How To Do Rainwater Harvesting In Your Home

With climate change being the buzzword and going green the coolest thing, it is only natural that people start adapting their lifestyle to suit the fragile environment. Going green is not limited to a green diet and an eco-friendly home, but a lifestyle that is in balance with nature. Water is the most abundant and the most important of nature’s resources, but only a fraction of it is usable. Throughout the world, millions of people are devoid of fresh water, while the minuscule percentage that has access to it wastes it more than it is used. In such a scenario, it is entirely beneficial to use rainwater as an alternative source of usable water, as other than a tiny amount of pollutants, it is excellent for human use. Harvesting is also an excellent way to save the enormous amount of rainwater that would gone wasted otherwise. It also recharges the ground water level and so, keeps the wells and other water resources from drying. Read on to explore tips on how to do rainwater harvesting in your home.

 

A rainwater harvesting system comprises of four parts - collection, transportation, filtration and storage. All these stages have been described below.

 

Catchment is the area where the collection of the rainwater takes place. In houses, it can be the open roof that directly receives the rainfall. Paving the terrace area makes it an effective catchment. The water can also be collected from roofs with corrugated sheets, by channeling it to a drum placed below. A coarse mesh placed on the roof will prevent the debris from accumulating in the water.

 

Make channels all around the sloping roof, to collect and transport the rainwater to a tank below. These channels or gutters can be made using iron sheets, folded into a semicircular shape. On the terrace, a single channel can be used to transport water to the tank below. The gutters can also be made of PVC pipes or bamboo, cut vertically. They must also be supported with brackets and rafters, so that they do not sag in between, when the water gets running.

 

The transfer of water from the catchment to the filtering area is done by pipes, which are known as conduits. They can also be constructed from PVC or metal sheets. One end of the conduit is fixed to the tank where the rainwater accumulates, while the other end is fixed to the filter. As the water in the tank accumulates, it is simultaneously transported to the filter.

 

The filter is very important, as rainwater contains many suspended pollutants that must be removed to make the water usable. An effective filter can be constructed using fiber, sand, gravel, and charcoal. They remove the dirt and other impurities before the water can be sent to the storage tank. There are basically two types of filter are, namely charcoal water filter and sand filters.

 

For large rooftops, the filtering tank should be able to accommodate the excess flow of water. In such a filter, three chambers are built, in which the outer chamber is filled with sand, the middle one with charcoal and the large one with pebbles. The chamber with sand should have a large surface area.

 

The storage tank is the simplest one to make. The water after filtration is passed onto this tank for storage and later use. The size of the storage tank would depend on the amount of rainwater harvested.