Harvesting Rainwater-Part Four

(If you would like to check out parts one, two and three here are the links:  Part One, Part Two, Part Three )

I mentioned at the end of Part Three that I had to take care of the overflow once the tanks were full.  My overflow pipe is installed on the opposite end of the tanks from where the water goes into the tanks.

In this photo you can see the 3” PVC pipe that comes out of the tank, runs to the side of the house and runs down to the corner where the roof washer is located.



The pipe turns around the corner and runs along the back side of the house, down to the end of the deck.  There it turns back to the right.




As you can see in this photo the pipe goes over half-way across the end of the deck and then turns again, going under the deck.





The pipe runs under the deck and into one of the two poly tanks that are under the deck.  These have been collecting the limited amount of water previously for use in watering flowers and garden.  I plan to run a pipe from these tanks in under the house and by using ball valves make it possible to draw from them if the main tanks should run empty.  The two poly tanks hold approximately another 950 gallons of water.

Here is pictured the pumping set-up.  It may be a bit unconventional but I have installed a 12 volt DC pump.  It is plugged into a converter that converts 110 volt AC to 12 volt DC.  Electrical usage should be less.  The blue tank is a 20 gallon pressure tank.  Instead of the pump coming on every time a faucet is turned on as is common with most DC pumps used in RV’s or on boats we will have several gallons of pressurized water to use from before the pump kicks on.

Some have been wondering, I’m sure, whether we can survive on what rainwater we can harvest.  Let us look at some figures.  The average rainfall for our county is a bit over 46 inches per year.  One inch of rain yields .6 gallons of water per square foot.  The roof of our house is 32 feet by 47 feet (the “footprint”).  That is 1500+ square feet.  Multiplied by .6 we find that one inch of rain will amount to 900 gallons of water.  At that rate it will take only about 3 and 1/3 inches of rain to completely fill the tanks, or the average rainfall would fill them almost 14 times.

Some figures found on the internet will tell you that the average person uses 60 gallons of water, or more, per day.  I know that figure is much higher than our usage.  Being quite liberal with my figures I  calculate that we use 40 or less gallons per day, each.  And, we will do some things differently knowing our supply will be limited at times.  For example, the reverse osmosis system we have for our drinking water is a water waster.  Depending on the system of course, but from 4 to 10 gallons of water goes down the drain for every gallon of filtered water you obtain.  We plan to quit using the RO system and use the Big Berky fulltime.

We plan to switch over to the cistern soon.  We have been receiving rain the last couple of days.  When I checked mid-day today our tanks were about 60% full and it is still raining.  We will keep you posted.

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Drinking Water-Part Two

The state of Kentucky has been in the news for the past week due to the worst ice storm in the state’s history.  Thousands are still without electricity and many are without drinking water.  We don’t often think of the vulnerability of our water supply but due to a loss of electricity many communities are without water because their water pumps won’t work. 

Do many of us have some sort of means or plan to cope with such an emergency?  I discussed in Part One a bit about water distillers and a great deal about a reverse osmosis system.  Both are great if we have power and/or water in the pipes.  Distillers take power to heat the water to produce steam which is turned back into pure water.  Reverse osmosis systems require a flow of water.  What do we do if neither is available?

There is a system that has been around for over 150 years, has been used in over 140 countries by missionaries, the Red Cross, the Peace Corp and others.  It requires no power or does not have to be attached to the water pipes.  It uses good old gravity and ceramic filters. 

Although the British Berkefeld brand is known worldwide their best known unit it what most have probably heard of, the Big Berkey.  We purchased one this past summer and although it can be used on a regular basis we will continue to use our reverse osmosis system for most of our drinking water, unless we have an emergency.  Since the only well on the property has a high sulfur content we are concerned about the possible loss of our public water.  We capture rain water from the roof but it has various contaminants in it which we would prefer to filter out.  The Big Berkey does a beautiful job.  But it does require manual filling and draining.  The RO system is more convenient as long as the public water is flowing.

The photo to the left is one taken from an advertisement.  As you can see the unit is compact.  It holds a bit over 2 gallons of water at a time.  Our unit has two black filters, although for processing more water an additional two could be added.  The filters can be cleaned and reused for many, many gallons of water.


In the picture on the right you can see the two black filters.  There is but a bit of water in the tank.  The Big Berkey is able to not only remove most contaminates it can filter water from the most polluted rivers and lakes if necessary.  When Henry Doulton first developed ceramic filters for removing bacteria from drinking water it was used to remove the contaminants from the water of the Thames River in London, which was contaminated with raw sewage.  At that time cholera and typhoid epidemics were rampant because people were drinking the contaminated water.

If we should lose our public water supply we are prepared to filter rain water, sulfur well water or creek water with our Big Berkey.  What will you do if you should lose your water supply?

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