So with the hosepipes ban in force I’m seriously considering a rainwater harvesting system for watering the garden, flushing the toilets and running the washing machine. Anyone got a system or considering? Recommendations or care to put me off. I will do all the installation work myself and am already laying drainage pipe from my ‘man cave’ to an existing soakaway which could easily be rejigged for an underground tank. I will also be rerouting the rain drainage from the house roof to this system if I go ahead.

If you’re doing it for eco reasons, then be aware that the carbon impact of installing pumps largely cancels out the benefits of not using mains water. Ditto the costs – what you save on water, you spend on electricity. I know someone who mounted a water butt on a platform and uses it to run is washing machine via a gravity feed…

The only thing affected by the hosepipe ban in your list is garden watering, so I’d just install as much water butt capacity as you can.

unless you have a very big tank you’re more than likely that the time of year when you have least harvested rainwater available is the time of year when you most need it.

Maybe calculate how much of this water you’ll need to run the items you list for, say a 2 or 3 month dry spell and then install a tank large enough to cope?

Also look at how much roof area you have and the rainfall for your area to see how much water you might collect over the wettest months of the year.

When building the barn I plumbed it with secondary rainwater supply pipes to 2x WCs, the dishwasher and the washing machine. However the cost of installing the necessary water regs approved pump station (with automatic bypass) and te 5,000 L tank was around £2,500. The cost saving would have been around £50 a year in water bills so just wasnt worth it so I just connected the rainwater water line to the mains instead.

On the other hand I have just installed 800L of rainwater butts for watering the garden and providing a heatsink for my Wine store. Second hand Olive import barells, 220L each cost about £20 each.

Havent got round to posting up some pics of the solar powered pumped wine cooler installation yet, but here’s the tanks before installiung them

eventually I will connect them to the raised veg beds with a trickle irrigation system

With the rain we’ve just had (about 3.5″ over the last 8 days) I collected 800+litres in a few days from a 12m2 shed roof.

who cuts your grass stoner 😉

How about planting more drought-tolerant plants so you need less water in the first place? Are your toilets dual flush or have a water saver fitted? ‘If it is yellow, let it mellow, if it is brown, flush it down’. Do you have an eco wash setting on the washing machine?

As far as a tank – they are expensive. You would then need to install a pump and filters with the cost that involves. Groundworks for the tank and then armoured cable for the electrics. There is then the issue of keeping the water clean in the tank.

Water butts for rainwater and outside jobs is one thing, but storing and using large quantities back in the house can be expensive and take a lot of work.

http://www.ukrha.org/

Stoner
You should be on telly with all your DIY stuff, it’s amazing 8)

who cuts your grass stoner

me. Takes me an hour and a bit.

Just done some back of envelope sums on the rainwater collection, and amazingly it works!

Shed = 3.7m x 3.4m so 12.58 sqm
Rain collected according to my weather station is 84mm
Allow for 30deg pitch of roof by reducing by 14% for the Cos of 30deg = 10.8 sqm

10.8 x 0.084 = 900Litres

I have 2x 100 + 3 x 220L = 880L

Maths is ace 🙂

This was the system I was considering:

http://www.rainwaterharvesting.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=GF-372003-DUK3

£3,500. madness

Second hand Olive import barrels

Where did you source these from? Also where on earth do you find out about these things? As you seem to be a massive source of DIY information regarding where to source stuff (not that I am complaining)

Starting to become a bit more of a mainstream idea – some of the bigger Builders Merchants (such as Burdens) are now offering off-the-shelf systems.

I got the tanks from here:
http://www.smithsofthedean.co.uk/
they clean and sell on s/h industrial tanks as well as new stuff.

Also where on earth do you find out about these things?

loads of research.

Sites like
http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/
http://reuk.co.uk/

etc

Had looked at the company Stoner suggested and was considering one of their shallow dig systems. They have calcs. for working out usage/ roof yields and I was considering a 5000 litre system. Living in West London the garden isn’t huge so I was keen to bury the system out of sight hence not using water butts which I currently have one of.
Reasons for installing would be in no particular order.
1. Reduce dependence on water company, especially if stand pipes are ever required.
2. Less water going into the already overloaded London sewage system.
3. Save some money add some value. Long term investment?
4. I love trialling new ways of doing things. Ok so not new but alternative!
5. Not having my garden become a dustbowl.
6. Not using drinking water for tasks where less intensively filtered water would be just as good.

Thanks for the replies.

As I asked – are your requirements for water reduced as far as reasonably practicable?

We have a fair bit of slope in our garden. I could put a water butt at the back, and have a pipe going from the gutter up the garden to the butt, then from the butt down into the kitchen. Could very easily run the washing machine and dishwasher from it that way for the cost of a tank and some pipes.

I’m also on a water meter, so it would pay back eventually.

Hmm…

Wickes have 100 litre water butt kits(stand,taps,pipes) for £25.
Same one online was £90.
I got 2 joined together and take up no room.

TooTall,toilets are all fitted dual flush and with three young children in the house they don’t always get flushed even when ‘brown’. We do limit the length of time in the showers and encourage the kids not to overdo it but I confess we’re far from the best washing machine always running and there is a sprinkler system fitted in the garden, helps wash away when the dog has been replenishing the South East’s aquifiers.

Run a dish washer from rainwater ? 😯 Have you seen the sh1te which comes down with rain.

we’ve a pair of 100l buts into both down pipes. And a submerged cellar pump in one that via a simple timer switch feeds water into those dripper pipes in the garden during the summer months. Cost about 40 quid plus the water butts.

