138 Rainwater

8/3/2019 138 Rainwater

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FOR 7 YEARS I HAVE LIVED EXCLUSIVELY USING RAINWATER for all my water needs.I have been asked to share my experiences, which I am happy to do. However, I need tostate that this is only the way I do it. I do not use an approved system. I live in the country,far enough out that not too many people get bent out of shape by all the rules that aremade to control everything we do, but I still keep a fairly low profile about this whole topic.Therefore I am declining to sign my name to this article.

Why I Use RainwaterI bought a small house in the country on acre of wild land. There is no well, but thehouse has full plumbing, toilet, septic system, normal water heater, normal bathroom,normal kitchen, etc. -- there is just no water running through the pipes. I have deed rightsto a spring about 300 yards away on the wild acreage of my neighbors property. In thepast, a system of pipes had been laid in the creek that runs behind my house, and thosepipes brought in water from the spring.

When I arrived on the scene, the spring-house was collapsed in a jumble of weeds and thepiping was disintegrated into pieces on the creek bed. The shallow well pump was rustingin the cellar. Instead of rebuilding that system, and dealing with all the vagaries of

torrential rains, creek flood-level volumes and velocities violent enough to roll bouldersaround, deer walking upstream, etc., I decided to live on rainwater.

I have the spring-fed creek as a backup for when it doesnt rain, which has happenedlately, with solid 1 and 2-month droughts in the middle of summer in the last two years.Fortunately, the creek never dried up, although it ran very low. This is the downside ofrainwater what if it doesnt rain? One begins to think about cisterns!

For the first 4 years I lived with 4 rain barrels. In the 5th year I added one more. Now I have7. There were times this summer when the barrels were almost empty, but I didnt end upusing the creek because the drought broke. Also this year I hooked up another barrel tocollect water from the air conditioner, which produced 64 gallons with light-to-medium use.

The system I use does not allow water to flow into the house, so I carry water every day inbuckets. However, if I wanted to drill some pipe holes in the walls, water could flow into thehouse. I have chosen not to do this because of other adjustments that would need to bemade to provide the flow. Its more work than I want to do.

Living with RainwaterAll I can say is that living without modern available-on-demand flowing water requires amental adjustment. You have to slow down, think about water, how youre going to beusing it, and do some planning ahead. In 7 years, I have not found any of this burdensomeat all, but I dont live a fast-paced normal American life. Also, I have a positive relationshipwith camping, which includes how one handles water in the wild. I rather think of it like

farming, when you have to milk the cows every single day, no exceptions. It becomes away of life.

The Setup: The More Roofs You Have, the More Water You Can CollectMy house has 3 rooflines off of which water flows: (1) The west-facing front roof which hasa gutter. This roof is steeply pitched and also collects pine needles and the other debristhat pine trees make in the spring. Some moss grows on this roof also because of theshade from the pines. (2) the shallow north-facing roof of the added-on bathroom with nogutter, and (3) the steeply-pitched east-facing roof, also with no gutter.


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When I first moved in, the cellar was extremely wet all the time because the lack of guttersallowed the soil around the foundation to become overly saturated when it rained.Vegetation at the foundation was thick and the soil seemed to never dry out. My firstproject, therefore building low and reachable water troughs instead of putting highgutters on the north and east

sides -- was aimed at dryingout the cellar, but later on,when the droughts began, itwas a setup already in placefor collecting rainwater. Instraight-down rain, the groundunderneath the troughsdoesnt even get wet.

Water collected from thesetroughs is not my primarywater, but I will give building

details here. These troughsare made very inexpensivelyand have held up so far for 7years, surviving the tail-ends of3 hurricanes with 70-80 mph winds. I usedstrips of lightweight inch foam insulationboard supported by coat hanger wire bent toshape and attached to the house on twostrips of wood with paneling screws. Duct

tape joins the pieces and aliner of dry-cleaning bagstaped together with Scotch

tape lays unattached downthe whole length of thetrough. This prevents anydripping. This drapes overthe edges and is securedby lying under the screencover which is used to keep out tree debris.In winter I put strips of the same foam board

insulation on top as covers (with string ties to hold them in place)if there is to be heavy snow, as the weight of snow collected in thetroughs caused the wire hangers to bend out of shape the firstyear it snowed heavily. Now I cover and uncover them as needed.

After experiencing last years 2-month drought, during which I hadto take water from the creek, this year I added two water barrels tocatch water from the long trough on the east side. This is casuallythrown together at the moment and needs more work, but itworked well enough. These barrels had been put out for trash bymy neighbor and one did not have a lid. I have screening clippedon with clothespins to keep out leaves and other debris.

North

side


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4 Primary Water Barrels.If it rains once a week, this is all thewater I need.

The original 4barrels provide

my primarywater. Thiswater comes offthe front roof,through aridged plasticpipe which hasreplaced thedown-spoutfrom the gutter,into the first ofthe four barrels.

