Mindzle

Whole house rain water system

It should be clear to all of us that water is the single most important “element” for life. When scientists look for signs of life out in the greater universe, they first look for signs of liquid water. And here at home on Earth we know all life needs this fluid of life to exist. Yet when we think of the bright green future, rarely is water put out front. We talk of Solar, wind, algae based bio fuels etc. But not about our diminishing supply of fresh, clean water. It seems that the only people who pay attention to this are in areas where it is already a scarce commodity, such as the Dessert Southwest and the Australia outback.

Here I live in a part of the world known for our over-abundance of fresh water. We have the mighty Columbia River, plentiful rainfall and immense aquifers. But even in this land of abundant water, we are already seeing our resource start to be used beyond the capacity of nature to refill. Many of the local municipalities are spending MILLIONS of taxpayer dollars to increase storage and supply, as growth here has far outpaced the infrastructure.

It hit home recently. We are in need of replacing our gutters. This winter they have been damaged by ice, branches, etc, to the point they no longer work properly. And, properly working gutters are not a nicety, they are necessary. So, I starting doing the math to calculate how much water hits our metal roof in a year, and then travels through our gutters, and is “disposed” of. And then starting looking at our water bills to determine how much water we use in the summer for the yard… We get 20,000+ gallons of fresh rainwater on our roof every year. In the summer we will use 17,000 gallons for our yard…

That water comes from our community well, which is treated with fluoride, chlorine etc. So why am I using this water, that is treated to make it “safe” to drink, to water plants, who then spend energy to get rid of the chemicals we treat the water with? Why am I using it to flush my toilets? The plants would prefer rain water, and the toilets could care less.

The inevitable outcome of this type of thinking is to start capturing and storing the rainwater. Use that water on the garden, toilets etc. In the overall scheme of things, it is a small additional price when adding or replacing gutters to include a cistern. We’d love to capture and store the full 20,000 gallons, but are starting small. As part of our gutter system we are installing 2x 550 gallons tanks that will be used primarily on the garden. When we remodel the house (hopefully soon) we will adding several more tanks and install a Purple Water system (aka grey water, but using rainwater) for the bathrooms.

I promise to post pictures, and a detailed account of how the system goes together. Step one, the gutters will occur March 12th, weather permitting.