How rainwater harvesting changed over a decade...How rainwater harvesting changed over a decade…

Rainwater Harvesting has been around for centuries!

As water around the world are fast becoming the most scares resource,households around the world have very little option BUT to start harvesting rainwater. This is a sustainable,long term solution to ensure we put rainwater to good use. Here’s how to do it.

The amount of water you can harvest are determined by the size of the roofarea you have and also the type of roof (metal or tile). On average,for every 13mm of rain you’d be able to harvest 1000l of water per 100 square roof size.

To translate that into something a bit easier I’ll use an example of a house we recently retrofitted with one of our rainwater harvesting system. The house had 200 square meter roof area (20m x 10m). This mean that the roof produce 2000l of water for every 11mm rain. There are two occupants living in the house,which means the water harvested per 11mm rain would be sufficient supply for 10days. The client coincidentally also installed a greywater re-use system,which means they’ll shower / bath and rainwater,thereafter the rainwater are redirected onto the garden.

The picture above shows the very traditional way of harvesting rainwater. A downpipe leading into a tank,where you open a valve and water will have to be carried into the house with a bucket. Altough it’s encouraging to see,you will get very tired of carrying 1000′s of buckets into your house. This is how we’ve improved on this over the last few years,so that you don’t need to change your lifestyle.

First of all,we introduce a rain runner (filter mechanism) to every single downpipe. This will prevent any leaves / stones / debris from entering into your tanks. We also ensure that all downpipes feed into the tanks,to ensure you harvest maximum amount of water. This is achieved through a underground pipe network. By only transferring one downpipe into a tank,means you’ll only harvest water from a very small roof area. It could well be a tenth of what you can actually harvest from your roof.

A filter mechanism that prevents debris from entering into tanks.

Once all the water from your roof are delivered to your tanks could can either use the bucket method to carry water into the house,all 7500l of it,or you can install a pump that will deliver rainwater to all the outlets in your house. Bath,shower,kitchen,hand basins,laundry,garden and water heating system.

The system are designed to give you the flexibility to decide whether you want to permanently use your rain water tanks or whether you’d like to run from municipal water. This all happens within an overriding box. There is also a number of safety measures that we’ve acconted for to ensure your rainwater do not flow back into municipal supply. The system will also never run dry,so neither do you need to be concerned that your shower will be cut short due to no water.

Rainwater Harvesting System / Reenwater Stelsel

Rainwater will be received in the house at the same pressure you receive municipal water. You do not change your lifestyle at all,yet you will be receiving water for free. It it does not rain for extended periods,you have the option of simple switching back to municipal supply.

There is no doubt that the system pays for itself and it’s one of the easiest ways of making a difference to our planet. If you’ve tried to install something similar and got stuck on something specific,feel free to get in touch and I’ll try and be of assistance where I can.

On paper it sound very complicated,by with 16years of experience we can pretty much retrofit any house with a rainwater harvesting system.

www.water-recycle.co.za