Rainwater harvesting

[daveO]

I managed to get a cheap 1000L caged water tank off a client and I've tapped it into my downpipes now to harvest rain water to water the garden and wash the car etc. The problem I have is that my house is 3 storey with the garden at first floor level at the back. The tank had to be at ground floor level so now I have to get the water up to the garden somehow.

I've got 2x 200L water butts by the greenhouse which get topped up by water off the greenhouse roof (very slowly). At the moment I'm carrying water up there as needed in water jacks which is hard work. I don't want to use electricity to pump water up and all the hand pumps I've looked at are either cheap but very slow or very expensive. Any ideas on a solution here?

Has anyone ever managed to get reduced water rates for harvesting water? Any tips for proving the amount you're saving etc? I get charged £1.58 for every 1000L of storm water that goes into the drain so if I can prove we use that in a month they'd have to charge me less right? On dry days right now we use at least 100L just for the garden.

 

[gregorach]

At the moment I'm carrying water up there as needed in water jacks which is hard work. I don't want to use electricity to pump water up and all the hand pumps I've looked at are either cheap but very slow or very expensive. Any ideas on a solution here?

No real solution there - water is heavy, so raising it is a lot of work no matter how you do it. It might be worth looking at solar-powered pumps, but you're probably going to have a hard time finding one that can supply the necessary pressure. Wind power has long been used to lift water, but there's all sorts of complications with erecting a windmill... You might be better off intercepting your downpipes at first floor level to fill your butts, then running an overflow from that down to your main ground level tank.

Has anyone ever managed to get reduced water rates for harvesting water? Any tips for proving the amount you're saving etc? I get charged £1.58 for every 1000L of storm water that goes into the drain so if I can prove we use that in a month they'd have to charge me less right? On dry days right now we use at least 100L just for the garden.

Are you on a meter or a fixed rate? I think you're probably stuck if your on fixed rates...

 

[Bushwhacker]

Are you aiming to fill the 2 x 200L water butts from the 1000L tank?
What incline is there from the tank to the garden?

 

[Shewie]

You could build a massive archimedes screw up the staircase

Not sure how you'd do it but I saw Adam Hart Davis doing it on telly once

 

[g4ghb]

would a ram-pump work? - I realise it relys on flow but wonder if the flow down the drainpipe could be harnessed?

 

[g4ghb]

I remember Dick Strawbridge making one at new house farm? - here is another link to the theory

 

[g4ghb]

Ooooo - this looks fun!

 

[Bushwhacker]

I'm thinking maybe you could make it airtight and pressurise it with a hand pump, co2 bottle or something and have the tap and hose at the bottom.

 

[daveO]

I'm starting to think I may be better off just making up a pulley system to lift the jacks up a level.

Sadly I didn't think ahead on this when we built the house or I'd have located the rainwater pipes more carefully.

We're on a metered supply which means we get charged less as we won't be using tap water for the garden but it's trying to prove we create less storm water run off thats the problem.

 

[Shewie]

Could you not put the 200L butts at garden level and tap them off the downpipe ? Once they've filled up they could overflow down to the bigger one at ground level.

 

[daveO]

The 200L are at garden level but theres no downpipe accessable up there. They're all in really bad places to tap off sadly.

 

[wanderingblade]

Would it be possible to route your downpipe to flow to the water butts then on to the 1000L tank?

It would be pretty simple to linl them up so one runs on to the other once it's full.

Of course, it all depends on the relative position of the butts / tank but it should be able to hide / bury most of the pipe work.

 

[Hugo]

I installed a 1200 litre tank to do the same as you Dave.
I placed it in my front garden and it is placed amongst some shrubs.
I installed a new down pipe for this tank, the water goes into a vertical soil pipe first, this acts as a filter as all the rubbish drops down to the bottom, to be emptied a couple of times a year, at the top of the soil pipe the water enters the tank.
I do have a piece of nylon mesh as well to filter out as much small debris as I can.
Speaking of Dick Strawbridge, after watching what he did on TV I got the bug and started to go Green.
I installed my own solar Direct hot water system, it works great, my cylinder temperature today is 75 degrees centigrade.