The results of Stoner’s latest diy project 8) :

Smiths at Milkwall for the barrels eh? Been there for years that company has – collect rather than have delivered and spend a day riding on their doorstep 🙂

With regards to waterbutts I’ve also read that the water remains fresh for a shorter time compared to an underground system where it is cooler and less likely to incubate nasties/smells. More of a consideration if the water is being used in the house domestically.

800L and 1000L IBDs are only £80-100 at Smiths (+VAT). Just the wrong footprint for my needs

friendly outfit, pity they dont put prices on their website though.

Water butts for collecting rainwater are pretty cheap; back in the day my folks bought 2 butts and the connections for plugging them into the drainpipes. If you’re ambitious you can also siphon bathwater into them too.

If using them for WC/ washing is too ambitious (the pressure would be the big problem really – unless you use a handpump to push it to a header tank), you should still have plenty for watering the garden.

My house was built with rainwater harvesting built in. The system wasn’t running when we moved in but when I run out of renovation jobs I’m going to get it running again.

Collection is from the main roof gutter taking half the roof runoff. This fills a 4800 litre tank in a small loft above the kitchen offshoot. This then fills a smaller header tank where water for 1 WC and clothes washing was fed. This header tank had two ball valves at different heights so if the rainwater was low, it would be automatically topped up from mains. No pumps, since the tank is at first floor level.

No pumps, since the tank is at first floor level.

that is the simplest system as you can use cisterns to meet the water regs requirements of zero risk of contamination to the mains supply. However that’s 5 tonnes on your ceiling joists 🙂

the alternative is to have a float actuated pump that fills a header tank in the loft.

I cant do any of these as I wont have servicing in my loft space.

If you’re ambitious you can also siphon bathwater into them too.

Which has just given me a great idea (if one that’ll irritate the living daylights out of Mrs North).

Deffo off to buy waterbutts at the weekend. Had one at our old house, but not got round to any where we now live.

Has anyone fitted a hot water recirculation system? I get a bid fed up of the water that is run away before the shower at the top of the house gets warm (not a problem with the bath though). It’s only about the same as a flushing the toilet but does still seem a waste

…looks outside at rain and wonders if it’s worth it

Add in the costs for an alarm system on the pump-house.

My folks had a beach house (in NZ) with no mains water so a bore with a pump, and solar powered steriliser to make the water taste OK for drinking.

Anyway long story short, locals kept stealing the pump for their horticultural exploits. They had to get an alarm installed.

I get a bid fed up of the water that is run away before the shower at the top of the house gets warm

Lagging pipes might help with this? Not something that seems to be done very well in houses, afaik.

Lagging pipes won’t help more than a bit if everyone has showers one after each other 🙁

Run a dish washer from rainwater ? Have you seen the sh1te which comes down with rain.

There’s very little debris inside my water butts, and they’ve been there for over 5 years. If you’re worried, I think you can get filters.

I have an old victorian semi and all the rain water from the guttering runs into an underground pipe then pours into the well.

The water down there is about 15 foot deep and in 20 years I’ve never seen the water level drop more than a metre (although I dont use the water as I doubt pumping it out would be cost effective).

my neighbour has a circulating system. Its controlled by a brain so is only circulating at specific times of the day to prevent losses. Not difficult to install really, just need a return from furthest deadleg, but wouldnt work with a combi I dont think.

I get a bid fed up of the water that is run away before the shower at the top of the house gets warm (not a problem with the bath though). It’s only about the same as a flushing the toilet but does still seem a waste

A relative of Mrs North has a beautiful, recently installed bathroom. And a plastic bucket in the shower tray.

Why? She runs the cold water from the shower into this and uses it to flush the loo.

Not exactly in keeping with the swish bathroom, but highly effective..!

What does this circulating system do?

Are we talking heat exchange from the outgoing shower water? Cos that would be cool.

Run a dish washer from rainwater ? Have you seen the sh1te which comes down with rain.

When doing our kitchen up about ten years ago, I wanted to insulate above the ceiling where the tank sat. Cleared all the old paper, wood and junk out of the tank and set to with the angle grinder. Was making slow progress, but seemed doable, but stopped for dinner. After dinner came back to kitchen full of smoke. Turns out the dried sludge in the bottom of the tank was 90% coaldust, runoff from coal fire days and was glowing nicely red when I went up for a peek. Angle grinder sparks had set it off. Cue 999 and evacuation. Close call.

circulating system pumps hot water around a loped domestic hot water circuit so you dont have to run taps to empty out cold water first.

There are heat losses from running circulating water, which is why you only run it for certain times of the day. Useful in houses with long deadlegs

Have you seen the sh1te which comes down with rain

Have you seen the shite on my dirty plates and in the bottom of my dishwasher?

Re the circulating hot water – some kind of electrical heater in the shower that only works until the tank hot water has arrived would be good, I reckon. If they don’t already make one, someone should, because a self-contained thermostatic inline heater would be easy to retrofit.

A bit off topic; apparently the house I have bought has an underground water storage tank which can be access via a hand pump in the kitchen. We have been told its not a well, but a tank that used to me manually filled in the 40’s (or earlier) when the house was off mains water.

Now the question is, anyone got any ideas on how to find the tank? As the previous owners (who had the house since the 60’s) didn’t know where it is, and I have walked around the garden (1/2 and acre or so) and I can’t find it.

Anyone got any ideas on what I should be looking for above ground?

do what mcmoonter did – start digging a veg patch and you’ll find it somewhere 🙂

(search for “show me your garden ponds” thread.)