These barrelssit on a side porch which can onlyhold 4 barrels because it must haveenough clear space for the electricand telephone people to get to their

boxes which are alsoon this porch. The lidsof these barrels aresecured against high winds by bungee cords.

The four barrels, which are either 30- or 32-gallon Rubbermaid trash cans*,are all connected together near their tops by 2 lengths of regular garden

hose, so water flows from barrel 1 to barrel 4 and all 4 barrels get filled. Thepoint of inflow must always be higher than the point of outflow, so theplacement of these connecting hoses gets a little bit lower with each step

from the first barrel to the last one. This keeps the water flowing in the proper direction, notallowing it a stasis point at which it would reverse itself. Of course, this stepping downmeans that none of the barrels can hold their full number of gallons; each holdsprogressively less. To reduce a bit of this loss, I raised the first barrel higher with a layer ofbricks. I could have gotten more volume of water by placing the first barrel on 3 layers ofbricks, the second on 2 layers of bricks, and the third on one layer of bricks, with the fourthsitting directly on the porch.

* I tried other kinds of trash cans but these have been the best. Rubbermaid makes a 50-

gallon can also, which is much more expensive. I dont know how it would hold up. Sometrash cans made from a stiffer plastic, the kind that have wheels, do not hold up at allunder the pressure and weight of the water, in conjunction with the expansion andcontraction caused by changes in temperature. Round shapes are definitely better thansquared ones, expanding evenly when ice forms.

There is an outflowhose running from the last barrel out into the yard, away from thehouse. This snakes across the porch under the door you see, drops over the edge behindthat barrel on the ground, and runs out into the yard through that piece of white PVC pipe


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you see there, which I added to leadthis runoff further away from thefoundation when I found the originalhose was too short.

The first barrel also has an overflow

hose on the side opposite theconnecting hoses. When it pourstorrential rain, the connecting hosesfrom barrel 1 to barrel 2 cannot handlethe volume, so an overflow hose lets this extra volume dump out into the yard in such away that it flows away from the house. In this regard, the natural terrain was perfectlysloped and I did not have to create any channels to accomplish this.

Degrees of Clean: The water in the first barrel is always the dirtiest water from the frontroof. It has the most debris in it from the gutter, as well as dust, dirt, and bird droppings.Even though I have put screening over the gutter, nothing keeps out pine needles! Most ofthis debris settles to the bottom and the water that flows into the other barrels is the clean

top water. When the barrels are near empty, I clean out this bottom debris, probably oncea year, when the summer is dry.

I keep a wire mesh kitchen strainer by these barrels and use it to skim floating debris outof the water, to keep the water as clean as possible.

In the fall, after all the pine needles have fallen, I climb up on a ladder and check the drainhole in the gutter. I run a wire down the plastic pipe to be sure it has not become filled witha little nest of pine needles. This happened one year, which I only noticed when there wasa sudden waterfall pouring out over that end of the gutter during a rainstorm. Or maybe itwas the wrens nest that got washed downstream (I keep telling them not to build in mygutter!). The pipe had become blocked.

The water gets progressively cleaner as it goes through the 4 barrels, so my cleanestwater is always taken from the last barrel. That is the water I use for bathing, washingdishes, and making distilled drinking water. Water from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd barrels is cleanenough to do laundry. During very dry weather or drought, I conserve the water in thesefour barrels very carefully, using them only for clean inside purposes, never for flushing orother dirty-water jobs. Ill take water from the creek before using these barrels for thosepurposes during drought.

Seasonal VariationsThe water from these 4 barrels has particular characteristics depending on the season. Inthe spring, the water may be pink or yellow from the pollens captured by the rain. The

pollens will float on top of the water and collect in a thick ridge along the inside of thebarrels. I usually remove this, trying not to disperse too much of it back into the water. Inthe summer, there is the mosquito question, which I will address later. In fall and winter thewater is the cleanest. I use a hammer to break the ice, which is kind of fun.

There are electric devices made for keeping animal water troughs from freezing whichfloat on top of the water and put out some heat. They cost about $45 each, and I have 4barrels. In my climate, I did not feel this was a particularly necessary investment, nor did Iwant more electricity dependence. The hammer works quite well and ice melts overnight in


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the house. In extremely consistently cold weather, ice builds up in the barrels starting atthe outside, building evenly thicker inward until there may be only a narrow opening of freewater down the middle of the barrel, then water has to be dipped out with a smallcontainer. One year I hooked up a work lamp with a 60 watt bulb and it kept the centeropen for the week that was needed.

When it snows, I collect snow, although you only get about half a bucket of water out of awhole bucket of melted snow.