 

[Neumo]

You could try a solar panel powered pump, which would cost a bit to set up but would be free to run. A small 12v pump would not need a lot of power to run & some clever electric box will charge up a 12v caravan type battery to run the pump when there is no sun; then the solar panel charges up the battery. An hour or so googling should find what you need & you would probably not need a big solar panel. Or you could keep carrying the water up by hand in which case you will loose weight (if you need to) & be built like Arnie in 6 months....

A mate of mine had a similar situation as far as being billed for water run off when he found out that the small group of country houses he lived in had their own sink away & so were not connected to the main sewar for most household water. He got back a few grand off them but it took a couple of years & it was like getting blood out of a stone, he said. It's slightly different situation & the water company would say that the water you put in your garden could end up in the sewer etc.. but it's worth looking into. In these Green times the rules have changed, so councils & utilities have to respond to issues like this. Again, a few hours googling it may pay off.

 

[daveO]

Well looking at my bills that tank of water is worth a grand total of £1.20 and every time I carry a bucket of water up to the other butts I'm saving about 1p lol. carrying 2 jacks does increase that to a whopping 5p though. If I can get the sewage disposal charge back I can effectively double that too. Laughing all the way to the bank...

I'll phone Welsh Water later and see what they will do. I suspect not a lot...

 

[Ogri the trog]

My first suggestion would be to divert water from your down pipes to the 2x200 etc as has been mentioned before - remember that you don't need to have down-pipe sized pipes running all over the place, simple garden hose will work just as well so long as you remember not to route it above the level of the diverter and the overall run has to be downhill.
I have a little over 5 tonnes of rainwater storage dotted around the house (3 x 1500 litre + 3 x 200L) and the logistics can get a little befuddling depending on where I want to use it.
I also built my own ram pump which is capable of harvesting about a tonne of water in 24 hours from a small stream - but the stream doesn't always flow enough to run the ram. Large commercial ram pumps can be up to 65% efficient but mine is considerably lower - so if you were to run your 1000 litre tank through a ram and pump a protion up to the 2x200, I'd guess that youd see only about 100 to 150 liters pumped, with the remaining 850 liters going straight down the drain - even then you'd need a head of pressure to run the ram so its beginning to sound less plausible. I do intend to have a play with building a smaller ram which I can attach to the bottom of a vertical reservoir (a sealed drainage pipe mounted against a wall, fed from a rain diverter near the top) and with a syphon system fitted so that when it is filled to near capacity, it would empty itself through the small ram pump and hence pump a percentage to a storage vessel contained in the attic - which would in turn get plumbed directly into the toilet cisterns with a gate valve for dry times. In our case of well supply and private drainage, no extra water would be going to drain; indeed I'd merely be interupting it (and making use of it) on its way to the soakaway.

ATB

Ogri the trog

 

[daveO]

Well I spoke to Welsh Water, filled in the forms they sent me with a diagram of what I've done and waited for a reply. To be fair I received a letter very quickly that stated 'We are unable to determine your exact drainage layout, and engineer will be sent out sometime in the next 3 months to evaluate the situation'. I'm not holding my breath...

I've since added a further 220L and a 100L butt under the other downpipes so hopefully the engineer will be impressed lol. We used 150L just to water the veg yesterday so it's not like it's just sat there.

 

[locum76]

would a ram-pump work? - I realise it relys on flow but wonder if the flow down the drainpipe could be harnessed?

That's what I was thinking...

 

[daveO]

Result! The engineer came out and basically said that even with no rainwater harvesting I'd be due a rebate. Our whole estate's rainwater goes to a natural soakaway. Effectively everyone up there should get their money back.

Hopefully theres a nice cheque coming my way very soon!