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How is Rainwater Harvesting done ? Harvesting System Broadly rainwater can be harvested for two purposes Storing rainwater for ready use in containers above or below ground Charged into the soil for withdrawal later (groundwater recharging) From where to harvest rain Rainwater harvesting can be harvested from the following surfaces Rooftops: If buildings with impervious roofs are already in place, the catchment area is effectively available free of charge and they provide a supply at the point of consumption.

Paved and unpaved areas i.e., landscapes, open fields, parks, stormwater drains, roads and pavements and other open areas can be effectively used to harvest the runoff. The main advantage in using ground as collecting surface is that water can be collected from a larger area. This is particularly advantageous in areas of low rainfall. Waterbodies: The potential of lakes, tanks and ponds to store rainwater is immense. Stormwater drains: Most of the residential colonies have proper network of stormwater drains. Ersson rainwater harvest and purification (original) Background In January 1996 we installed a rainwater catchment system to capture Oregon's abundant rainfall.

Portland receives between 3 and 4 feet of rainfall annually. During a gentle rain a typical Oregon downspout sheds several gallons per minute. Our twelve hundred square foot roof captures on average 3600 cubic feet (27,000 gallons) of water per year. Backflow prevention Rainwater machine Materials This system, which cost less than $1,500, consists of the following components: Schematic of the project Maintenance Maintenance consists of keeping gutters and cistern screen clean. At the current time we continue to use the public water supply only for summertime water and occasional drinking and cooking.

In my research on rainwater catchment systems the best single reference I have come across for detailed design guidelines is the Texas Water Development Board's Texas Guide to Rainwater Harvesting. caption Roofwashers A simple prototype is shown in the TG. Rainbarrels Advantages Water Sculpture. Harvest Rain DVD. Harvest Rain - The Movie review by Doug Pushard In harvesting rainwater, the overwhelming majority of the attention is focused on active rainwater collection systems - that is systems with tanks and pumps. Passive rainwater catchment is too often overlooked, and yet, a very impactful and important practice. Passive rainwater collection is the art of slowing down rainwater and letting it infiltrate locally rather than channeling it too quickly running off the land.

It promotes healing of the land and treats rainwater as an asset rather than a problem. It has been practiced for centuries; however, with the advent of deep wells and cheap electricity to drive big pumps, it has all but been forgotten. However, with droughts, significantly larger storm events and the new emphasis on building green; it maybe getting a second life. An extremely well made DVD by The Cuenca Los Ojos Foundation highlights this connection and how it can actually heal the land if properly managed. Related Links. Collect Rain Water For Your Garden 3in1 System. Interview_Sally. Harvesting Rain Downunder by Doug Pushard Rainwater harvesting is not just a topic of interest in the arid southwest, or even just parts of the United States; it is a topic of worldwide interest.

Sally Dominguez, CEO of Rainwaterhog from Sydney, Australia, was recently in the United States promoting her Rainwaterhog product line; an innovative, attractive interconnectable line of rainwater tanks that can be used vertically or horizontally. Sally, how long ago did you get involved in Rainwater Harvesting? I guess I started about 15 years ago when I started designing houses with large steel tanks. I have also lived in houses with rainwater systems; one was where a possum drowned in the drinking water tank, so I also seen the drawbacks first hand. What is the weather like in Sydney? Where I live, we have rainfall patterns similar to those in San Francisco. Is Rainwater Harvesting growing in Australia?

Are there incentives for water reuse and conservation in Australia? Links: MNT's Rainwater Collection System with Manifold. The best rain barrel I have ever seen-and affordable. How to Build a Rainwater Harvesting & Greywater collecting system DIY. How to Harvest Rain Water in a Household Setting. Rainwater Harvesting. Rainwater harvesting with multiple (modular) barrels I'm dependent on water and I'm hooked on barrels. With one installed, I just had to have more. I added another, and another. Now I have seven connected barrels. This system of barrels, pipes and fittings has a water holding capacity of 350 gallons. The first barrel I installed is the receiver barrel. Five more barrels are located on a platform at the same height inside the garage (I later moved them OUTSIDE to get more room). It is important to note that a barrel full of water is extremely heavy.

To create the joint between each barrel and the connecting pipe we used the same device that allows water to flow from a toilet tank into the bowl. Once the barrels are operational, there is always great interest to see how much water there is inside! If you know the capacity of your system you can figure out how many gallons are represented by one inch on the level indicator. It feels great to recycle our rainwater into the garden. NOTES. Rain harvester using 55 gallon barrels. Rain Barrel To Toilet Installation - Page 1. Many of you probably think I'm nuts by harvesting rain water in Seattle. After all, water is plentiful here, right? While is it true that we get a lot of rainfall, up to 60 inches per year in some places, the summer months can be very dry. Climate change has made our winters here warmer and there is less snow in the mountains to fill our reserviors during the summer. Watershed collection for our growing urban population can offset critically needed water from rivers during the fall salmon spawning season.

