Video 14 Rainwater Collection
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- Our rainwater collection design and construction. After some tweaking, it is operating superbly! I forgot to mention in the video that we did try drilling a well. We were told our chances were only about 10% and after spending almost $4000 on a dry hole, we decided to go the rainwater collection route.
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The wrap up portion of this video was amazing. Such a gorgeous home with the birds chirping. Thanks for the videos and I hope you and your family enjoy it for years to come.
Thanks for the kind words.
Watched all your videos. This house is beautiful.
Thank you very much.
You got a nice house and nice set up for rain water collection, hope you get some rain soon.
Thanks. We have about 1.5 inches in the last few days for the first time since April. We are over 16,000 gallons of stored water. Doing great.
Interesting video, definitely the way I want to go. You have a beautiful home there, fantastic job sir!
Thank you very much. We are extremely proud of it all.
Like LJ Prep said below, each pipe bend adds friction loss to the system, also, you have friction loss in the pipe runs. If you start having overflow issue, replacing any 90 bend with 2 45's or even going to 22.5 can greatly decrease the friction losses in your system. All of this can be calculated.
As I replied earlier to a comment, the system is working great and I am very happy with the results.
That's a beautiful home you've built yourself and what makes me love it is the fact it's off grid. The Rain harvesting setup is awesome, look forward to a complete tour of the place and house.
Thank you very much. I plan to start editing all our final pictures next week and a tour of our new home will be part of the final construction video.
You have a fantastic home and I love your rain recovery system. I'm glad to see it's working out for you.
Thank you very much. I have to say the rainwater collection system is working fabulously. We've only had about 1.5 inches of rain since April and we still have 16,000 gallons of water and are using about 2500 gallons a month.
Thank you Michael, I too have built an off grid home in Eden Texas and really appreciate all you have done. Geat job!
Thank you too, John. Eden sounds like a good area for an off grid home. I'll bet you get more hours of solar than we do here. It seems we have clouds streaming up from the Gulf every day! Let's see some videos!
this is a beauty, God bless you sir.
Thank you so much.
Another great video Michael
Thank you very much.
Jam up system Michael. Glad for you, you worked hard on this fantastic project....now is time to enjoy your rewards. Congratulations to you sir......
Thank you.
Very cool system, Time to get an SDR and do a little weather map Sat decoding... You can be your own weather man..
Great stuff. You sound Young. :-) Also you cracked me up in the other video with the cut to put on a Shirt.., It's NOT a beauty contest. We're lucky as users we don't have to put our real picture..LOL
thanks again for the motivation on the rain collection.
Thanks. This the first time I have heard of SDR. I had to look it up. I'm glad I "sound young" because I'm for sure not. I passed the wanting other people to see me without a shirt on many years ago. We received another .5 inch of rain during the the night and we're up to almost 18,000 gallons in our tanks now. Super pleased.
Thanks for the video Michael, all rural homes in Australia run on tank water and as it seems to be getting dryer all the time and water cartage is a big business. Your system looks great and well thought out. It's great fun watching the rain fill up the tanks glad to see you enjoy it as well.
Ben Dixon Very interesting about Australia. I didn't know that. Thanks for the comment.
Roof top Solar going full bore here as well we are doing 100 mw per month just domestic.
Oil companies will be getting into solar component manufacturing very soon - if not already.
Drill a solar direct well and run the overflow into the pond. 👍👍👍
No underground water source where we are located.
Magnificent! Well done sir/ma'am.
Thank you very much.
I had to listen to the end a few times since it sounded so tranquil with the birds chirping. Nothing like the sound of nature. Anyhow. Maybe you could save some water by filtering greywater for irrigation and toilet flushing.
I enjoyed your video and found it is very informative. You display a good knack for planning and execution of details. Have you considered using the lake for watering the lawn, as any extra water on the lawn can be channelled back into the lake. That should save tanked water for household use only. You could also add a filter lake water for flushing to save additional water. Finally burying those tanks would increase the flow rate into them and provide protection from freezing in a severe cold spell. Good luck and glad to see you live a self sustaining life style.
