Harvesting Rainwater

*You will be shocked at how much water you can collect from rainwater harvesting*

Most people are not aware of the fact that a colossal amount of water can be collected from rainwater harvesting efforts. In fact there are rainwater harvesting systems that take care of the water needs of large households throughout the year. Most would find this very difficult to believe but it is a fact.

All one needs is a well designed rain harvesting system, complete with adequate rain harvesting storage tanks.

It is actually amazing that while many parts of the world are facing such serious water problems, on the other hand colossal amounts of rainwater that would otherwise have been harvested and put to good use, are going to waste. Plenty of rain falls, the water is drained away, some evaporates and we are still left with our huge water-scarcity-related problems.

Rainwater tends to be one of the purest sources of water available and also one of the healthiest which can also be easily and cheaply treated and even used for human consumption.

Few people are aware of the fact that an amazing 600 gallons of water per inch of rain per thousand square feet of catchment area can be harvested. This means that an area does not need to have a spectacular amount of rainfall to carry out successful rainwater harvesting that can meet most needs the whole year round.

And yet not all the rain that falls can be collected. There are several factors that affect the efficiency and reduce the amount of water collected. For example a small amount of rain will be needed to wet the roof and fill the roof washer. Secondly some of the rain tends to spill out of the gutters while still more rain overshoots the gutters. The other obvious factor that comes in is the fact that once the storage tanks in the rainwater harvesting system are full, all the additional rainwater will go to waste and cannot be collected.

Efficiency of the rainwater harvesting is usually estimated at being between 75% to 90%. Of course all this depends very much on the system design and its’ capacity.

It is clear that in years to come, rainwater harvesting is bound to become increasingly important. More so as our environment gets more and more polluted, thus endangering many of the other sources of water that we have come to rely on over the years. Increasing rainwater harvesting seems to be the only available long term solution we have.

The writer of this article Aaron Pratt has a Rainwater Harvesting Guide http://www.rain-barrel.net that covers anything related to rainwater harvesting recycling and reuse.