Thread: Rainwater Harvesting

Here in the dry hill country of Texas we are short of water. I built a rainwater collection system after attending a seminar and spending a lot of time at the library and on Internet learning how to make one work. Ours is great! It has a roof-wash subsystem and we can collect 3300 gallons from our garage and barn roofs. It is not exactly rocket science, but it does require some craftsmanship. The water is OUTSTANDING for making good shaving lather. No spots on the washed cars either. We are not using the water in the house of yet. Our water is for the landscaping and vegetable garden. In Texas all supplies and materials from the gutters to the spigots are sales tax-free. I shower with rainwater. Understand that in certain parts of the world, rainwater collection is mandated by law. Soon I fear this will happen here. I hate being ordered to do something. I am ahead of government edict thus far. Later I shall add more tanks and get off the municipal water system grid. Meanwhile, use some rainwater for shaving lather. I think you will like it. RRR

I've thought about doing that here in Az. What do you use to get the water from the barrels to where you want it? pumps, gravity

Bob

Originally Posted by timberrr59

Here in the dry hill country of Texas we are short of water. I built a rainwater collection system after attending a seminar and spending a lot of time at the library and on Internet learning how to make one work. Ours is great! It has a roof-wash subsystem and we can collect 3300 gallons from our garage and barn roofs. It is not exactly rocket science, but it does require some craftsmanship. The water is OUTSTANDING for making good shaving lather. No spots on the washed cars either. We are not using the water in the house of yet. Our water is for the landscaping and vegetable garden. In Texas all supplies and materials from the gutters to the spigots are sales tax-free. I shower with rainwater. Understand that in certain parts of the world, rainwater collection is mandated by law. Soon I fear this will happen here. I hate being ordered to do something. I am ahead of government edict thus far. Later I shall add more tanks and get off the municipal water system grid. Meanwhile, use some rainwater for shaving lather. I think you will like it. RRR

Would you mind posting some pictures? This is quite interesting

I intend on doing something very similar, dont know yet if I will use aboveground storage or the traditional cisterns.

Folks, I do not have a camera. Do check the Internet for general harvesting details. Texas rainwater collection.com has a good downloadable manual. Ideally with 1 inch of rain, a little over 600 gallons can be collected from a 1000 square foot roof. With cedar trees and winds, I get about 500 gallons/1000sqft.
Here is what I do for pressure: Gravity-we have three 1100-gallon black poly tanks bought at a Tractor Supply Store in Kerrville. They are about $600 each. Since this is hilly ground where we live, two of the tanks are on the ground at the source of collection. For enough pressure to make a second story shower work, I pump the collected water to a storage tank atop a hill behind our house. It is about 15 feet higher than the other two tanks. I use basement sump pumps to transfer the water up the hill. One of the pumps is only 1/6HP bought at Home Depot for about $70. All the piping is schedule 40 PVC. As the water comes off the roofs, it is screened at the gutter opening, then at the downspouts. At this point there are two 4" PVC standpipes which fill with roof wash water and it is not collected in the tanks. Collected water is filtered at the tank entry with a home-made Y strainer. Finally inside the tanks, I use a women's stocking support hose clamped to a 2" PVC 90 final pipe fitting. This last filter effectively collects any fines or mud in the water. In order to drink rainwater safely it is a good idea to filter once more with a 5 micron filter and then run it through a UV purifier, just in case of bacteria. The UV sterilizes the bacteria if present.
The improvement will be for me to buy a 12volt DC RV transfer pump and then power it with a Solar Photovoltaic collector. It will be slower transfer, but it will be GREEN! Whatever you use- keep all fittings sealed against mosquitoes. This is not a too-hard project. Next to donating blood (not from shaving!), collecting rainwater is something that I feel is noble in life. If you do rig up a system you will sleep much better knowing that you are part of a solution and NOT part of a problem!... RRR

Wow, practically no need for a camera- your description is perfect! Are you by chance a writer?

That's really cool what you're doing. I've been through your neck of the woods before and I'm sure it's a necessary thing. No reason to go through a drought when it's falling off your roof! I bet your savings will be phenomenal too.

I try to yarn about things that I believe in. I should get a camera and maybe produce something visual. I love to show this system off to anyone interested. There are many things that we need to know more about. I just told a basic outline with few exacting details; because, there are just about as many valves in this layout as are in a submarine! Each tank and pipeline can be isolated, cross-connected, or bypassed, depending on where from or where to the rainwater needs to go. One thing to be aware of-rain collection is OK from just about all types of roofing with the exception of WOOD SHINGLES! They sometimes have pretty toxic preservatives in them. Older metal roofs with lead solder seams and flashings could be bad over time also. Rainwater hoarding in the form of cisterns goes back many thousands of years (Megido in Bible times). Something old, something new, we can all use any help we can get. Thanks for the interest. RRR P.S. Please pray for Hill Country rain.

sounds amazing. I don't hardly have the room, but I do have 6 rain barrels. 2 locations. save lots of water for watering the plants/garden. Made them from parts at Lowes and barrels found at a local distributor of alcohol based food flavoring.
aaron

Good job for collecting the water. I have used some of that plastic screen repair screening material to seal off where connections are exposed to mosquitoes. They love to get into the stored rainwater! It doesn't take much to keep them out. I can make some really good lather with that soft water. I just use some Williams and sometimes some Old Spice mug soaps. Later I plan to experiment with some of these high-class soaps that I read about in the Forums. Keep up the collecting. Think about this: IT IS ILLEGAL TO COLLECT RAINWATER IN COLORADO! It has something to do with eastern Colorado water rights about possible diminishing the water in rivers and streams. According to what I learned at the Cibilo Nature Center Rainwater Harvesting Seminar, only about 4% of rainwater ever makes it to streams and rivers because of soaking into the ground, evaporation, vegetation, etc. The state of Colorado has "ownership" of the rain!!! After learning that, I never listen to my John Denver records ever again!... RRR

Great post. I've been thinking of doing something like this for a long time, albeit something simpler. How many inches of rainfall do you get per year? Any links to good sites is appreciated.