Eole Water, realized that he could extract water from the air after noticing how much water an air conditioner unit collected. He decided to combine a green energy source with the necessary components for condensing water directly from the air. The end result after 10 years of R&D is the WMS1000 wind turbine, capable of condensing and storing up to 1,000 liters of water every day.


The 34 meter tall turbine requires 15mph winds for its 13 meter diameter rotor to turn and generate sufficient energy. It then produces 30kW of power for the system to function. Air is drawn in through vents in the nose of the turbine and a generator heats it producing steam. That steam is then fed through a cooling compressor to form moisture that gets condensed into water. The resulting liquid is piped into a storage tank at the base of the turbine after being purified.

Nice. Maybe a smaller version that generates part electricity, part water? Something a tenth the size would produce enough pure water for most households.

Cork boy 55

I wonder how much Rainwater the average Urban house could
harvest in a year given a basic system of collection and what % of average household use that is?

Any ideas or estimates?

TheChizler

Any ideas for increasing the pressure? I have a 50 gallon ex-mango chutney container, have a pump but I'd rather avoid using and it has no auto-cutoff, which I'd want for using it with a hose. Was considering hoisting it up a tree but common sense is telling me that might not be a great plan.

Doc Ruby

Doc Ruby wrote: »

Aldi is doing a water butt with rain collector for €40 tomorrow.

Really want to pick one of these up for my house - so many good reasons to (most already mentioned here, so I won't rehash them!).

Will have to save up the shekels for one, there's always more urgent stuff in front of getting one!

- Druss.

http://paddy-halligan.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/#!/druss_rua

Cork boy 55

Deleted User wrote: »

Really want to pick one of these up for my house - so many good reasons to (most already mentioned here, so I won't rehash them!).

Will have to save up the shekels for one, there's always more urgent stuff in front of getting one!

- Druss.

Nothing is more urgent than harvesting the rainwater. :eek:

Cork boy 55

There seems to be a number of options out there.

From the inexpensive to the expensive.

http://www.rainharvesting.ie/

http://www.tanks.ie/cPath/30_104/rainwater-harvesting-systems.html

http://www.rainman.ie/


Not promoting anyone in particular.

I'm sure there are others.

Cork boy 55

The water collected from rain water harvesting would have the benefit of being fluoride free.

TheChizler

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

The water collected from rain water harvesting would have the benefit of being fluoride free.

Would you really want to drink it though?

mawk

TheChizler wrote: »

Would you really want to drink it though?

sand charcoal filter and ten minutes boiling.. it'd be great and healthy

Doc Ruby

mawk wrote: »

sand charcoal filter and ten minutes boiling.. it'd be great and healthy

I don't think charcoal will do much unless its activated, boiling will get organisms but not chemicals. Its pretty useful stuff to have around for other reasons too which I won't go into here.

CamperMan

TheChizler wrote: »

Would you really want to drink it though?

I drink it once it goes through a Black Berkey Purification Element..

eth0

Is it really that bad to drink a bit of rain water?

baords dyslexic

eth0 wrote: »

Is it really that bad to drink a bit of rain water?

Wouldn't bother me, but it would depend where it had been collected from? I think a nice steeply pitched roof that gets some sunlight is a nicer source than a flat roof thats in the shade all the time.

Then there is always the problem that you can have a dry spell and a small amout of rain which washes all the sh!t off the roof straight into the water butt.

Not that I collect rainwater for drinking (could if needed) but I think I'd be tempted to collect water specifically for drinking and might keep a separate container just for drinking water connected to the cleanest source and only collect drinking water into that container after it had been raining for a while so the roof would be cleaner. What that would need would be a switch over system so I could collect all the water then switch over to collect in the drinking water butt after it had been raining for a while.

The reason I don't take rainwater harvesting too seriously is that we have several springs (at a distance but high above us so could pipe them) and a river near by.

mikom

Doc Ruby wrote: »

I don't think charcoal will do much unless its activated, boiling will get organisms but not chemicals. Its pretty useful stuff to have around for other reasons too which I won't go into here.

Air in, air out......

Doc Ruby

eth0 wrote: »

Is it really that bad to drink a bit of rain water?

Well if you open your mouth and just take it as it falls it should be okay outside cities and industrial areas, but collecting it from roof gutters you've the buildup of algae, organisms and pollutants from the atmosphere to contend with as well as dead insects, bird droppings and the like. Enough stuff collects up there for seeds to sprout in most places.

I would definetely filter and boil gutter water.

Cork boy 55

TheChizler wrote: »

Would you really want to drink it though?

Would you drink fluoride?

baords dyslexic

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

Would you drink fluoride?

Add to that have you seen the muck thats in many peoples header tanks in the roof? Dead rodents and birds aren't uncommon in any that don't have a cover (and some that do :eek:).

I know most of the water we drink will be from a cold tap in the kitchen straight off the mains but the stuff from the bathroom cold tap you brush you teeth with could be another matter

tbh we get used to whatever bugs are in our water, you'd be in for a weeks diarrhea at my brother in laws farm if they switched off the UV filter but they managed for years without it - only the guests of their B&B suffered

Merch

I'd be more then happy to use collected rainwater to flush my toilets, as a lot of drinking water seems to be wasted that way.
I'd put in a separate tank to feed the toilets, pump it up from the water butt, but I'd need to isolate the supply to the toilets and tap in the mains (with double non return valve?).

Are there any problems with doing this that I haven't accounted for?
My main concern is contamination, back siphoning, but I think the double non return valve and the isolation of the water from the tank for wash hand basin/bath use sorts that?

baords dyslexic

Merch wrote: »

I'd be more then happy to use collected rainwater to flush my toilets, as a lot of drinking water seems to be wasted that way.
I'd put in a separate tank to feed the toilets, pump it up from the water butt, but I'd need to isolate the supply to the toilets and tap in the mains (with double non return valve?).

Are there any problems with doing this that I haven't accounted for?
My main concern is contamination, back siphoning, but I think the double non return valve and the isolation of the water from the tank for wash hand basin/bath use sorts that?

Its a pitty that no ones invented a small ball valve so that you could have two in a toilet? Many toilets can be plumbed from the left or right so if you had a mains feed to one side and a grey water feed to the other you could switch off the one you weren't useing with no need for check valves as there should be an air gap between the ball valve and the top of the water to prevet siphonage.

OOPs just realised that you need to use the side opposite the ballvalve for the overflow but still a good idea

OK why not disconnect your mains feed to the toilets, put in a header tank to hold pumped grey water and feed the toilets. Put in an over sized overflow and a ballvalve feed from the mains water, switch off the mains water and set the overflow so it goes back to your water butt, insure overflow is at least 4inches below the bottom of the mains water ball valve. No check valves needed and if you pump up too much water it just gets returned to the water butt. If you need the mains water for the toilets just switch it back on.