As the old adage goes, April showers bring May flowers. But for those looking to green their homes, April showers also provide an easy way to reduce water bills and water waste. CAP has the story.
Rainwater harvesting is a simple and efficient way to capitalize on the naturally occurring precipitation in your area, and reduce dependency on irrigated or treated water. Provided you live in a region that receives above a certain amount of annual precipitation (the EPA recommends a minimum of 8 inches), rainwater harvesting can be a cost-effective means of greening your home.
The most basic way to harvest rainwater is to use a rain barrel. As the name suggests, rain barrels are simply large bins placed at the end of roof gutters to collect rainwater. This system is incredibly simple and easy to install, yet able to collect tremendous amounts of rainwater. On a 1,000 square foot roof, 1 inch of rain can yield 620 gallons of water. Given that the daily per capita household water usage is about 70 gallons, this means that even in climates with low levels of yearly rainfall, the potential for saving water is quite significant.
The EPA handbook on rainwater harvesting lists a number of important environmental benefits in addition to the cost savings. The most immediate benefit is the reduction in water waste””an important advantage given the decreasing supply of available fresh water. In this respect, rainwater harvesting can reduce the strain on local reservoirs and aquifers, and mitigate senseless water depletion.
Rainwater harvesting has a number of important advantages with respect to energy and climate change, as well. Because people using rainwater collection can source a significant portion of their water right at home, they rely less on water that requires treatment and transportation. Thus, the EPA estimates that reducing potable water demand by 10 percent could save 300 billion kilowatt hours of energy annually”” that’s 71 Hoover Dams worth. A reduction in energy usage also decreases the amount of carbon emitted in producing that energy; for every million gallons of water saved, carbon emissions are reduced by 1 to 1.5 tons. That’s admittedly not much, but the link between water usage and carbon output demonstrates that large-scale water savings can put a dent in our carbon footprint.
While the benefits of rainwater collection are manifold, there are some precautions homeowners should take before installing a system on their property. Firstly, check with local authorities about the laws and regulations concerning rainwater collection in your community. In some areas, rainwater collection is prohibited because it can divert water away from natural waterways, reducing available water for those downstream.
Secondly, make sure that your roofing does not contain toxic materials. Some shingles and tiles on homes still contain asbestos””a carcinogenic chemical you certainly don’t want accumulating in your water supply. It may be prudent to send an initial sample for lab analysis to check the cleanliness of the water you collect. Some communities require this as a pre-requisite to installing collection bins.
Finally, consider installing a filtration system in your collection bin, or, at minimum, appropriate screens to keep out insects, dirt, and plant material. More complex filtration systems are only needed for potable water. But because 80 percent of household water use doesn’t require potable water, installing such a system may not be necessary depending on how you wish to use harvested rainwater. A small spigot at the bottom of the collecting barrel is enough for outdoor needs, such as watering the garden. If you’re interested in using rainwater for laundry, toilets, or showers, you may need a pumping system to connect the water supply to your plumbing.
Fortunately, these measures can be easily taken, and actually installing a rainwater harvesting system is simple enough for most people to do themselves. All in all, rainwater collection is a great way to save water and to save money. Perhaps the best upside is this: with rain barrels, rainy days no longer have to be gloomy occasions””just think of how much you’re helping the environment!
- A CAP cross-post.
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One thing about rainwater ‘harvesting’ for gardens in dry areas I heard on local radio. If you have fruit trees or perennial plants of any kind, directing rainwater into a ‘swale’ or other depression alongside the garden bed in question is the very best way to store the water – in the soil – needed to support those plants into the dry season.
I presume you can get the same kind of diverters for your downpipes in the US that we can buy here. Very easy to redirect the water back into the stormwater runoff for a while if you have a particularly wet period with one of these gadgets. You may not want to turn your yard into a quagmire or flood your neighbour’s yard during these times.
The other great advantage of ‘storing’ water in the soil is that you may replenish any subsurface streams you might not know about. (We didn’t know there was such a thing at the back of our block. We just happened to try to put in a fence post towards the end of a wet winter. What a surprise!)
The other issue you’ve not mentioned is mosquitoes. Very important to ensure that all openings to tanks or barrels are screened to eliminate any opportunity for the horrible, disease-carrying nasties to find breeding sites.
April Showers? What April showers?
If you have the option to drink uncontaminated well water or spring water, stay away from surface water sources, including rain water. There are so many contaminants in rain & snow that most surface water sources are not suitable for consumption. Pretty much everything that ends up in industrial smokestacks comes back down to the earth as rain or snow. That includes all sorts of nasty chemicals, as well as heavy metals like mercury.
And now we also have high amounts of radioactive particles in our rainwater.
Someone help me with the concept of not legally being able to collect water that falls on my own home? I don’t grok this. So much more rain falls in the surrounding area than on people’s roofs that it can’t possibly effect the needy further downstream in any really meaningful way, can it?
