permaculture

[Claude William Genest <genest@pivot.net>]

> I haven't thought much about this, but how are you going to catch your water? If you're just going to use your roof runoff, that's not so good. Your roof's pretty dirty. If you're going to set out a washable thin film to catch it, you need space to spread the film and a setup to fill your rain barrels. This sound kind of time and money intensive. You can't do better with well water or city water?

There are simple, cheap and commercially available rain diverters such as this one:
http://www.theraincatchers.com.au/products.asp?cat=5
that divert the first "flush" of rainfall off the roof .....Then, that debris-free water can be filtered through a low-cost sand/charcoal filter, and finally through a bacterial filter if desired...
> I can see justifying the expense of rainwater impoundment in specialised circumstances, like a desert where the groundwater's too alkaline for use, and occasional downpours normally just result in wasted runoff. You could divert the flash floods from the arroyos into catchbasins. But I don't think rainwater detention's going to be a big solution for most of us.

I think it has to be. Here in Montreal for example, the pipes are so old and corroded that 40 % (!!) of the water is leaking out. In other words, the costs of our water delivery systems are far beyond what it costs an individual to turn on the tap. This pattern is endemic to most big cities and reperesents a real sound argument for the privatizers to come in, pay for the repairs and get control of our water supplies which is when the real costs of water will hit directly home.
Also, rainwater detention on a larger scale would include strategies like green roofs and large scale swales...Check out this urban swaling project:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/95881_model20.shtml




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