Rain Water Harvesting

I do not know why but this is one of my favorite pastimes, messing about with water. I live in the UK and people always seem to think it rains all the time in the UK. Sometimes it seems to, but there are many times when we do not get a lot of rain and because of this I need to think about rain water harvesting.

So what is rain water harvesting, well it is simply the collection and management of some of the rain which falls on your property and land. If you have the space what I would do is dig a big pond and save the rainwater in this but most of us do not have this luxury and so we need to think about saving water in water barrels and this is what I do.

My house has four downspouts from the roof to take away the rainwater and in two of these I have fitted rain water diverters. These form the basis of my rain water harvesting system. Because of the way my house is built these two diverters allow me to collect rain from about two thirds of my roof. The rain water diverters divert the water into an outlet pipe and I channel these into a water barrel. When this is full the water is fed back into the nearest downspout and when it rains heavy the diverters allow excess water to flow down the down pipe.

The water barrel holds 45 gallons, (210 liters), and this is not enough so I have two further barrels  which both hold 45 gallons. These are at the top of my garden and I have a submersible pump which sits in the bottom of the barrel and allows me to pump water from the collection barrel to the storage barrels. The other advantage of having the water barrels at the top of my garden is that I can attach a hose to the taps and water my high density garden by gravity. The flow rate is fairly slow but I find watering this way somewhat therapeutic and is one of the ways I use to calm down after a hard day at work. Rain water harvesting is not magic, just common sense so start by building your own system.

The other big advantage is that the water is free and as I have to pay for the water I use, it cuts down on my household bills. There is the initial investment in the barrels, diverters and piping though and it will take a while to cover the cost of these in savings you make but the other thing to remember is that water from the tap, (faucet), has been treated to make it fit to drink. This is done with chemicals. These are not present in rainwater and it is more natural for your plants.