Rainwater Catchment for a Tiny House
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- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- In this video I explain the basic setup of the water system in my passive-solar strawbale house. I collect rainwater off my roof, store it in an underground cistern, and pump it to my kitchen faucet using a solar powered pump.
A cistern is an integral part of a sustainable household water system. With water becoming scarcer as human populations grow, consumption increases, and climate change makes availability uncertain, limiting ourselves to what falls from the sky is a great way live within the means of our local watershed. Not only does rainwater catchment make our water use more sustainable, it makes our water taste better.
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www.hardcoresus...
Great system brother. I learned my lesson the hard way and didn't drain my flush system...BOOM...the flush tube exploded. I just wish we received more rain here on the Western plains where I live.
This is a great video. Thanks for the ideas. I'm not even close to as self sustaining as you but making the plunge and living in a tiny house starting in April.... this will help
Good luck in your tiny house experience.
This is amazing, I love how you are breaking everything down. My brother and I are trying to plan a way to build our own home and your layout is exactly what we hope to emulate. Thanks for the videos.
Love this channel! Thanks for sharing this useful information to the public.. we need more eco villages!
+VAN SOLO Glad you've found it useful. I agree, we need more ecovillages.
Two things I wanted to ask...
1) Have you tested your rain water for contaminants? I would test myself if I were a homeowner but I haven't had my own place in several years but is something I've wondered about for years. Whenever I ask anyone who has rain water catchment they don't answer my question or say no they have a filter. Perhaps I just need to put a glass bowl outdoors and catch some rain myself and get it tested???
2) Your downspout, the section that catches the first flush from the roof, do you have a ping pong ball in it? (that floats upwards to the joint, and once full closes off the lower spout and prevents any water in that section from seeping upwards and into your cistern, if yes do you find it makes a difference or not?)
Thanks for sharing via video, nice job.
Great video, i'm really impressed by your system for flushing away the fist part of rainwater. I'll definetely copy it with my project!
How do you cope in the winter months if it goes below freezing? an underground container shouldnt freeze in my opinion, but i only have camper/rv exerience on the matter.
+squalobike I usually stop collecting water about the time I have to worry about the downspout freezing and then just make it through the winter with what's in the cistern. Sizing the cistern right for your water consumption is pretty key. The cistern water will no freeze if it is mostly in the ground. You do have to worry about emptying the tank though. You never want it to get less than 1/4 full or it could pop right out of the ground in a spring rain. Sort of like trying to hold an inner tube underwater--the water pressure from the rising water table can push it out
+Hardcore Sustainable I totally underestimated the power of archimedes' principle! that's something i wouldn't want to learn from experience.. Thanks for the infos, look forward to other videos of your project.
Great system, thank you for posting!
Good Job.. Really a good Idea & good video..
I just found your videos and already I 💖 them. The like button is acting strange. I keep liking them but it doesn't smash like. It goes back and fourth. I literally have to wait and see if it smashes like when I smash like. Ok I think it worked after my 6th try. 😊👍👍
Lol. Lucky! Sometimes it hasn't even registered after hitting the like button for the 20th time😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶
Ok I give up. It won't keep when I smash like. Dang it. I really like your videos. Sorry
Great video, I would love to do something like this. We waste too much water.
Nolan Mailliard you can't "waste" water. You can waste money on water, but that's it. The water you "waste" isn't lost. It goes back to be treated at a treatment plant and used over and over, or it evaporates and nature "treats" it. Either way, it's always there in some form.
I would have to disagree that water can't be wasted. Water can be recycled and is being recycled all the time by nature, but we are drawing it unsustainably from underground deposits and from the surface. If it were abundant enough on the surface in the areas where it's being consumed, we wouldn't have to take it from underground. The city of Tucson is using water from underground at 5 times the rate it's being naturally replenished. When you run the hose to wash your car or you water your lawn, that water doesn't go to the treatment plant, it goes into the nearest lake or river and off eventually to some other body of water. There are also many wildlife that depend on surface water and when we use it unsustainably we are taking their habitat. If people are using water unnecessarily and unsustainably, if people are using it for things like keeping swimming pools filled, or keeping their lawns watered in a desert, or to irrigate the desert, or they're just letting the water run while they shave or brush their teeth, they are wasting it. Money really means nothing when it comes to supply of resources like water.