We do use the lake water for our irrigation and thanks for the compliment. My wife calls it O.C.D.! As I commented to someone else, below ground tanks including installation would have increased the tank price from about $8500 to at least $25,000. We have our valves and lines covered in heat tape and insulation and we have made it through a very cold winter for this area. We're very happy.
ZManMD I
Especially on slow speed/low pressure systems, the losses of the pipe itself and any extra directional change (45/90 degree ells and tees) add up, which reduce the end pressure. Lowering the collection tanks into the ground is your best bet if you still have trouble. $700k isn't a bad price for all that you have there. How far off the grid/out of the loop are you? // I'm in the Pacific Northwest, so the lack of water for a well strikes me as very unusual. Condolences on the dry hole.
@10:00 fido is laying a landmine :D
I love the set up of the water catch. as a side note be sure you have a filtered open system to atmosphere so the Tanks can "belch" when it rains, just the opposite of a water heater or well pump collection tank. must have a way of relieving the Air Pressure inside of the tanks, other wise they will over flow like crazy. and cause erosion in the planters. lol YOU may have already figured this out. lol Nice Home and lots of hard work. I look forward to my build in the Bahamas , Great Exuma Island. I don[t look forward to the expense of having every thing brought in by ship or Air. But, it will be worth it in the end. I hope both your hard working wife and yourself Good Luck. and enjoy the new home. Give plenty of party's for the people who helped you build it. except for the 1st Roof Dick. lol
Every tank has a 2" insect and rodent proof air vent. I did think of this.
Very nice house Mike, very high quality. I'm sure you're very proud. There are two things I could see that I really didn't care for one is where your outdoor patio fascia meets the house fascia there should be a little trim piece in there to bring them both to the same point. Also the solar collectors on the roof are little bit skewed they're not true to the roof line. Once again very nice house.
Thanks for the compliment. I feel like my second roofing contractor did a good job so I'm going to trust that that joint is water tight. The skewed panels don't bother me - I was just relieved to get them installed and they work great.
I like your Rain water harvesting system, and I love and use Z-wave extensively in my house. The only thing I would have done different is I would have used new concrete septic tanks underground for water storage over above ground ones. It solves a lot of problems and is a whole lot prettier.
I'm sure you understand this was a financial decision. It has worked extremely well so far, almost 3 years. We just checked our water a few days ago and are still under 12 total dissolved solids. Our visitors often complement our water taste.
Absolutely incredible!!
Thanks so much.
I got a lot of good ideas for my own pump house from you there. I need to find out more about that leak indicator and smart valve.
Funny thing. I am using a Samsung Smartthings hub and the pump house is just too far away. I have never got the Smart Valve to connect. I have an exterior ZWave door lock about 25' away from the pump house but it just will not connect and in fact, I lose the door lock connection a lot of the time. The ZWave mesh network needs some boosting.
I wonder what adverse impact the metal walls and foil insulation is having on your z-wave signal (Faraday cage). Is it possible to wire an antenna on your valve that is placed outside your Faraday cage.
I will assume that your pump has a certain amount of lift that it can pull up water. You could then lower your collection barrels so that your collection pipes would not have to push up the water so high. By using only one pipe instead of multiple pipes or a larger pipe for transit you have a built in restriction to full flow as you saw when your original pipe setup on the house overflowed. If you have a long enough storm or a very heavy storm you will again get a backup and not be able to take advantage of it filling your tanks to the top.
No pump involved - all gravity flow and functioning great. I'm very happy with it and won't make any changes.
Love the house, love the system. One thought though. Did you think to put the toilets on a seperate system? Since they're going to the septic, it seems like a waste to filter and UV that water just to go down the drain. You could supply the toilets with the line you have bypassed from the micron filters since it's already pressurized. Just a thought.
We had already pushed the electricians and plumbers way out of their comfort zone. I wasn't going to add anything else. Besides, we have plenty of water.
And thanks for the compliments.
Air in the pipe just needed venting above the highest point in the system!!