Recent summers have been dry enough for the local government to call for voluntary and sometimes mandatory water use restrictions. While it doesn't come close to making up for our gas-guzzling, high-consuming lifestyles, rain havesting does have a positive impact on our environment. Your house is an "impermeable surface". Besides the more important environmental issues, most of us in urban areas pay for domestic potable water. My rain barrel design. Functionality update: 21 June 2007 We spent a week visiting the grandkids. While we were away, the National Weather Service reported over an inch of rain in the area.

The first barrel is full and there are no leaks. Now to add more barrels... Functionality update: 28 July 2007 I added the second barrel to this downspout using a 3/4" male pipe thread to hose adapter near the bottom of each barrel. The connection between barrels is made with a washing machine hose (yet another leftover, about $6 if you buy new) because it has the needed female hose fittings on each end. You can add inline shutoff valves to allow isolating each barrel (great if the hose springs a leak). I'm thinking of adding a couple more barrels at a lower level, so the overflow can be run into them. The barrels do provide enough pressure/volume to allow using a soaker hose (approximately 0.433psi/vertical foot of water height). This was also my week to drain and flush the barrels. The original tank after cleaning. How to Build a Rainwater Collection System. Steps Method 1 of 4: Getting Rain Barrel Supplies 1Obtain one or more water storage barrels.

You can buy a water storage barrel online, but it's cheaper to get a used one from a company that uses large barrels to store food and other merchandise (just be sure to clean it thoroughly with soapy water). A rain barrel can also be made from a large plastic trash can. Get a barrel that will hold 30 to 55 gallons of water. If you decide to get a used barrel, make sure that it didn't formerly contain oil, pesticides, or any other type of toxic substance. It's too difficult to clean these chemicals from the inside of the barrel, so using them is too risky.If you plan on collecting a lot of water, get two or three barrels. 2Get additional supplies to turn the barrels into a water collection system. Method 2 of 4: Building a Rain Barrel Platform 1Level an area right next to your downspout. 3Stack concrete blocks on top of the pea gravel.

Method 3 of 4: Adding the Spigot and Overflow Valve Tips Ad. HCM-04950. Rainwater Harvesting and Purification System. Aussie Rain Tanks. Harvest the Rain. Learn how to build a rainwater harvesting system to save free water. Rainwater harvesting systems can be as simple as directing gutters to a lidded garbage can or as complex as a concrete cistern, roof washer and filtration system. But whatever your application, rest assured that you'll be getting some of the purest — and cheapest — water around. Why Save Rainwater? Rainwater can be used for potable water (drinking, cooking, bathing) or nonpotable uses such as landscape irrigation, livestock watering and washing.

Collecting and using rainwater has numerous benefits, ranging from improved water quality to reduced stress on underground aquifers. "All water is rainwater," rainwater systems enthusiast and author Richard Heinichen is fond of saying. And indeed, he's right: All our water, whether sucked from an aquifer, river or well, or harvested from a rooftop, once was cloud-borne. Capture the Cloud Juice Rainwater Harvesting System Conserve Water First Sizing Your Water System Water Cisterns. Simple_Diagram_to_show_Rainwater_Harvesting.png (PNG Image, 1209x851 pixels) - Scaled (95.

Raincycle - How to harvest rain. Sustainable System Every Raincycle system has a storage component and a water handling component. Proper sizing and configuration of both components is necessary to create a sustainable rainwater recycling system. Through site specific design and calculation we customize each system according your project's needs. Tank Sizing The first decision when designing a system is to determine the tank sizes. We can locate tanks above or below ground to fit your project needs. Tanks are also available in many different materials (i.e. 4 Step Process Rainwater is captured through the building downspouts and diverted through either a Vortex or Downspout FilterWater then passes through a smoothing inlet as it enters the tankWater is collected from a floating suction filter and pumped out for reuse A Multisiphon device diverts overflow water while preventing backflow into the tank Wisy Filters.

How to Plan a Home Rain Water Collection System. Capture System. The Capture System by Doug Pushard You have decided to invest in a rainwater harvesting system, but where do you start? What questions do you need to answer before you can build the right system to harvest rainwater? Let’s start with learning how much rain you can collect. Rainwater systems need not be complicated. They have been built and used for thousands of years. The Capture system is the place to start. Calculating the maximum amount of rain that can be caught on a roof is a straightforward equation: Maximum Annual Gallons of Rain Capture = Annual Rainfall x Square Footage of Roof x .623 Gallons The Annual Rainfall in your area is readily available on the Internet, in the local paper or from your local weather station (see related links for a listing of some US cities).

