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Weather you’re looking to start harvesting rainwater for drinking or cooking with, bathing, or for your garden, the first thing you need to do is verify with you’re local and state rules, regulations and laws pertaining to the collection of rain water!
I have seen numerous time’s where folks will fork over a good deal of money, thinking that they can collect rainwater just for the county to come out and fine them, or worse!
Since laws change over time, it is best to keep up to date with what’s going on in your neck of the wood’s!
There are a few different methods of collecting rainwater that we will go over, you can then decide which method would best fit your need’s and budget!
What are the benefits to harvesting Rainwater?
Before we dive into how you can go about harvesting your own rainwater, we need to understand the benefit’s!
- Free water that is usually clean depending on your local environment!
- You can rely solely on Rainwater in order to cut monthly expenses!
- It can help reduce pollution from less runoff taking toxins to the water streams!
- It is environmentally friendly and help’s preserve the underground water reservoirs!
- Better water for your garden since there are less chemicals like chlorine!
What are your intentions for the Rainwater?
It is best to decide what exactly you want to use your rainwater for before you start to invest in a catchment system.
Are you looking to collect rainwater just for your garden?
Will you be using it for your whole household?
Planning just to use for non-potable things like flushing a toilet?
The amount of money you spend on a rainwater collection system varies depending on the use. If you plan to use it for your house to bathe or cook with you’ll need to have a filtration system in place as well.
Lets say that you have right at 1k square feet of collection space, if you receive 1″ of rain, you are looking at about 623 Gallons of collected rainwater.
Harvesting Rainwater!
While there are different methods of rainwater catchment system’s, they are fairly similar for the most part.
- Capture the rain
- Store the rainwater
- Get the rainwater out
The best way to capture rainwater if using a gutter system on your roof!
There are a few options to choose from when it come’s to a gutter system. Sure you can go a cheap route, this would require more work on your part to maintain the system. You could spend a bit extra and get a nice set up!
If you don’t mind having to continually clean out leaves and twigs from the gutter’s, you can go with the cheapest system.
But you will save yourself a lot of time and energy if you go with a system designed to keep the leaves out! It will just cost extra.
Storing the Rainwater!
Now that you have the gutter system in place, you’ll need a way to store that water! You can choose from barrel’s or cisterns.
If you decided to go the cheap route on the gutter system, you can still filter out debris from going into your storage by simply putting a mesh screen over the opening of your storage container.
Rainwater Barrel’s
You can either buy new rain barrel’s or you can buy used barrel’s. You don’t necessarily need new one’s, but if you buy used barrel’s you’ll want to make sure no chemicals have been stored in them.
As long as they are food grade material (HDPE) or other good water storage containers and have not stored any chemical’s then you can save a lot of money to use on other project’s. You can clean out the barrel’s by using bleach and water in a 1:10 ration.
Simply place the barrel’s underneath your downspout’s and adjust the length to where it will match up the opening of the downspout to the opening of your container. Leave some space in between the two.
Cistern’s
You can store a lot more water with using a cistern because they are going to be much bigger! They can cost a lot more to set up as well. The cost varies depending on if you want an above ground or underground set up.
How to get the rainwater out?
There are a few different method’s. You can go with a gravity fed system, pump, or using bucket’s.
Gravity fed water system
Gravity fed systems usually require more space. This can be done by pumping the rainwater to a hill or tower that is higher than the highest faucet or shower head.
the higher the elevation the more water pressure you’ll have.
Since the cost of pumps and pressurizers can be expensive, you can use a small pump to get the water to your cistern or other large storage tank that is higher in elevation.
Water pressure pumps
If you want the water pumped directly into the house, you’ll need to invest in a pump that can put out a high amount of pressure.
Some appliances like washer’s or dishwasher’s require a certain amount of water pressure to run. If you have a low water pressure, these won’t work properly.
Also, who like’s taking a shower with low water pressure? I’ve been to many truck stop’s that just have a little trickle of water coming out, it is not fun!
Bucket’s
If you are looking to just try out the water catchment idea, you can go the cheap route and improve from there.
You can use the spout from your barrel’s or make the input hole on the barrel big enough to get your bucket down into.
You can then bring the water in and use it for the toilet or even dish washing in the sink.