Rain Water Harvesting
Rain water harvesting is all the rage at present with the emphasis on greening homes and saving on utility costs. Bear in mind that rain or the water gathered from a roof may not be as pristine as we like to think as it can be contaminated with bird droppings, dust and wind born contaminants, scrapings from the roof etc
In it’s essence is simply gathering of the water to a storage facility, filtering this water and pumping it back into the home and or garden. Most people use the water rather for the garden and washing or toilet usages rather than bathing and drinking . For the same reason that municipal water needs to be filtered and treated so does rainwater.
Rain water is harvested by saving the run-off from a roof into a tank, filtering this through a sand filter and in some cases more sophisticated methods such as carbon filters and then pumped out through a UV system to kill bacteria into the house or garden.
Image below from Wikipedia on Rainwater Harvesting
Rain Water Harvesting
The municipality keeps the water clean by chlorinating and this sanitising method protects the piping in the home keeping it free of bacteria and slime build-ups but when you pump water through a harvesting system the water does not contain any form of sanitisation so the protection level is not there and that water is best served for non-drinking purposes unless the harvested and treated water is very close to the point of use. Like the municipality dosing the rainwater to sterilise it then removing the chlorine may be a safer option
In its simplest form the items needed would be piping from the roof to the storage unit which could be a Jojo tank of 2500 – 5000 liters capacity, sand and carbon filter plus UV ( size dependant on the water flow required ) and 3 bar pump with pressure stabilisation kit . The pump is used to circulate the water in the storage tank and pump the cleaned water into the house or wherever it is required. Total cost not more than R9000 ex vat and installation
Many design options are available and best is to call us and let us check what it is that you want to do and advise accordingly