A Simple Rainwater Harvesting System
Who doesn't like to have free water? Although the answer is probably "no one", we often fail to benefit from a free water resource that is widely available: rain. Setting up a rain water harvesting system is easy. It saves money and the feeling of capturing such a precious resource to water your plants and the garden just feels good. Besides you feel better when it rains (thinking of all the water that you are collecting). Furthermore, rain water is arguably more nutritious than tap water for your plants (I've heard it has more nitrogen).
Setting up such a system is pretty easy if you know what components you need. The most difficult part (at least for me) was cutting the downspout pipe to insert the water collection equipment (the white piece you can see in the picture below). I bought mine from here. This is basically a hard plastic equipment made of two pieces that fit inside each other. The top piece has an outlet to which you can connect a hose to redirect the water to your reservoirs. The picture explains it better:
The reason that this system works is that the rainwater flows down the perimeter of the pipe rather than through the center. This plastic piece collects this water and redirects it to the outlet to which you can connect a hose. You can attach the other end of the hose to the lid of a water barrel. In the picture below, I've done it a somewhat ad-hoc manner by cutting a circular opening on the lid, inserting the hose through it, and applying silicone to fix it in place. You can do it more professionally but the idea is the same:
It may also be beneficial to add a filter (like a small cutting from a mosquito net) in between the hose and the barrel to prevent debris from your roof going into the barrel. In the picture below you can see my two rain barrels connected to each other from the bottom. Together they take about 600 liters of water (about 160 gallons). It is very easy to daisy chain barrels like this. I think I will add two more barrels next year.
The following picture shows the connections more clearly:
The connection to the other barrel outlet connects the first barrel to the second one. The connection to pump outlet connects the barrel to a water pump for pressure watering the garden. The connection to bucket outlet is used to manually fill a bucket for hand watering (which I use most of the time).
Another thing to consider when building a rain water harvesting system is how to deal with excess water. When it rains your roof will collect a large amount of water and if the barrels fill up, this water must be directed away from your house. The white downspout piece that I've showed above is actually designed to allow the water flow back down the downspout if the barrels fill up. But this requires the barrels to be watertight (but not airtight as otherwise the air pressure in the barrels will prevent the water to go into the barrels in the first place). I've found this to be difficult to achieve and therefore manually punched an overflow hole to the top of my second barrel. You can see this in the first picture below. I've attached a hose to this and connected the other end of the hose to a pipe that leads to a manhole.
In this post, I've tried to explain how one can set up a simple rainwater harvesting system. I hope you find this useful and in building your own rainwater harvesting system. Let me know your opinions and questions in the comments below.
Setting up such a system is pretty easy if you know what components you need. The most difficult part (at least for me) was cutting the downspout pipe to insert the water collection equipment (the white piece you can see in the picture below). I bought mine from here. This is basically a hard plastic equipment made of two pieces that fit inside each other. The top piece has an outlet to which you can connect a hose to redirect the water to your reservoirs. The picture explains it better:
The reason that this system works is that the rainwater flows down the perimeter of the pipe rather than through the center. This plastic piece collects this water and redirects it to the outlet to which you can connect a hose. You can attach the other end of the hose to the lid of a water barrel. In the picture below, I've done it a somewhat ad-hoc manner by cutting a circular opening on the lid, inserting the hose through it, and applying silicone to fix it in place. You can do it more professionally but the idea is the same:
It may also be beneficial to add a filter (like a small cutting from a mosquito net) in between the hose and the barrel to prevent debris from your roof going into the barrel. In the picture below you can see my two rain barrels connected to each other from the bottom. Together they take about 600 liters of water (about 160 gallons). It is very easy to daisy chain barrels like this. I think I will add two more barrels next year.
The following picture shows the connections more clearly:
The connection to the other barrel outlet connects the first barrel to the second one. The connection to pump outlet connects the barrel to a water pump for pressure watering the garden. The connection to bucket outlet is used to manually fill a bucket for hand watering (which I use most of the time).
Another thing to consider when building a rain water harvesting system is how to deal with excess water. When it rains your roof will collect a large amount of water and if the barrels fill up, this water must be directed away from your house. The white downspout piece that I've showed above is actually designed to allow the water flow back down the downspout if the barrels fill up. But this requires the barrels to be watertight (but not airtight as otherwise the air pressure in the barrels will prevent the water to go into the barrels in the first place). I've found this to be difficult to achieve and therefore manually punched an overflow hole to the top of my second barrel. You can see this in the first picture below. I've attached a hose to this and connected the other end of the hose to a pipe that leads to a manhole.
In this post, I've tried to explain how one can set up a simple rainwater harvesting system. I hope you find this useful and in building your own rainwater harvesting system. Let me know your opinions and questions in the comments below.
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