Hardcore Sustainable and I'd have to disagree with you. All the water I use, whether I drink it or it use it to clean off my driveway, will end up going down a sewer and wind up back in the river it came from or at a treatment plant eventually. It all gets recycled to be used again. Maybe in a different part of the country or world, but it's not lost. We have water shortages in the US because people have chosen to live in deserts. If that's what they want to do, they should pay the money to operate desalination plants. But to say swimming pools are wasting water? That's just crazy hippy shit.
Never said it was lost. You have a very simplistic and misguided understanding of how the availability of water works in the world, which is why you don't think it can be wasted. There is surface water scarcity in areas of the world, and people are getting their water from underground aquifers that aren't being replenished. California, the most populace state, has been in a drought for over three years, and still you don't think water can be wasted there? If they didn't waste water by having lawns and swimming pools, they might be able to live in areas with less water, but instead they have a false abundance by drawing it from a big hole in the ground--then they run out and realize they can live there anymore. You're right though, it's everyone's god given right to have a swimming pool and live in the desert, and to question that is to question freedom. We should all have to right to live whatever way we want whether it's sustainable or not. It's what being a Merican is all about. Which is why we as a country are dooming the entire planet almost single handedly. I don't make the rules dude, nature does, and people are going to pay for their stupidity in wasting water, whether you say it's wasted or not.
Hardcore Sustainable you just aren't hearing what I'm saying. You're correct, the water used in California and Nevada isn't being replaced, not there anyway. It just falls back to the earth somewhere else. Too many people out there where they shouldn't be, because there was no water there to begin with. Pay the big bucks, pull it out of the ocean, and they'll be fine. It will just be even more expensive to live there. That's their choice. They'll pay for it just like you said. But with their checkbooks, not by destroying the planet. If you think you're saving the world by mocking fellow Americans while you live in hippytown, more power to you. Meanwhile, I'll just keep "wasting" water here. We've got too much anyway.
You got pretty much all of it right, except the water filter. It's not necessary. Let run 2 or 3 big rain fall. You are good to go. That's what we been doing in Vietnam for centuries and maybe the rest of 3rd world countries. It's good to clean your gutter in the beginning of every rain season. I have lived in Vietnam for the last 4 drinking unfiltered rain water and I still kicking. 🤣🤣🤣
Yeah the earth is covered in 75% water its really shrinking?
Huh? What's shrinking? Do a little research and you'll find that many parts of the globe are lacking water. 70% of the earth is covered in water, almost all of it salt water. 2.5% of the water on earth is fresh, and 1% is easily accessible (not frozen). It takes a lot of resources to make fresh water from salt water. Also, ask anyone in California or the Southwest if water is abundant. Water is likely to be the main limiting resource of human populations in the future. I realize we aren't taught anything about this source of all life in school, so it's not surprising a lot of people are ignorant.
It's not shrinking, it's just not falling every place it's needed, when it's needed. And more and more of the ground water is contaminated due to farm chemicals, manures and industrial pollutants.
Great info!
Do you mind providing where you bought all your materials?
The pressure tank was bought at a local hardware store. The DC pump was ordered online. Shurflo DC pumps are pretty easy to find online, you just have to get one that's the right voltage for your system. Mine's a 24V because my battery system is 24V. The ABS piping can be gotten from a local plumbing supplies store or possibly a hardware store. The cistern itself will have to be gotten locally. A plumbing supply store might be able to help with sourcing. These tanks are normally used for other applications (like for septic systems), but can be used as cisterns. You have to get one that's corrugated, suitable for drinking water, and I'd recommend one with supports inside to prevent collapse, as well.
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How foolproof is the debris pipe? Wouldn't sticks and other debris float and go down the pipe that goes to the cistern? Just wondering--I don't know much about the system or plumbing in general. I'm trying to make a plan for my tiny house.
+Mark Cox Jr I don't seem to have any problems with debris going into the cistern, though I suppose the screen cap I talked about in the video would solve any issues with that. I don't really have tall trees around my house so I haven't needed a screen cap.
He's the last thing craft beer sees before they die
So you don't like craft beer?
vegas saves lots of water...get the facts first
Do explain what the facts are that contradict my facts. How do they save water by being a rich person's playground in the middle of a desert with lots of fountains, lots of water consumption, draining down Lake Meade and the Colorado. They better be conserving water because they are screwed if they don't. But it really makes no difference if they conserve a little water because they are a city that is totally unsustainable for where they are located. Not that a lot of other cities aren't unsustainable, and not that the entire western lifestyle is sustainable, but as far as water, it doesn't have good long term prospects.