The Square Footage of Roof is calculated by multiplying its length by its width. The last factor (i.e. .623) in the equation, is how many gallons are in an area of one square foot by one inch deep of rainwater. Notes. Residential_gutters. Residential Gutter Sizing by Doug Pushard Gutter sizing is an aspect of rainwater collection that has been studied extensively and can be calculated based on published guidelines in the plumbing codes. For example, the Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC) recommends that a gutter system be able to carry the runoff of the heaviest 60 minute downpour recorded in the last 100 years.

The International Plumbing Code (IPC) has a similar, but not exact, published sizing recommendation. Both plumbing code manuals include the necessary sizing calculations to properly size a gutter system. With water weighing over 8 pounds a gallon, it poses a significant threat to a house and it’s inhabitants. In properly sizing the gutter system (i.e. sometimes also referred to as the drainage system), any of the following can be varied: roof size, number of downspouts, slope of the gutters and the size of the gutters and downspouts. To determine system sizing alternatives, know the roof size to be drained. Links: Raingutters. Making Raingutters Work! Why gutter protection should be standard on every home. Reprinted by permission from the January 2007 Home Perservation Newsletter Copyright 2007 HPS Palo Alto, Inc.

All Rights Reserved At HPS we receive a lot of requests for information about gutters and how to best take care of them. Rain gutters are quiet but critical components of a building’s roofing system. They have the important job of capturing rainwater at the roof edge then controlling and directing it away from the structure. Unfortunately, standard gutters do not work! In order for gutters to work when they are needed they must be fitted with a “protection” system that allows water to flow freely through while preventing debris from interrupting the flow. Gutter protection products are basically passive filters and therefore not “install and forget” systems. Gutter protection also helps reduce fire risk by minimizing flammable debris in the gutter. Summary: Links: New Page 1. Search The Renewable Energy site for Do-It-Yourselfers John's Post: Just wanted to share a simple idea. I have three dry creeks and 2/3rds of my ponds water has evaporated thanks to the drought of 2007.

To make matters even worse the town offically announced it will be out of drinking water before February. So I bought this water storage to prepare for the worst case senieros: well runs dry or collapes, contaiminated city or well water, no water due to drought and of course quench the livestocks thirst. Tank is full; discovereding 1/2 inch of rainfall equals 300 gallons of roof water collected...love the tank.

The tank is great for gardening. John __________________ TENNESSEE JOHN Thanks to John for providing this material! Some of the comments suggested using a dark color tank or painting the tank to reduce algae growth in the tank. How to Collect Rain Water. How to Recycle Rain Water. How to plan a good system of collecting rain water. Collect Rain Water. How to Make a Rain Barrel Out of a Wine Barrel. How to Collect Rain Water on Vacant Land. Manual1. The WooTank rain water harvesting tank. Search The Renewable Energy site for Do-It-Yourselfers The first wootank was made a few years back as an experiment in low cost custom tank construction.

I wrote about it about three years ago on my blog. It has been operating reliably for the last three years, with no signs of deterioration (beyond the initial design flaws this new tank hoped to address). pfh kindly takes photos every now and then: fish and water storage Dad wanted to do something with the water off his back roof, so I suggested this. My brother is keen on keeping fish, and mum wants to be able to irrigate plants with flood and drain (low water cost, low operational cost). Its amazing how nice it was to just move 2.5 m^3 of dirt: progress is evident, instant feedback, and you feel great after all the exercise. There is a company in Melbourne that makes plastic water tanks called plastank. Capacity? Peter asks: "are you comfortable with the weight? Peter asks: "how does woo compare with plas ? " Termites Rot Sun damage Puncture. Build a 6500-gallon concrete water tank for $1500 by Dorothy Ainsworth Issue #101.

RainwaterHarvestingManual_3rdedition. MSUExtnRainwaterCatchmentmt9707. Water From The Sky (9780962676758): Michael Reynolds. SmartValve. The Online Rainwater Harvesting Community. Pedaling. Cidecalli. Hari_Top10. Pump_systems. First_flush. First Flush System Rainwater Harvesting - Water. Rain Chains :: The Online Rainwater Harvesting Community. Home -  – rainfoundation.org. UK Rainwater Harvesting Association (UKRHA) - Recycling Water. Regulations. Rainharvesting Systems-rainwater recycling, recovery, storage and reuse-water conservation. People's Daily Online - Rainwater harvesting benefits farmers in Gansu. Calculate water productivity of your roof. Simple System.

Rainwater Harvesting: Comparing Storage Solutions :: HarvestH2o.com. Pumps or tanks. The Online Rainwater Harvesting Community. Conveyance1. Portable shelter and water catchment for livestock. The Secret to Successful Rainwater Harvesting: Floating Filters :: HarvestH2o.com. Florida House: A Rainwater Harvesting Case Study - HarvestH2O.com :: The Online Rainwater Harvesting Community. The Online Rainwater Harvesting Community. Op Ed Greenest Roof. The Online Rainwater Harvesting Community. GeoPathfinder. Rainwater harvesting. Rainwater_harvesting. Home - Waterwall tanks. Rain Barrel.