Harvesting Rain Water for WFP

does anybody do this. If so explain.
Saw a video on it. Interesting.

What amount of minerals are in rain water?
I have a tank and I’m thinking of filling it with rain water (not from the freaking ground) from a special barrel system…I think this could make the DI last SOOOO long…

Thoughts Di/Ro people

I’ve thought about doing the very same thing. But then I discovered a major flaw in the plan - no rain.

I wonder how much pollution is caught in the rain as it falls through to the ground.

Some time back Marc King did a post on rainwater. I’ve also seen posts on the British forums about the same thing. Althought the tds of rainwater does vary by location it is usually far lower than the tap water tds. I’ve seen posts saying tds as low as 5.

http://robinson-solutions.blogspot.com/search?q=rainwater+harvesting

I accidentally put a trash barrel under a part of my roof that water drips off when it rains heavy, after a big storm it was about half full , so I checked the TDS, It was 6 and that was from a “not so clean” trash barrel, I may be wrong but at a TDS of 6 I think that can go straight on glass without DI or anything

wow…6 tds???
I think it’s something that could save some serious money…I’ll be playing with it and update you’ll on how it goes.
It seems like it’s already purified water, but running it through a DI will ensure complete pureness, thus making a DI tank last forever.
I have a 65 gallon tank, so this could be a sweet thing!:cool:

Heres a pic of a simple rainwater system, theres a valve in the pipe so that when the tank is full the water just carries on down the spout and a sponge type filter to divert leaves and other residue
Jeff Brimble has a setup so that he doesn’t start to catch rain water until the rain has been going for a while , this reduces the contaminants from the roof etc


ill remember to wait til the rain wash the dirt off the roof first. the filter is a good idea as well.

so it rained tonight and thought…hmmmm why not give the rain water a little TDS checking. I haven’t set anything to collect it, but found a puddle near my car and tested it.
It was in the 20’s!!! That was from rain water sitting in a puddle, wow. I don’t know if I’ll collect rain from a roof. From doing some research, roofs have many chemicals in and on them. So just setting a large funnel that goes into a barrel will be my start. If puddle water was in the 20’s, I can’t wait to see what pure rain water will be…maybe around the 2-5 range.

If you’re concerned about contaminents from the roof you can filter it thru an aquarium sand bed. Not quite sure how to set it up. Maybe Karl can help w/ a link because I thought I saw this suggestion on one of the British forums. Karl?

I haven’t harvested personally. But there is quite a bit of info on the Brit forums. Try here for more info besides the link I put in to the blog. You can also search in You-Tube for more info, but you will wade through a load before finding what you need.
Personally if I was going to do it, I would stick an elbow/U-bend from the down-spout of the roof with a retractable pipe, filling it with DI & letting the weight of the water push its way to your container. There are devices that let you switch over to collect after a long downpour - but this would physically mean going out in the rain to switch over! Why not just use some gutter guard for the big stuff & collect the lot. The sand we used to use in water treatment was a special grade & very expensive. But it can be done with the finest grade, but this would back up the water as its a called a “slow sand” filtering process.

I think this is a catch 22. An average home is going to take what? 60 gallons to complete? So if it rains enough where you can get 60 gallons I think your season would be shot. I could be wrong as I never tried this, but think about it. When you hear your weatherman say they got 1 or 2 inches of rain, they mean 1 or 2 inches. If you stuck a cup on the ground during a rain it would only fill up one or two inches. I could see my gutters collecting maybe 2 or 3 gallons at most during a normal rain, but not enough to clean a whole house. Once again could be wrong. I also know some people who want off the grid use it as a whole home water source. Interesting but I don’t see how feasible it would be.

You’d be suprised Jugg! There is a bottled water company in Texas (yeah Texas) that uses a butterfly roof system to collect rainwater to filter. They collect hundreds of gallons of water from one rain. When they say 2" of rain it’s 2" everywhere. you can put out a 5 gallon bucket and get 2" in it but if you out out 2 5 gallon buckets you get 4" combined. When you expand the catch area you get more gallons.

Man that’s pretty cool. You know me and the wife have been talking about getting off the grid alot lately. The more and more I think about what I am paying in utility cost the more I get upset. I just pay the bill now and try not to look at it. Might be something to consider for the home. My last 5 months of electric bills were over $350 per month and I can’t stand it. Sometimes I get so mad I want to go out and blow up some of these places. But can’t do that or else I become a lover boy for big bubba. When I think of the unibomber and how he was mailing bombs to normal people I think how much of a moron he was. Why could’nt he do everyone a favor and mail some to say the IRS lol.

Ok just kidding guys don’t go call the cops on me. I’m not going to make a bomb in my basement. Although it would be a fun project. I love to see things go BOOOOM. lol.:eek:

For every 1000 square feet of roof and one inch of rainfall you could collect almost 625 gallons of rainwater, according to Vaughn Usener of Raincatcher Rain Water Harvesting.


[I]In southeast Iowa, we get about 35 inches of rain per year on average,fairly evenly distributed through the year.

A 1600-square-foot home gets 35,000 gallons of rainwater per year, almost100 gallons per day.[/I]

I don’t think Jeff (electric) uses his RO any more, he just collects rainwater. Interestingly enough, users say its better for cleaning than production water!

Thanks for the Iowa stats Larry. It’s mind boggling to think about the numbers. I can also vouch for the fact that it rains pretty much throughout the year. Gets annoying in the busy seasons!

Karl does Jeff polish the rainwater w/ DI or is he just using it at the tds he gets after the filter system he’s using? It’s aquarium sand he’s using isn’t it?

I think he goes out into the rain & when it reaches its desired tds turns the dial in the drainpipe to fill up - I could be wrong? Jeff?

Some just store the water in the truck mount & pump it through the DI before it hits the windows. So they are always carrying around water of 020 + just ready to be put through the DI.

After finding my home tds was 550+ I figured a rain harvest system was not just an interesting idea but one I am going to do. I found 55 gallon rain barrels w/ spigots at the bottom for under $50. I am going to get 2 (one for the van and one to collect rain water. I figure w/ a small pump I can push the push the rain water thru my DI tank and into the barrel in the van. I will use that water for my backpack when I do monthly houses or those tricky balcony windows I have on some of my big homes. I also will be able using this set up to get that last few gallons out of the DI resin. You know the place somewhere between 2 and 5 tds.

Interesting concept. I did the math and Larry’s post is correct - approx 625 gal 1000 sq ft at 1" of rainfall. If you took the area of my roof, approx 2000 sq ft, times that by 1" of rain = 1250 gallons. A couple of problems though - filtration (all the grit and debris coming off the roof), storage capacity (you would need at least a 500 gallon tank to make it worth your while), and timing (you can’t time mother nature). So in essence, a great idea, but not very practical in my opinion. That is unless your municipality doesn’t mind you storing a 1500 gallon tank behind your house. On a side note my neighbor is a tree hugging freak, and they collect their rain water for their plants.