Posted on March 03 2023
The ever-saturated WATERMAN is here today to give you some advice about water! Through these fun and informative info-comics.
If you're serious about prepping, you probably own one of these.
Even cheaper: 240 gallon IBC Totes, but they take up a lot of space and are immobile once full.
If you've never run these numbers on your home, garage or shed, you're missing half the picture about water storage.
These folks do a nice job demonstrating our water system:
EVERLANDERS explain our water on a Baja beach
https://youtu.be/1THtBYxu8N8
We operate a small organic teaching farm near the outskirts of rainy Eugene, Oregon.
modular — add more at any time transportable — one goes to the picnic-table or camp-fire… because fire loanable — one can go to a chum cleanable — if one gets stanky, the others remain in-service and can clean the problem child some stay in camp while some go to town for re-fill at the RO dispenser inside the grocery.We converted a 40’ semi-trailer for storage.
I built a dam around the perimeter of the roof.
That drains into the roof over the porch.
The porch roof has perimeter dams… except for an opening at the downhill side.
Below that spillway, a stainless-steel chain dangles.
Under that chain we can position one of our stainless-steel five-gallon retired Pepsi kegs.
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Why kegs instead of barrels or IBC totes?
Five-gallon kegs are:
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Pepsi kegs are engineered to be pressurized.
A quick puff from a 12vdc bicycle tire pump, and fresh clean water flows from the sprayer designed for a stand-still house kitchen-sink.
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Although we use them individually, kegs can be daisy-chained to extend time-between-switching.
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Pepsi kegs are manufactured by Cornelius Company… leading to their nick-name ‘corny-kegs’.
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Cornies are used by home-brewers of kombucha and beer.
Kegs are acquired then abandoned after enthusists realize the difficulty in crafting a decent product.
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Brewer supply shops carry re-build kits with parts for the inlet and outlet, plus O-rings and food-safe lube to extend their service-life.
Most important: brew shops carry the tiny brushes on long wires to clean the pick-up tubes.
I suppose you could order on-line, but we prefer supporting local-owned family-operated small businesses.
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For showers, we use a dedicated three-gallon ‘Torpedo’ keg.
We heat water using a ‘sous vide’ circulation heater designed to hold a set temperature during cooking.
Low-draw, they operate from a 750-Watt automotive inverter just fine.
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As you might imagine, we have duplicates and spares for everything.
Many municipalities will fine you for harvesting rain water if you don’t have an engineered/stamped system. I guess they’re not willing to give up their cut of the water cost, or they are afraid of people not processing their water properly and just holding their glass below the downspout….I’m sure roof bacteria and chemicals are not the best to ingest.
Highly recommend “Harvesting Rainwater” by Brad Lancaster, Volumes 1 and 2. My background is rural farm girl and I’ve made it back to real civilization – extremely rural, sparsely populated Colorado Rocky Mountains. I have studied, read and re-read these books many times. I am working on implementation. This is true beauty. :-)