Rain Water Collection System Explained at our off-grid property. Here’s a short video about our simple water system. It’s a work in progress and nothing fancy right now. Once the Cabin is done we’ll put a 12volt pump in to push water up the hill to a large tank. We’ll probably just use the pump when there is lots of sun hitting the solar panels so the batteries don’t get drained too much. Then we’ll have lots more water pressure that’s available on demand with a turn of the tap, gravity is pretty reliable. At least so I hear.
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Filed under Rain Water Collection …
Rain Barrels and Sand Filters for water storage
We don’t have any well or running water on the property but being on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, we have a ton of …. You guessed it. Rain!
We already catch rain off half of the shed roof into one of two 55 gallon barrels we have. It’s connected to a garden hose and then a hose spigot. Used only for washing it works great for us now but I’d like to connect the barrels like the guy in the video did with a PVC manifold. That would give us more pressure and get us through a long summer drought.
I wanna build this:
The master plan is to pump the water in the 2 barrels up to our 650 gallon storage tank on the hill above our property. We’d use a 12 volt utility pump to empty a barrel when the sun is out then let the batteries charge again. If we did it a little everyday we’d have plenty of water in the tank on the hill that could then provide tons of pressure for our cabin. I can imagine some pressure to spray pots off and even take a shower in the summer would be great. Also having some pressure to spray out of a hose would come in handy for fire fighting if we ever had a fire get out of control.
Here is some bad photos of our system now. The rock filter you see stops most of the pine needles, but a screen would be better.
Then someday if we want to drink the water, maybe we’ll make a sand filter. Here’s a great video show you how they work. Towards the end they show it can be backwashed, which you wouldn’t normally do but it’s a good illustration of the concept. Sand filters use microbes to clean the water.
How a sand filter works for dummies (short)
An actual filter in action (long)