Secondary WaterThe shallow bathroom roof does not produce muchrunoff. I have only one barrel catching that water, andthe water is always very dirty, good for flushing thetoilet or watering plants. The dirtiness is, I think,because of the kind of debris produced by the sumactree that overhangs, and perhaps because of thevolume of moss growing on the bathroom roof. This is

north-facing. There is always a lot of

thick moss up there. The water hereis cleanest in the winter.

The steeply-pitched east facing roof produces tons of runoff, which isalso dirty because of the sumac debris that collects on the troughscreening, which I clean off periodically. This water is used for flushing,washing the car, watering plants, etc., anything that doesnt require cleanwater. This year I added 2 new barrels to this side of the house. I havespace enough to line up about 10 under that trough if needed.

The Mosquito Question

This is a serious issue for me because mosquito bites driveme crazy, not to mention West Nile and other fearful things,so I do all I can to reduce the mosquito population which is achronic problem everywhere in this area. Along withremoving all objects that might collect standing water, Ivehad to re-engineer the lids of the 32-gallon Rubbermaidtrash cans. They are flat and collect water (whereas the 30-gallon have domed lids). I tried emailing the company to seeif I could get domed lids for these also, but they neveranswered. So Ive built up a shallow dome of lightweightfoam board on each lid and covered that with thick plastic sheeting, duct taped to the lid.The duct tape decomposes and has to be replaced from time to time, but at least water

doesnt collect there anymore.

The other problem for me is that my front gutter is not perfectly flat across its length andsmall puddles of water collect in several low spots. My attempts to hammer out the lowspots and/or to remove the nails and put up new gutter have not been successful, so Ivedecided to live with it for now. The mosquito population is actually quite minor.

Mosquitoes breed in those shallow puddles and then get washed out of the gutter into therain barrels, so in the summer I end up with squigglers (mosquito larvae) in the water,


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which if left alone long enough, turn into mosquitoes in the rain barrels. In a good heavyrain, if enough water moves through all the barrels, that whole population gets cleanedout. But then there are the puddles in the gutter again, and new ones are bred.

My simplest solution to this whole problem in the summer is to lift the barrel lid just a tinybit and spritz the Dickens out of whatever might have hatched into adulthood. I use a

homemade spritz of kitchen dishwater (which has soap in it) and vinegar. The soap coatstheir wings and they cant fly. I dont know what the vinegar does, but it makes me feelbetter that its there. Plain water is not effective at all. After a vigorous spritzing, I open thelid and knock down anything that is still flying. Then I use my wire mesh kitchen strainer toscoop off all the downed mosquitoes. A few will sometimes escape, to go find the lowspots in the gutter again, and thus the cycle continues. I also use the strainer to scoopsquigglers out of the water Ive just filled my buckets with. I dont want to bring anymosquito larvae into the house. A small amount of dish soap squirted into the water willalso kill the squigglers, but I dont necessarily want soap in my water since Im not surewhat Ill be using it for. (The small amount of soap in the spritzing doesnt seem to affectanything adversely.) This whole problem goes away in the fall. Hooray.

I know that it is through the puddles in the gutter that this cycle happens because mywater barrel hooked up to the air conditioner, making a closed system, never hadmosquitoes in it. Therefore, they are not getting in around the lid and must come down thepipe from the gutter. The troughs are sufficiently angled that water does not stand in themand this is not a problem with any water barrels attached there.

In the HouseI carry water every day in 3-gallon buckets, rain or shine. Its what the enlightened persondoes! (chops wood/carries water), but I dont carry it very far except when I take waterfrom the creek. The size of the bucket is determined by the weight I can, or want to, carry.

Some of how I do things is dictated by the small amount of space I have. You will see how

this works out for me, but I would likely do things differently if I had different space.

The BathroomAll water is used as many times as possible, with its last use being to flush the toilet, whichis done by emptying one bucket of water (3 gallons) straight into the bowl. After the propertechnique is developed, this is usually enough. A small amount of gray water may need tobe added after flushing, to bring the water level in the toilet bowl high enough to just coverthe flush opening. This prevents septic smells from backing up into the house. I never fillthe bowl to what people would consider a normal level.

As a side note: this is not a house that it is easy to have diarrhea in, so it behooves one tostay healthy!

In regard to the toilet, I use the If its yellow let it mellow; if its brown, flush it downformula that motor home occupants have found effective to conserve water. If thismellowing results in a pissy smell, which I cant tolerate, I change my pattern here and usea piss-pot (an old-fashioned chamber pot) which sits covered until the next big flush, atwhich time it is emptied and rinsed.

I do not require guests to do this, allowing them free use of the toilet as needed, and Iprovide a guest basin for washing their hands.


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I keep 4 full buckets of medium-clean to fairly dirty water in the bathroom, and I never goto sleep with less than 2 full buckets there. I also keep a 5th bucket in the bathroom, whichis used to collect incidental gray water from bathing, hand-washing, floor scrubbing, etc.These are small amounts of water, usually, so I use this 5th bucket which is never full, forthis rotating water supply.

