Water Harvesting at Nowty Towers

[nowty]

(nowtyproject for searching)
This is a re-write of the water harvesting here at Nowty Towers which was done in 2013, having been lost at st elsewhere. It will just cover the water harvesting aspects rather than the culvert repair shenanigans which enabled it.

Half meter diameter concrete culvert under my house with one of the original house pilings (30 years prior) had been driven through it. It created a sink hole and obviously it had to be fixed, very long story.



6 months of hard labour later it was mainly fixed by creating a large concrete box culvert bypass around the offending pilling.



I bought a 500 litre tank which fitted the hole I had dug for the general working area for the culvert repair. The area would have otherwise needed to have been filled in, so it made sense to use the space for the tank. I just had to find one of a suitable size and shape.



I'll add bits more to this over several days...............

[ecogeorge]

Remember the original posting and pics ..........awesome .........respect.
George

[nowty]

I drove a couple of hardwood piles into the soft clay for the tank to sit on to keep it level, I used hardwood deckboards driven in vertically with the help of a sledgehammer. Then I put down a bed of ballast and literally dropped the tank in.



I backfilled around the tank with sharp sand as I built up a manhole over the repair. I built in an overflow pipe and a local surface water drain which went back down into the culvert. I had to make a few small bends in the pipes for it to all fit. I improvised and used my gas hob to heat the pipes to the point that I could put a slight bends in them.



Overflow pipe slotting through the roof of the box culvert.


More to follow,

[nowty]

A manhole was built up as well as a pump chamber next to it. The pump which goes in there will be a self priming pressure pump to suck the water out of the tank and inject it into the house. More about that later.



I fitted a course filter chamber prior to the tank, it's the one with the brown 90 degree elbow. There is a black pipe connecting the filter chamber to the main tank, but it cannot be seen in the photo as it’s under the sharp sand.

You can also see a surface water drain top left in the picture which was the reason I found the culvert problem in the first place. My neighbour complained that there was rainwater flowing off my driveway onto his, so I thought it neighbourly to fit a small surface water drain, and link it to a nearby existing drainpipe. When I cut a small square into the driveway to fit the drain pan, I noticed that there was some sort of void underneath. Thought it would be some very minor settling of the earth under the driveway but when I used my digital camera with the flash on and randomly snapped away with my hand in the void.................



.........................I had to return to my computer to download the images from the camera, one of them was this image.


More to follow,

[nowty]

To get the water into the tank I used a 12V submersible pump with power of about 50W, it has to pump the water up about 2.5 metres. It does silt up every few months so I made it easy to remove, clean and flush out. I control it with a WiFi socket so it can be timed and I still have easy manual control from my smart phone.



The culvert has a permanent pool of water in which the submersible pump, pumps the water up into the course filter chamber.



Looking into the top of the tank you can see the water coming from the course filter chamber and filling the tank. You can also see the outlet copper pipe which sucks water out from near the bottom of the tank. The hole at the top of the picture is the overflow which runs back into the culvert.



So most people doing water harvesting will be doing it from either rain water collection from drainpipes, or reusing in house greywater from bathroom sinks, showers, tubs, and washing machines. I know that my source is quite unique, but from now on the project is about how you get the water from your tank into your house.

You can see a self priming pressure pump fitted in the pump chamber. Its uses about 300W and can go up to 4 bar pressure. It has a small chamber which you prefill with water. Once the pump has sucked all the air out it remains primed and there is a pressure switch which turns the pump on and off. Just before the inlet of this pump you can see an in line fine mesh filter and all the copper pipe which connects to the tank and sucks water from near the bottom of the tank.


More to follow,

[Petertc]

Lots of hard work in that.

I had a pressurised setup originally, with filters, did all the toilets and washing machine.
We eventually moved and rented our original house out. So disconnected the system. Then after a couple of years dismantled the systems and installed into our other house.
When for the KISS route, had a small header tank to gravity feed the down stairs toilet.
It's all 12 volt so running of a small battery and solar PV so don't have to worry about power cuts.
Yes there were issues had to replace the pump, that was party my fault pipe freezing in the main tank and float switch keeping the pump running.
So how to buy a new pump, then float switch packed up. Ended up splashing out on a Stuart turner float switch and put and over ride switch in to switch off at night when cold.
Did try to insulate the pipe inside the tank, but that failed miserably.
One thing that has saved a lot of water was changing the WC, not for the amount of water per flush, but with a toilet that actually flushes as some times, we had to flush 3 or 4 times to get it to clear. Even with brushing. Screwfix toilet cheap a flushes great.
Only had to clear one blockage in the last 4 months, compared to having to unblock the toilet every couple of days.