Rain Water

[Optimystic]

the other day, for the first time ever, I actually saw in a garden a water butt placed under the garage gutter with some rigging in place for the water to go directly into the water butt. I know it is spoken of all the time - but this was the very first time I had actually seen someone who had done it. I am wanting to do the same thing, but money for the water butt and then the rigging up of the gutter etc is putting me behind.

Hiya..
We have 3 butts attached to our garden shed, it really is quite simple to set up.. and not hugely expensive.. i think the guttering and attachment pipes cost about £20/£30. the Waterr butts cost about the same each.. so for less than £150 we now have about 100Ls of rain water available for gardening etc.
basically you get a piece of guttering long enough to cover the edge ur going to hang it off.. u get some brackets to hold it all in place, some end caps and then u need the downpipe attachment and down pipes. If i can ill post some pics of ours later this week.

[Technik]

I know that some US states have the rain water gathering ban and it apparently is because of low rainfalls that they have and a big demand.

Ian - it's very interesting what you wrote there about problems with grey water re-usage. Do you know where could I get more specific info about it? You've probably heard about "earthship" projects - these use a grey water system and apparently it works. At the moment there are lots of single buldings all around the world (2 known to me in UK) and a whole village in US where the architect himself lives. I wonder if they did something in a different way.

[tigs]

as far as i know ther is no restriction on rain water harvesting in england and wale as for taking water from rivers or the ground,

under the Water Act 2003, any borehole or well or other ground water source from which you intend to draw water requires that a Clause 32 Consent be aquired from your local Environment Agency but only under specific conditions,The conditions under which a licence is required are if you intend to draw more than 20 tonnes per day.
20 tonnes is a lot of water and to put that into perspective, a dairy farmer with 400 head of cattle will use less than 20 tonnes under normal conditions. A family of four use about half a tonne per day,Each local authority sets their own rates for the application of a licence though the average is around £700 per year.
One tonne is one metric tonne of water. Sometimes refered to as a cube or CU or one m³ and which is equal to 1000 litres, or one kiloliters, or 1000 kilos weight of typical analysis fresh water at sea level.
It shouldn't be confused with the 'ton' which is one of the old English imperial weights and which has no relationship whatsoever with vwater volumes or weights.

http://www.southcoastwater.co.uk/FAQs-w ... cence.html

[Moony]

On a related note (especially to the grey water discussion), I've been looking at reed bed water purification systems and was a bit dissappointed at the most recent results. It seems that these beds need replacing every 7-10 years. Severn Trent water has a few large scale reed beds that have been going for this amount of time and it seems they need 'refreshing'. Thats a fairly big task

This is all a bit of a pipe-dream to most of us anyway, but apparently people who have had the beds installed also suffered during recent harsh winters when the entire bed froze over, leaving them no way to dispose of their waste water for weeks at a time, nasty...Hence one of the largest professional installations companies has ceased all operations and is looking at alternative systems. http://www.wte-ltd.co.uk/reed_bed_sewage_treatment.html

[Ian]

Technik, I don't have too much to add to the earlier post.

Grey water from washing machines, dishwashers, baths and the like 'goes off' very quickly, after a few days it starts to smell. You may easily experiment with a jam jar of bath water and keep it, opened, for a couple of weeks. So long term storage is out. I understand grey water storage is banned in Australia for this reason. Water the garden immediately OK, but that is it. No tanks allowed.

There are lumps and contaminants it it which sediment out and easily block small bore/15mm pipes and I found that hair wound around the impeller shaft of the pump I was using jammed it and effectively wrote it off (12V Whale in line pump to get the water up to the toilet tank for reuse in the black water system). Try and run your bath or shower water through a piece of cloth over the waste hole to see what I mean.

BRE put filters in the line, they were about 18" X 18" to get this muck out, but the filters blocked very quickly with a slimy mess necessitating cleaning on a fortnightly basis or even more often.

My conclusions were that a decent grey water system needed to use large bore piping, really big filters, sewage type diaphragm pumps such as the manual toilet pumps used on yachts and would need constant maintenance. The whole thing seemed more trouble than it was worth.

Now rainwater storage and reuse works well, but I have found that you need to store a lot to get through the dry periods. For us some 3,000 litres would be necessary to supply enough for the toilets and we are not prepared to have an eyesore of three IBCs in the garden and I really don't want to dig such a hole, so that will be a project for the next house perhaps.