Adelady #1, I remember seeing pictures of swales dug during the Depression in the USA, as part of some works program. It was somewhere in the steadily drying south-west, and, when the film was made, in the 80s I think, ie fifty years after they were constructed, they were still working a treat. Not only were they cloaked in thick vegetation of trees and shrubs, in contrast to the parched surrounds, but the vegetation served as a windbreak, slowing down erosion of the soil, and the swales also slowed down water erosion during cloudbursts. And the trees and shrubs were a biodiversity refuge. Win, win, win. I think that the producers made the point that these earth-works had not even been properly maintained for many years, yet they still operated effectively.
tst #3. Thats all well and good but if its a choice between dying of the drought or ingesting some chemicals, I’ll take the latter anytime, ME
Thank you, adelady, for introducing rain gardens into this conversation, and Mulga for developing her idea. You reminded me of the organic gardener’s mantra, “feed the soil.” I know many people are more interested in rain barrels as a water/cost-saving device, but the runoff management aspect of rainwater collection is really important, too. We need to be sure the water goes into the ground in ways that benefit the ground, which can be a challenge with all of the impervious cover in the cities and suburbs. I’m actually thinking of disassembling my 2-year-old, 400-gallon rain collecting system and converting to a rain garden system. My system currently collects about 25 percent of the rain that falls on my roof, but it turns out that, in my climate (Texas), the rainfall is concentrated in one spring month and one fall month, and my tank hits capacity early in the first of our typically heavy storms in each season. Space constraints keep me from increasing my capacity, so it’s difficult to balance my inflow and outflow. My observations are leading me to think that smallish collection systems are best suited for areas with regularly occurring rainfall, and rain gardens for arid areas with intense rain seasons.
Drinking rainwater? All you need is a nifty gadget that collects the first xxx litres that come off the roof and sends it into the garden (probably best if it’s not your lettuces or strawberries if you live in a seriously polluted area). The workings then allow the water to run from the freshly washed roof into the storage tank.
If you’re still concerned, there are plenty of effective filters for your drinking water.
Mulga. I have a personal obsession about concrete gutters on suburban streets. Quite apart from the issues about using this vast quantity of concrete, I believe road verges should be covered in water friendly rather than waterproof materials.
I’m old enough to have grown up when ordinary suburban streets had simple depressions rather than sterile concrete gutters. In Adelaide we have serious, chronic problems with water pipes bursting and disrupting traffic on major roads. We _never_ have frost, much less frozen ground here. The issue is the swelling, shrinking, cracking clay soil that Adelaide is built on. It’s wonderful for growing roses, but not for stability. Now that so much of the surface is water repellent rather than water absorbent our pipes are damaged by both soil movement itself and often by tree roots seeking out moisture from the parched growing medium. And at the end of the drought, something like 20% of our street and park trees were dead and dying.
If we’d had water channelled into tree roots and subsoil throughout the city and suburbs, these problems would be much less serious.
adelady#9, it’s akin to what the US Army Corps of Engineers did to the Mississippi, taking out the lazy meanders etc, and making the river flow that much more swift and destructive. And all those levees to stop the river flooding exacerbated the problem. It’s all part of the problem of disrespect for nature and human arrogance thinking it knows what is best. If we survive, and God knows that looks an increasingly remote possibility, we must construct systems that exist within the living planet’s parameters. I’ve always thought that permaculture in all its evolving forms represents a very great contribution to humanity, and I see Mollison and Holmgren as two of the very greatest Australians to have ever lived. I like the way that permaculture involves repairing things, here and now, and not waiting for a real ‘black swan event’, that is the current anti-life economic world system suddenly realising just what a destructively neoplastic process it actually is and reforming itself. That is not going to happen.
There is one more option- don’t use the roof at all. Our system RainSaucers, lets you collect rainwater straight from the sky. I started the company because I thought using asphalt roof run-off (asphalt is the most common roofing material in the U.S.) would probably not be the best thing for edibles. I also wanted to give the developing world (where they don’t have gutters) an easy way to leverage rainwater to meet some of their drinking water needs.
Andrea. Don’t get rid of your rainwater tank. If I were you, I’d let the tank fill at the beginning of the season (and perhaps connect it to the hotwater sevice for the duration of the rainy period) then let further surplus water go to the garden.
This http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=1&oq=divert+rainwater&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4HPND_enAU311AU283&q=divert+rainwater+downpipes gives search results for Australia for some useful ideas. They’re pretty cheap considering how useful they are. I can’t imagine that such things aren’t available in the USA.
Reminds me that my grandmother’s house had a rainwater tank. When it was full, the overflow didn’t go to a street drain. It went onto a brick drain (*not* set in concrete) that went all the way to a patch of bamboo at the bottom of the garden. There were 6 or more fruit trees along the way. The bamboo was cut and used as stakes for tomatoes, climbing beans and peas and the like. The trees were prolific providers of fresh and preserved fruits, jams and chutneys.
No such thing as permaculture in those days. Just practical good sense.