Rainwater harvesting

Andrew_Bellinger

Hi,

I have updated my blog to a new site. You can now leave comments!

http://andrewbellinger.blogspot.com/

It means that I can now update it much quicker than on iweb!!!!!

tommyG

This guide to rainwater harvesting might be helpful http://www.kingspanwater.com/rainwater_harvesting_information.htm

T

pmorrisjones

Glad you are all so technically minded. I have 4 water butts. ! bought new from council (about £30). One bought 2nd hand about £10 and 2 found on beach. All used for flushing downstairs loo with a bucket. Saved us a lot of water over 6 years and cost a lot less than 2K! Also use old washing up water. Upstairs we occasionally have a bath (no I'm not dirty I usually shower!). If so we use that water to flush upstairs loo. Glad you are so adept but I'm happy to be so low tech (and cheap)with my bucket.

Ken68

Same here pmorris....all this rain we get and peeps are paying for water, and most of that water doesn't need to be drinking quality. Time grey water systems were part of all newbuilds.

Richard_R_3

If anyone is interested in an application for assessing the hydraulic and financial implications of installing a rainwater harvesting system then I am now giving away a spreadsheet that I created for my post-graduate work back in 2007. It's freeware, so I'm not spamming an advert here! Unfortunately I can't post links on this forum but if you Google for "RainCycle" then it should come up in the top 10 hits (the website you want is the SUD Solutions one).

Please note that the disclaimer applies (we can't provide support, and any reliance on the results is at the user's own risk etc).

furndire

When we built our house about 10 years ago, we decided to put in a system for harvesting the rainwater. Have dual pipes all through the house. It was not very well known then, or not to many people round here anyway. We dug a huge hole in the ground, dropped in tank, but it didn't have caging round it, company we got the system from didn't seem to know much either, as they said tank would be fine (they told us where to get it from).
We found that we are on a high water table. To cut a long story short, all the family came to stay, tank emptied, and before it rained again, the sides of the tank collapsed. There is still some water under there, and we have been thinking of getting this all rigged up again, but a new tank will have to be above ground. It was great while it lasted.
You save money on such as soap powder, and shampoo etc, if you are in a hard water area, as we are.

Ken68

Quote...We found that we are on a high water table. To cut a long story short, all the family came to stay, tank emptied, and before it rained again, the sides of the tank collapsed...

It's not easy Being Green, did something similar, don't think that was caged.

gromituk

Basically you're making a boat which you don't want to float. Even if it's got a cage around it, if it's still buoyant, the whole construction will be pushed up out of the ground, so using a cage might make things even more interesting! The density of concrete is about 2.4 times the density of water, so I think that simply to stop the tank rising, for every cubic metre you dig out of the ground you have to sacrifice 1/2.4 or about 40% of it to concrete. And of course apart from the weight, the construction has to be strong enough to stop the walls caving in or the bottom erupting!

Of course if the water table never rises above a certain level, anything above it - such as a house - is dead weight which contributes to the weight you need without adding any extra volume of displaced earth you need to compensate for. But something I haven't taken into account is that the density of saturated earth will be greater than that of pure water, so I guess you have even more to counteract.

furndire

They say you learn by your mistakes, and that was an expensive one at the time!!!!!!!

haggle_2

The government is talking about water meters again which is the best way to save loads of h20.