Household Water - Diy Water Harvesting and Recycling

Household Water - Diy Water Harvesting and Recycling

Introduction
The great thing about working to optimize the way you use and gather water for your home, is that you get to feel as though you are doing something practical to heighten the environment without production sacrifices, but as a matter of fact benefiting your household.

Background
Initially I was curious in building Diy solar hot water panels. I found a society group who had a jig made up for pressing the grooves into the copper sheet to search where the copper tubes are to be soldered. They also had a jig for positioning the ½" holes in the 1" header and footer pipes. This was a great start, and then I silver soldered the risers into the 1" pipes, and soft-soldered the risers onto the sheets. After painting the copper sheet and pipes with black-board paint, I built a box with timber sides and a plywood back, with fibre-glass insulation, and assembled it with a glass sheet over the top, sealed with silicone.

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I bought a second-hand water tank, and mounted them all on a frame screwed through the metal roof, into the timber roof frame. The panels are still going strong 30 years later.

Success in Home Water Conservation
The three main things you need to know in order to successfully found your home water agenda are: how much water of what quality you need; how to harvest and store rain water; and how to safely re-use waste water.

While we only need a few litres each of drinking water each day, cooking water should be potable quality, and laundry washing water should be free from impurities that would stain, such as iron deposits. The next quality down would be grey-water for vegetables and fruit trees, but only if it is applies via dripper, and not sprayed. Septic tank effluent is favorable for fruit trees, but must be applied via underground methods, such as gravel trenches, covered with soil. Ornamental plants and trees can use any appropriate of water in regard to cleanliness, however salt, nutrient, detergent and particulate article can be problems, as they can also be for the other uses.

A ¼ acre block with a big Ornamental orchad of deciduous trees and shrubs in a temperate atmosphere requires about 2,000 litres per week in the summer. You can conjecture the water request for a tree using the British appropriate Bs5837 1991, which gives a recipe together with the tree type and canopy diameter, the local evaporation rate. The watering frequency depends on the soil type and how much soil is available to each tree. Typically, a small tree takes 20 litres of water a day. Vegetables' water request depends very much on the collection and the weather. Partial shading is recommended for some varieties in the heat of summer.

Grey water systems are reasonably cheap, off the shelf, and government rebates help off-set the cost. However, to qualify, you need a plumber to setup it, and that takes up a lot of the rebate. An economical Diy system, which I have found to work very well, consists of a 200 litre plastic barrel (.00) with a pump incorporating a float switch. You cut a hole in the top and lower in the pump. search the barrel under your extraction pipe from the laundry and bathroom (not the toilet). As a filter, you duplicate up a pair of panty-hose to give a two-layer filter, and put it over the end of the pipe, taping it in place. Every few months, replace it. The pump is linked to 20mm black poly pipe for distribution to the garden. A secondary filter - a commercial one- is needed if you use dripper hose. Don't buy the recycled rubber hose, it goes fragile after a few years, and leaks and breaks. For recycled water, use the purple one, as its holes are bigger, and less likely to clog. Every now and then, open the end of the dripper hose, and flush it out.

Rainwater is easy to gather in plastic tanks, which are cheap and easy to handle and install, but take up space. underground tanks are the opposite.

Getting Started
You can conjecture the likely rain available using facts from your local Meteorological Bureau. They will give you mean rainfall each month. For example, in a location like Melbourne, it rains about 600mm each year, with rain pretty much uniform through the year. If your roof area is 200 quadrate metres, and you want to catch it all, and assuming you want to store adequate to water your orchad for about a month, the tank volume needs to be about 1,000 x 200 x 0.6 / 12 = 10,000 litres. This gives you 10,000 / 30 = 333 litres per day. If you add this to your grey-water, originating from mains water supply, this gives you about 500 litres available for the garden. However, it is less if you use the tank water in the laundry.

Becoming Proficient
It may take a while to get all the skills you need, and this is where the net can be useful. There are lots of government authority sites with heaps of information, as well as dedicated societies with lots of technical articles. Just have a go, and get started. The skills will build up as you go.

How Much palpate Is Needed?
You can do most of this sort of work without any experience, except for the electrics, that must be left to a grand electrician, and any plumbing to do with sewage. Of course, working at heights, doing connections to gutters for example requires good security practices.

Examples
With my grey-water system, I have a prosperous orchard of about 14 trees, providing organic fruit over the summer and autumn. The underground water tank, just arrival on line, collected 7,000 litres over one weekend of rain, from a roof area of 200 sq m.

The Best-Kept underground About Home Water
By zoning your plants in the garden-planning phase, you can optimize your water use, by having the frequent- drinkers all grouped on the same pipe, and the bigger trees on a separate pipe. (I think you should also go for the biggest tank you can afford).

Common Problems
Regulations require that your grey-water doesn't seep onto the group nature-strip or roadway, or onto your neighbour's property.

Evaporation is a huge waste of water in the garden. A thick layer of mushroom compost and pea-straw is best in the vegetable patch and orchard (because this will break down fast to furnish nutrients for the plants), and wood-chips are best for ornamentals.

Blocked gutters are a problem, and quarterly maintenance is needed. Leaf-guard over the gutters is great, but quite expensive. In-line leaf-diverters are a good option. But they also need quarterly clean-outs.

Tank systems need mosquito-proof inlets and outlets.

If you are going to drink rainwater, your roof can't be zinc-alume, as the aluminium is not good for you. You have to be aware of animal and bird droppings, as well as pollution fallout. A first-flush diverter will help a bit here.

A Great Investment
While it may take a bit of planning, money and work to get your ideas up and running, once it's done, there is just a bit of quarterly maintenance, and you have a breathtaking feeling of accomplishment, that you are doing your bit, and getting broad benefits as well.

Staying On Top
To keep on top, you need to monitor your usage, to ensure you don't just use more mains furnish water as well as your recycled and harvested water. You need to keep the ideas clean: flush the drip lines and clean the roof gutters regularly. You also want to cycle the roof water with your recycled water, to reduce the build-up f salts in the soil.

Household Water - Diy Water Harvesting and Recycling

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