While I do have a normalbathroom sink and bath tub, I donot use them as intended.Instead, because of spacelimitations, two buckets of watersit in the bath tub at all times. Ihave no use for the sink, otherthan to hold dripping clotheswhen I do laundry. I use largebowls, metal basins, for

washing. I have built a back-splash board for my normal-use basin to keep from splashingwater on the walls. There is a guest basin also, for visitors to use, and several closed

containers of clean water set aside for that purpose.

Bathing as such is done the old-fashioned way, in the kitchen. I heat water and take asponge bath standing on a towel, using two basins, one for washing, one for rinsing. Ifthere are other people in the house, I do this in the bathroom.

Washing of hair is done in the bathroom. I heat water in a large pot and dip the hot wateronto my head with a container, collecting the water in another basin. This is very much likecamping out in your own house. The resulting gray water is reused to flush the toilet. Idont let this water sit very long, though, especially in the summer, as the organicshampoos break down pretty quickly within a day or two, and a bad smell can result.

The KitchenI keep one bucket of the cleanest water in the kitchen. This is used for dishwashing, half ofit to wash, half to rinse, which I do in metal basins which sit in the normal sink. I dont usethe divided kitchen sink in any way except as a place to put these basins. Dish-washing/rinsing water is first poured through a cotton cloth bag to strain out any smallparticles of debris.

The wash water gets recycled. It might be used to clean the sink, or go into the compost,or into the gray-water bucket in the bathroom, where it must be used up quickly as fooddebris in the wash water will decompose and begin to smell in a short time. The rinsewater moves over to the wash water basin and is used once again.

The cleanest water is also used for making drinking and cooking water,which I do daily with an electric water distiller. The water is first strainedthrough a cotton cloth bag. I have to find a non-electric way of purifyingwater, but I dont want to get tied into buying filters or chemicals forother kinds of units, so I havent solved this problem yet. Ive seen unitsthat can be used on a wood stove, but I dont have a wood stove.

I try to keep 3 glass gallon jugs, recycled from store-bought cider, full ofdistilled water at all times for normal use. The signs on the jugs say


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Peace and Joy, Healing, and Prosperity, so that I remember to bless the water tothose purposes as I lift and pour. I use about a gallon a day, but can use more whenwashing lots of vegetables or making soup. The distiller can make 4 gallons per day ifneeded.

Laundry

In planning to do laundry, I need to have water from barrel 1, 2, or 3 in my buckets, so Ihave to think ahead on this one a little. I do laundry by hand, so to speak, but I use ahand-cranked pressure-washer device. This works on the same principle as when you putwarm water into a plastic bottle with a snap-on lid, put the lid on, and shake it up. Steampressure from the warm water can blow the lid off the bottle. This laundry device is acontainer with a stand, a lid, and a crank handle and is used with hand-hot water. Thesteam forces the soapy water through the cloth of your clothes in about a minute or two ofcranking. After washing this way, I rinse clothes by hand in the water buckets in the bathtub until I can feel soap building up in the water, then I switch to a clean bucket. All thewash and rinse water is used to flush the toilet. The clothes dry outside on a line in goodweather, or in wet weather and in winter, they hang over the bath tub on coat hangershung on a long curtain rod.

This laundry method uses very little water and very little soap. I normally use one bucket ofwater or less for washing clothes. In spring and fall, when I wash quilts and heavy winteritems, I collect extra water in a big tub outdoors when there is a good rain. I do this byplacing the outflow hose from the 4-barrel setup in this tub, then I do these big laundriesoutside by hand.

Washing the car I do this in the rain with a broom. Its fun. If it doesnt rain and I reallyMUST wash the car, I do it with a bucket of water and a broom.

Watering the lawn There is no lawn, per se, more like a meadow. Nature takes care ofthis or it doesnt get done.

Watering the garden Done by bucket, from the creek if weather is very dry. I have plansto set up an irrigation system using water from the creek exclusively, pulled up from thecreek by a hand-powered transfer pump and the siphon principle.

A Plumbing Consideration The traps in all the drains (bath tub, bathroom sink, kitchensink) must have water in them to prevent septic odors from backing up into the house.Because I dont use the tub or the bathroom sink very much or as intended, I have toremember to dump some water down those drains from time to time. In addition, because Iam not putting large volumes of water into the septic system, during heavy rains I will flushmore times than normal, often using the water collected below:

Additional Water During heavy rains, a nice stream of water develops off the rear of myold van. I put a bucket there to collect that water, useful only for dirty-water jobs, thusconserving the water refilling the water barrels. There is also a leak at a joint in my frontgutter that, no matter how many times I have tried to patch it, it still leaks. So be it -- I put apot there to collect that water and use it to water flowers in my window-boxes.

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