Harvesting

The rainwater tank has been inplace for months now, and we've been using the 1500 litres of mains water that was put into it when it was first installed to flush the toilets. However, with the recent priority being getting back into the house, and therefore sorting out bathrooms and the kitchen, completion of the rainwater system has dropped off the critical list.

So last weekend I did a temporary lash-up of drainage pipework to connect the downpipes from the house guttering to the rainwater tank inlet filter. This is the WISY filter that is supposed to keep leaves etc out of the harvested water tank. After a dry week I've not had the opportunity to see if it has worked, but several heavy rain showers today have obliged and a quick check of the water level in the tank this evening indicates that we are now collecting rainwater, hurrah!

I need to sort out the pipework properly next weekend, but in the meantime it's good to know that we are flushing 'free' water down the WCs (cost of the tank etc excluded obviously) and not water that's good enough to drink. It'll be interesting to see how we get on with water quality, as the harvested rainwater system in our new office produces brown silty water when it's collecting rain, and crysal clear water when it's off the mains. Time will tell if we have the same issue to contend with.