Rainwater Harvesting

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Jin+Guice
Posts: 1279
Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2018 8:15 am

Rainwater Harvesting

Post by Jin+Guice »

Does anyone have any experience with this? I'm trying to move the urban garden I live on towards getting all of it's water off the grid. We've got two large rain barrels and have a hook up to get more. Right now the water pressure isn't high enough to water the garden with them. Is there an easy solution that's not a pump? Should we just use a pump?

Does anyone have experience purifying and storing rain water for drinking?

Does anyone have experience building a sink that uses rainwater and a catchment system to reuse that water on the garden?

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Alphaville
Posts: 3611
Joined: Thu Oct 03, 2019 10:50 am
Location: Quarantined

Re: Rainwater Harvesting

Post by Alphaville »

look for brad lancaster on the subject. he drinks his own rain in tucson. he's got books, videos, does workshops, etc.

for barrel upgrade, people use kiddie pools. no need for pressure if you can create infiltration in the soil (unless you must spray for some reason).

ive created earthworks to reflow water around my cabin and feed trees etc (with a backhoe). what do you mean by sink?

i've used water barrels to flush toilets :lol:

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: Rainwater Harvesting

Post by white belt »

Jin+Guice wrote:
Wed Dec 16, 2020 12:50 pm

Right now the water pressure isn't high enough to water the garden with them. Is there an easy solution that's not a pump? Should we just use a pump?
If gravity won't provide enough water pressure then you will need a pump (there might be the possibility to use a hand pump depending on your setup).

Jin+Guice wrote:
Wed Dec 16, 2020 12:50 pm
Does anyone have experience building a sink that uses rainwater and a catchment system to reuse that water on the garden?
See here for a very simple outdoor sink setup: https://youtu.be/Hr5s0ps9rAQ?t=356

Rainwater harvesting for drinking water is another layer of complexity, so I recommend you really dive into the Brad Lancaster stuff to make sure you have all of the safety measure in place before attempting it. It's probably best to start with something easy like harvesting some rainwater for irrigation which shouldn't require any treatment. Another option we talked about in the water bill thread is to add T-Connectors to drainage lines for sinks, washing machines, dishwashers, etc and have them go right to the garden. Start with rainwater/gray water diversion before worrying about storage.

Edit: Also check out https://oasisdesign.net/greywater/misinfo/
Last edited by white belt on Wed Dec 16, 2020 1:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9371
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Rainwater Harvesting

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Look for information about a water ram.

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