DIY Rain water harvesting system.

[Hugo]

Well peterc, after seeing your rain water tank I have installed one the same size. mine has a large 18 inch screw lid, which just happened to not screw on tight after  a few uses,   a little angry, but I drilled two holes ether side and of the lid and inserted two stainless bolts, and then made a twisted wire strap to hold it down onto them.
The tank is fed by the guttering down pipe, full size, in between the gutter and the tank it crosses over a silt trap, made from a piece of soil pipe 4 foot in depth, inside this is a multi hole drilled piece of plastic, to stop water going straight across the trap to tank inlet, and a small piece of mesh nylon for a filter.
With all the rain we have had lately after a couple of days I had a look inside and was disappointed only 16 inches in tank, then I saw why, there was a leak on the gutter, and down pipe, fixed that, next day tank was full.
Pictures to follow when I get my new camera.
Thanks for the inspiration.

Hugo..

[wrigpm]

Where did you get the filter from?

[Outtasight]

Nice one Peterc.

I'm thinking how better to re-use our water.  We've got a couple of water butts that catch rain from the garage roof and the house (if I ever get round to fitting the diverter - the down pipe from the house roof is cast iron... not the easiest thing to cut into).  At the moment when the garage butt is full I use a drill pump and my cordless drill to transfer some into the second butt.  I got the second butt for £5 at a boot sale but then discovered it had a crack in the bottom  .  Still, £1.50 of Lidl silicone goo later it was good as new  .

I'd like to be able to recycle bath and rain water for the toilet - it has to be our no.1 (and no.2!) consumer of water and we're on a meter now so every m³ counts.

[martin]

whatever you do, NEVER Google for a "butt pump" - I'm still in therapy!

[petertc]

http://www.organiccatalogue.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2596

This is the link for the filter that i bought hope it helps.

Also have had our water bill for the last 6 months 23^3 for the last 6 months so that is a total of 43^3 for the year 

so from our worst year at 180 m^3 its not a bad reduction !
80^3 of that was topping using the water in the garden, then we dropped another 20m^3 by not flushing as much and also reducing the water level in the flush, 
The rest is not having as many showers but just a good wash and then the rain water harvesting.

at £3.00 m^3 including the sewerage not a bad saving overall 

[petertc]

I have been a bit disappointed at the amount of rain water i have been harvesting and thought it was something to  do with the water but adaptors i was using so i made up an adaptor to go from the std guttering down pipe to 40 waste pipe.

As you can see it was a bit blocked

[Hugo]

I checked mine this morning after last nights heavy rain, almost zilch.
The mesh filter was blocked, so I removed it, my fault for not cleaning it.

[pottsiwebber]

Yeah, I remember we had a powercut once when I was eight or nine years old, but I can't really remember if it affected the water companies. I think not. They probably have a backup system though, because the hydrants connect to the water mains as well. (at least I hope they still extinguish fires when there's a blackout...)

A powercut once when you were 8 or 9! You dont live in the sticks then 

And yes we do have diesel generators on most water treatment works at least in my part of the country. Also most water is delivered via water towers or clean water reservoirs build on high spots so the water gravitates to the customer so unless the power is off for a very long time water supply generally isnt affected. We normally only have pumped supplies in low pressure areas.

[Outtasight]

My mum's water butt wasn't collecting any water last year so she asked me to take a look at the gutters and down pipe to see if they were blocked.  Didn't take me long... the small tree growing out of the top of the down pipe should have tipped her off 

Seriously, there was this tree sapling growing out of the pipe where it had been blocked for so long that about 20cm of solid soil had collected in the vertical pipe!  That was an impressive blockage.

My Lidl silicone repair of that other water butt failed in the winter (frost damage?) and now we're back down to one...  Must get another one soon.

The missus wants to use the old water butt as a plant pot for our christmas tree that is growing quite nicely now.  The guy in the nursery gave it a 50:50 chance of surviving beyond the New Year (as the roots had been chopped to get it into the tiny plant pot).  We'll saw the water butt in half and use the bottom half.

Check it out...  New stackable water butts.  Dunno why nobody made these before.  Shops that sell traditional barrel butts have to waste a lot of transport space in lorries as they are bulky and can't be stacked.  These ones just stack inside each other so save a lot of transport miles!

http://www.garden4less.co.uk/selecting-a-water-butt.asp

[petertc]

Well we had a bit of a freeze this was the first time since installing.

seemed to be the nrv in the line to the pump.

I have also had an issue with the pump not priming again after running out of water, so i put my cunning plan into operation.

in the picture i have an option of 2 inlets for the pump to suck from the main one being the tank and the other is via a 3/4" washing machine valve.
I have a small 5 gallon tank ready to plumb into this with the cold water feed coming off of the mains feed that we don't use for the washing machine.
I also changed the filter while i was at it. i think this needs changing every 3 months not the 6 i have been doing. works a lot better now pump it not on for so long so less battery usage.