Very nice rainwater system! I have a partially wet catchment system and the same thing happened to me (water not going into the tank). I had to elevate my leaf diverter as well. And leaf diverters are not as good at diverting leaves was I would like. After every rain I have to get up there and get the leaves out. I now keep cinder blocks under my leaf diverters to step up onto. Thanks for showing all the parts and how your system was plumbed together. It is the most complete video on the subject that I have seen. (And I think I've seen most of them). Are you planning on watering that huge lawn with your rainwater catchment? I hope you live in an area with consistent rain. Those 4 tanks wouldn't be enough in a North Texas summer. That lawn would easily take 500+ gallons a week to stay green if there was no rain. And you look to have sandy soil to boot. I guess I really don't understand why a person would want to be off-grid and have a wasteful conventional lawn and shrubs too.
Thanks for the comment. Believe me, the lawn idea was discussed very much and we kept going back to our original motto: "Off grid but not roughing it!". So we installed an automatic sprinkler system that pumps out of our lake and we have a 7500 watt portable generator connected for backup when we need to water and don't have enough solar power for some reason. It has performed wonderfully. I think the grass even looks better when watered with lake water!
Why is there a pierce of facia missing on the front of the house on the left?
I wasn't going to comment on the relative heights of your system as it seems to be working just fine now. Be aware that in a very heavy rain you will likely still see spill over.
But, you seem to be quite an intelligent man, and asking a real question. The how was already addressed by a previous comment, so I will simply address the why. Without getting into the math, I can and will if you ask. Your system has a height differential of only 3 maybe 4 feet, this is refereed to as total head pressure. At sea level, it takes 2.31 feet of water column to equal 1 pound per square inch. Your altitude in Austin, isn't far enough off that to matter, so lets just say the rule of thumb is dead on.
So what you are asking is for 2 psi max to push as many gallons per minute as your roof can produce through a brilliantly large pipe, around corners then down through the piping associated with the first flush barrel.
Those are referred to as line losses, but that is not your key problem. With a 4" pipe your system never exceeds laminar flow rates..
Simply put, the pressure differential is not great enough to get the water moving through that gravity fed system to move as fast as it needs to to keep up with the gallons per minute that your roof can generate in a squall.
2 psi through even a 4" pipe can only flow so fast.... and yes it is pressure differential that generates flow.
You improved this differential by moving your system input upward, but only by about 0.75psi. (that looks like about an 1.5' improvement in the height of collection)
You should be just fine, in all but the most extreme events. If the rain exceeds your ability to collect it, you will get spill over, but rest assured you will be collecting at your maximum system capacity while you do.
Obviously I didn't get this deep in the physics of our water collection design but everything you have said has been proven in real life in the year we have lived here. I am so glad we went with 4" pipe because I remember I considered using 3". Our four 5000 gallon tanks are completely full right now and the lowest we have seen this year was about just under 12,000 gallons. We couldn't be happier. I realize that if we lived in West Texas instead of East Texas, we would have had to buy water because of the drought out there.
Beautiful house I like the details
Did you keep water tank in higher than a house roof level, how you used bathroom flash and all water tank
The tops of the water tanks are lower than the tops of the downspouts. This makes gravity flow work well. The only pump is from the water tanks to house. Thanks for the comment.
where do you live? edit:
just realized you live in Texas.
I do live here aswell.
near Houston.
what is the best area to move off grid ? any town suggestions?
Northeast Texas.
Just saw your edit. My suggestion would be stay away from the liberal controlled large urban areas. If any area is going to pass some stupid law that will infringe on your right to live off grid, it will be one of these areas. We live in a very rural area and our lifestyle doesn't even raise eyebrows with our city and county leaders.
Would it be too much if adding water sources by digging two or three water wells in addition of rain water harvesting ?.
