Rainwater Harvesting - Home System Tour

hey there guys welcome back today I want to take you on a tour of my whole house rainwater harvesting system it's about eleven thousand five hundred gallons in capacity and accounts for 90% of my family's water needs it's been working well for the last six years and overall it's a pretty simple system so let me grab the camera I'll take you around and kind of tell you a little bit about it to start the tour off will begin in my front yard actually you know what let's begin with the diagram just so you understand how this system works you're going to notice as I walk you around my house that many of the downspouts go directly into the ground this is what's known as a wet pipe system meaning there's going to be water in the pipes during the entire process of transferring water there's no pumps required basically the water transfers because there's a difference in the level of the inlet port and the outlet port I'll show you here in just a second how the water flows and then you'll see the difference in level get some great artwork in there okay so you'll see there's approximately the level of the inlet and then there's the level of the outlet the difference between these levels is what moves the water so now that you understand that now let's go for the walk around to to start the tour off we'll begin with the largest component of my rainwater harvesting system and that's my corrugated metal roof from the roof the rainwater passes through a series of gutters and PVC pipes to one of four eventual holding tanks the first of these tanks is my 1100 gallon culvert cistern this is definitely the coolest looking tank and that's why it's on the front side of my house it receives its water from gutters on either side of my garage and is eventually fed by this PVC pipe that you see over the garage window and if you're wondering about the IBC tote just next to the tank it's simply there for added capacity now as we move closer to the main portion of this rainwater harvesting system I do want to point out that we still find good uses for standard rain barrels as well this one set up in a corner that sometimes has water skip during very hard rains so we like to collect every little drop as much as possible now moving across the yard we'll come to the first of seven connected PVC downspouts that comprise the majority of our water harvesting capacity all of these downspouts are connected to a four inch PVC pipe that runs under the ground and eventually all the way to our main rain collection tanks here's number two and number three downspouts they both collect from either side of this run of gutter and here's a closer look of what they look like from up top the tops of the downspouts have Belle couplings and I've simply screwed standard aluminum wire mesh there just to keep bugs and other debris out you you now we'll move on to the fourth downspout which collects water from half of the gutter that runs along the backside of my porch you from here we'll move on to the fifth downspout which collects water from two opposing sides of gutters on either side of this portion of my roof we'll continue to follow the underground line on to the sixth and seventh downspouts these collect water from the portion we just passed and the one on the right collects water from the section of gutter over the garage the final path of the water after being collected in all seven downspouts occurs underground in the orange PVC line that eventually makes its way to a 5,000 gallon tan rain tank this tank is approximately 13 feet tall with about five to five and a half feet buried beneath the ground the horizontal pipe at the top of the tanks allows for the transfer of water by two different methods one is by simple overflow at times of full capacity and the other is by using a small electric pump now we'll move on over to the final two tanks in the system which are the ones that are actually connected to my house this one is 3,000 gallons and the other one is 2,600 gallons currently both tanks are plumbed together and when the house pump draws water it's drawing from both tanks at the same time however if I ever need to do maintenance I can easily shut down one tank and have the pump draw off of the other one this structure is my pump house it's what actually holds my pressure tank and my pump that supplies all the pressure for my household needs if it looks familiar it was built almost entirely from scraps from my building process and it's clad in the same corrugated metal that my roof was made out of to transfer water from my rain tank to my other tanks I simply use an electric pump a short length of potable water hose and a PVC fitting to redirect the transferring water through the overflow pipe that already exists between the tanks here's what it looks like you here's some footage of a very light rain that we had during our recent monsoon it's just barely more than a sprinkle but as you'll see here at the rain tank it still provides a substantial amount of water that's flowing into the tank and here's the footage of a much more substantial ring that we've got later in the monsoon season you'll see all three tanks are overflowing and I absolutely have no more capacity you at the end of each rainy season there's really only one tank that ever moves cleaning and that's my tan rainin tank it tends to collect a little bit of the dirt and sediment from the roof but pretty much nothing else the rest of the system does a good job of keeping everything else out truly the most difficult portion of this process is just getting in and out of the tank if you look down at the bottom of the screen you'll see my rope ladder that I made out of rope and PVC pipe works pretty good but it is still a little bit hairy to go up and down and this is how baby whales are born in addition to keeping the rain tank clean I also like to flush out the entire system of PVC pipes from time to time to reduce any sediment or dirt buildup I can do this from one of two drain pipes this one right here or this one right here located right next to my rain tank you

Channel: homesteadonomics

Views: 1,046,397

Rating: 4.9232244 out of 5

Keywords: rainwater harvesting, culvert cistern, cistern, homesteadonomics, homesteading, permaculture, gardening, sustainable living, rainwater barrel, rainwater collection, water harvesting, survival water, desert

Id: pNXooT2FVXM

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/minimallyviablehuman]

This is a great Youtube channel. Joe captures 90% of the water he needs from his roof outside of Tuscon, AZ, which only gets ~10 inches of water a year. It made me realize how possible more sustainable water use is.