Homestead mailing list

[clhw AT InfoAve.Net (clhw)]

I'm on several yahoo lists which promote rain catchment systems.
OffGridLivingandHomesteading
 does, occasionally.

Recently,
preparedsurvivalistsunite2
carried a description of such a system that one of the moderators has.

Another is
rainwater
Recently, on that list, there has been a discussion of how such washer
systems (where the first rain is used to wash the roof into a reserve pipe
before the cleaner rain goes into the tanks) are not used in Europe,
especially Germany, but a filtering system is. And how in Europe, it is not
encouraged to periodically drain the reserve tanks from the bottom. Very
interesting. Those posts should be in the archives.

The owner/moderators of
chickenlittlehomesteaders
have lived with such a system only for several years now, including coming
through Katrina in Mississippi in good shape. They use the washer system
described by Gene and would probably be glad to share it. They also have
descriptions in the archives.

The group who is settling in Terlingua County, Texas, has many who rely on
rainwater catchment. Some of them are also on another group.
TexasOutback
and
FoodWaterShelter
(from Austin, Texas).



>Gene -
>Do you know where there might be an illustration (drawing, etc.) of this -
>online, perhaps? It sound quite workable, but my "Picture this!" mechanism
>isn't
>kicking in this morning.
>Sandy
>
>On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:33:46 -0500, Gene GeRue wrote:
>>
>> I haven't done it but I was planning to do it some years ago so I did
>> the research. What you want is not a screen; you want a diverter. The
>> first rain that falls on a roof must go into a wash barrel with a
>> small drain hole in the bottom. Rain fills that barrel with the dirty
>> stuff that washes off the roof and then the water lifts a float that
>> opens a valve that allows the now-clean water to go into your fully
>> enclosed water container via a pipe between the two barrels. The wash
>> barrel resets itself after the rain by slowly emptying through the
>> little drain hole, carrying the crud with it. There are various rain
>> gutter deflectors that will keep out leaves but allow the runoff to
>> fill the barrel.