We tried. Dry well.
you do not need to drain rain water tanks. there won't be that much sedimentation build up. particularly with first flush and filtration. the sediments at the bottom are actually beneficial for the water quality. (plus i doubt it would flush out anyway, as there is usually no outlet right at the bottom but a bit higher up.)
as for the pump shed, it is very highly unlikely you will ever need to use the heater. i mean if the climate is under the freezing point for prolonged period of time, the water tank will freeze up as well.
the reason for the water running over the top after the low leaf catcher: you combine all the pipes into one pipe that goes into the tank and going through your filter sock, this of course created bottle necks and reduces flow.
putting a roof over the tanks keeps the water on the cool side, protects the tanks from uv and adds more roofing surface.
that triple filter system i only use it to filter the drinking water. i mean you are not going to drink water in the shower or from the toilet bowl, etc. i installed the filter, because some of the leaves next to the house gave the water a slight tangy taste. the toilet bowl needed cleaning more however. adding a filter there solved that.
the rain water system of some friends of mine has no filters, leave catchers or first flush diverters and no cleaning or maintenance at all. all went into a large tank. they have 4 kids and they are all still alive and healthy and very successful jobwise.
Thank you for those comments. All very interesting and informative. I knew it was overkill with filtering the entire house water but those replacement filters are only about $20 and it just makes me feel better. As for freezing weather, we usually have a few sub 20 degree days during the winter and I will do whatever it takes to keep any lines from freezing.
yes better safe than sorry
I wonder if adding some sort of heater to the tanks would be cheaper than insulating them. I think its highly unlikely those tanks would ever get anywhere near freezing, especially if they are full. My guess is a tank heater would never actually come on.
I have been watching your video's and wish I could build the same. I love SIP PANELS and the entire idea of off grid living. I kinda have to think that part of the problem with getting the water caught all into the tanks is due to the size of your piping and all the internal friction from surfaces and angles but also the turbulence. Plus you are fighting gravity on the way back up out of the ground and to the top of the tanks.. So that leads me to my first question. Why didn't you bury or at least partially bury the tanks? I saw SNOW in one video, so I am worried about the tanks cracking from a freeze. Also piping that isn't kept about 32F. Next question is about the electrical wiring in the outside walls. You kind of blazed over switch boxes and outlets, but unless I missed it, never showed how the wire is run in the SIP panels. Do you have video of that? Last but not least, will you be putting solar electric panels somewhere on your property for total off grid operations?
I am really enjoying your videos and hope you will continue. I am a handicapped Vet living on a thin nickle, so I am living vicariously through you and a few others on here.
Enjoy, Steve
Thanks, Steve. First, I looked into buried tanks but those tanks costs almost 3 times as much as above ground tanks and that does not include the cost having them buried. Several people said we would be pumping warm water to our house but as of now, almost mid July, the water is still cool. I will have all the piping covered and insulated and probably actively heated by winter. I'll make another video when I get that done. As far as the rough-in electrical, each panel comes with vertical and horizontal chases already pre-engineered. The electrical contractor crew watched videos on how to do it such as this one - th-cam.com/video/E6hE1-OOGyY/w-d-xo.html. We are already "total off grid" and yes, we will be installing more panels in the next few weeks. Thanks for your service and glad you are enjoying the videos.
This man has big banking bucks = $$$
How do you dispose of your garbage since you're off the grid?
Burn barrels for trash that burns, family who live in the city for plastics and glass and county dump for anything else.
Thanks for the info. How many square feet on the home? keep the info and updates coming I am interested in seeing how you like the (SIP) home. thanks awesome!
Thanks for the compliment. Our home is approximately 2400 square feet of living area with about 3600 square feet under roof. I'm still formulating my opinion on the SIP construction. Right now we are entering our hottest time of the year here in northeast Texas so this will be a good test.
Well, this guy is very well of financially he must have a fantastic Bank Account especially the size of that safe he had the property built around, its a surprise to me he as any money left to put in the safe, mega Rich. but credit where its due it a beautiful home.
Looks like a safe for bang sticks. Good responsible thing to do if you have 'em.
Here in Michigan, pvc is only approved for water under 100 degrees F and animals. Is it different where you are?
I'm not sure why you are asking this question. I admit I don't know the plumbing codes so I don't know the answer about PVC pipe but the only water that is over 100 degrees is going through PEX pipe.
was the drinking water too bad to drill a normal well for ur house to use?
I didn't mention it in the video but I did in the description. We did try drilling a water well. We are not near an aquifer and were told we had very little chance to hit water but we spent about $3600 trying with no success. I would recommend that anyone buying land probably should check on the availability of an underground water source before buying. We didn't do this. However, this rainwater collection system is working fantastic in our area where our normal rainfall is 48" of rain.
