Duh... Rainwater ETA New Question!

[Marianne]

Marianne wrote:
Ed Nigma, do you have your pamplet online somewhere?

I do not have the document on line (not sure how). On the advice of a fellow novice I saved it as a JPEG and uploaded it to this site.
It is formatted as a pamplet so keep this in mind when reading it.

http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/uploads/thumbs/4109_rainwater1.jpg
http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/uploads/thumbs/4109_rainwater2.jpg

If the uploads are not readable I can email it to you.

Could you send them via email to me as well? I'll pm my email to you.

 

[~gd]

We don't have rain gutters either. We have just strategically placed our barrels around the house where the most of the water runs off. I wish there were a way to keep collecting and storing water during the winter here though. We use it to water our chickens, but everything freezes solid here in the winter.

I used to live in western NY where most old farm houses had cellars and in those cellars there were tanks built of brick, stone. or even cement that were called cisterns. Buildings had gutters that delivered the roof runoff to the cisterns. Sure snow would build up on the roof but the roofs weren't as well insulated as they are today and eventually that snow melted. We had tons of snow and in the winter we had to keep an eye on the water level in the cisterns so we could divert that water before the cellar flooded. That water was used for everything except cooking and drinking. Rainwater is very soft and it made wonderful bath or laundry water. So unless you live where it never thaws you can harvest water from a roof, storage is the real problem.

 

[Leta]

Thank you very much for this! We get so much snow here that a cistern filled with snow would be very easy.

 

[Leta]

Okay, so DH and I have decided to put up gutters along the north side of our house. Our ridgeline runs east-west, and we get most of our wet weather from the north. Plus, we actually have room over there for some type of barrel/cistern.

As luck would have it, our laundry area is along that wall in the basement. So I was thinking, if we got one of those things that keeps livestock water warm (well, warm enough to keep from freezing) for the winter, and since there is a window and everything right there, we could just plumb it right into our washing machine and/or laundry sink. (Legend has it that my grandmother used to collect rainwater to wash her hair, because it's so soft. Maybe I'll end up washing my hair in the sink, heh.)

DH confirmed that he could handle the plumbing and installation of the water heating element, but he was uncertain about what sort of filtration process we would need. So if any of you all have any products or processes that you would suggest, I'd love to hear it.

 

[ChaneyLakegirl]

My great aunt always said to use rain water to wash hair too. She said it left her hair soft as well.

 

[AmericanHomesteader]

I can speak pretty intelligently about DC wiring, how to hack a fridge to save tons of electricity, alternative methods of heating and cooling, greywater reuse, and composting toilets... but I have NO FREAKING CLUE where to even begin when it comes to rainwater harvesting and how to do it in a useful, sensible, and affordable way.

So, any resources, recommendations, or novice tutorials would be most appreciated.

Hi Leta would you please share with me info on hacking a fridge, im still working on that for off grid homestead, Thanks