Why not just use a solar water well?
You are probably not figuring out the square footage of your roofs properly to figure your rain water capacity per inch of rain. You don't figure out your square footage like you are trying to find out how much roofing material to cover your roof. You measure the outline of your roof as if it were flat and use that square footage to see how much water you'll get per square foot. That should bring your numbers more in line minus your first flush diverter. Hope that helps.
Thanks, Jurgen. That is actually how I am figuring square footage. One thing we realized is that we have many many feet of 4" pipe that is holding hundreds of gallons of water and we drain it after each rain event. This has to fill back up before it starts going into the tanks. We are catching about 2000 gallons per inch of rain.
I watched the videos but one question kept popping up, the electricity, where do you get it, the grid?
I don't really understand the question if you watched the videos. All of our electricity is from our solar electric system. There is no electric provider within a couple of miles of us.
so i haven't missed any of your videos, and in fact i think was one of your very first comments :), long story short i would love to know the price of the whole project, just so that i can save up and do the same thing. by project i mean every thing. solar house ext,
This may offend some people but I mean it with all sincerity that my wife and I are blessed beyond measure and we give all the praise and glory to God for our blessings - financially and in all other ways. I won't give exact figures but the 48 acres of land, the out buildings, the lake, the road, the equipment, the solar system, the rainwater system and the fabulous home will total approximately $700,000. And I'm afraid we are not done yet. We have already decided that 24 panels (6240 watts) are not enough. I am getting some quotes on adding another 24 panels this summer.
Michael Hoybook man that's alot of money lol (but definitely looks worth it).. as for the solar it would of been cool if you got the Tesla solar roof coming out later this year. supposedly it will cost less than a standard roof & it will generate electricity. I don't know if you've looked into that.
Chai t As you probably know, from the time you begin planning and bringing in an architect and general contractor to the time you move into your new home is well over a year and I felt like I had to have solar electricity up and running first. My current solar setup is designed from data from two years ago. I just heard about Tesla roofs and I'll bet you won't be able to buy it for at least a year - too late for me. I can't look back!
Thanks for the info!!!! and enjoy what you have created because i sure am :) side note i can not wait to see how big the fish are.
God is good. Yoou are blessed Mr. Hoybook.
96 gal. a day is very high usage . The usual is less than 10 per person .
I don't know where your numbers came from but everything I read says "typical" is 80 to 100 gallons per day per person and there are two of us. And our motto continues to be "off grid but not roughing it" so I'm pleased with our usage.
19:15 you said in actuality there is no way you can drain the whole tank. wouldn't that lead to sediment build up?
As a matter of fact, my wife and I have discussed this matter. We know that no matter what preventative steps we take, we are still going to get sediment - primarily in the first tank. We are going to look into whether or not there is some device such as a swimming pool vacuum that we can use occasionally to clean the bottom of the tank.
Once every ten years we have our tank vacuumed to get rid of sediment.
What kind of business does this for you? Pool cleaning service?
No they just clean tanks but having said that all their gear looks to be pool clean equipment
Maybe tie the four tanks together a few inches (or more) above grade so the first tank collects all the sediment only? it would appear that sediment can travel between the four now with your transfer lines near grade. Or perhaps there is a sediment catcher you can make out of one or more 55 gallon drums with some 2" drains on each to release that sediment at a cost of a few hundred gallons per drain, rather than whatever it will cost and what you may lose having a sediment vacuum process..... dump the 4" into the 55g drum, have the outlet at near the top to the next drum with finer and finder screens and do that throughout.... two, three, four drums to catch the fines at they cycle through. A cursory thought indicates that the screening system and transfer pipes would need to be sized to allow for flow. Maybe the (four (in my mind)) barrels could be staged at different elevations with the first being the highest to have some additional head to push the water through the sequence. Just an idea.
What are you wanting for your RV
Probably going to ask about $12,500.
What did that set up cost about
Are you referring to the rainwater system? If so, I'd say about $10,000.
WANT TO SELL THE RV?
As a matter of fact, yes I sure would.