It’s monsoon season and that rain is really coming down!
How do we capture all of this free water and store it for later use, as we do in Water Harvesting Activity #2?
The centerpiece of a rainwater harvesting system is a cistern. I’ve had a cistern at my place for six years. Let’s learn how they work.
Transcript
INTRO: From Tucson, Arizona, welcome to the Water Harvesting 101 podcast. My name is Martha Retallick. I’ve been a water harvester for 20 years, and I’m looking forward to helping you get started.
Before we do that, here’s a little Tucson secret: For most of the year, we’re in drought. That’s just how life is in the desert.
But when the rains return, oh, do they ever. They often bring an unwelcome friend called flooding.
How do we reduce the risks of flooding? We do it with water harvesting.
Water harvesting encompasses three activities:
- Redirecting rainwater away from where it isn’t wanted to where it is.
- Storing rainwater for later use, for example, during a drought.
- Recycling “used” water. At my place, I don’t let laundry water go down the drain. Instead, it’s for the fruit trees.
We’ll be covering all of these topics and more, so let’s get started.
EPISODE: It’s monsoon season! The rain is really coming down now.
How do we capture all of this free water and store it for later use?
The centerpiece of a rainwater harvesting system is a cistern. I’ve had one at my place for six years. Let’s learn how it works.
We’re going to do this by taking a little trip – as a raindrop.
Our little raindrop is going to fall on a rooftop and here is a universal principle about water: Wherever it is, it flows downhill.
That raindrop is going to join up with its friends and start flowing downhill – off the roof and into rain gutters that are covered with screens to keep the crud out of them.
What do I mean by crud? I’m talking about leaves and twigs, even branches.
And now that water is flowing through the rain gutters to the downspout. At this point, our little raindrop and its friends have become a waterfall.
They’re falling downhill through the downspout onto something called a rain head. (See above photo).
A rain head is a device that’s covered with a screen. It filters out even more crud because we don’t want that crud to go into the next place along our route, the piping that ends at the cistern.
Once that crud is filtered out, the water’s clean, it’s falling downhill, and it’s going to land in plumbing pipes that are above and then below ground. The water is flowing through there, and then it’s going to end at a riser.
Because we’re in the midst of a rainstorm and that water is flowing with great force, it’s going to start rising due to water pressure.
How far will it rise?
That water will rise until it hits a horizontal length of pipe that extends between the riser and the cistern. Then, when it reaches the cistern, kerplunk! The water is going to fall into the cistern. And that is where this water is going to be stored for later use.
The Water Harvesting 101 podcast is all about showing you how to use water harvesting to conserve scarce water and put it to work.
I use the word “scarce” because I’m talking to you from the Tucson, Arizona area, where we’re in a desert. We don’t get rain that often.
So, when it comes, we want to make the most of it. We store it in rainwater harvesting cisterns.
Some people like to use their cistern water to irrigate landscape plants. I prefer to use mine for watering the fruit and vegetable garden.
I do this by connecting a short hose – as in, a four-foot laundry supply hose.
I connect that hose to the cistern’s faucet, turn that faucet on, and, on the other end, there’s a watering can. When the watering can is full, I take it around to my raised bed gardens and water the plants.
If you’d like to learn more about water harvesting, sign up for my monthly email newsletter. If you do, I’ll give you a free copy of my Water Harvesting Cheat Sheet.
And if you’d like to support the Water Harvesting 101 podcast, the PayPal email address is info@westernskycommunications.com.
OUTRO: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Water Harvesting 101 podcast. If you’d like to learn more about water harvesting, meet my book family.
First, it’s City Nature, the book that’s guaranteed to look great on any coffee table. City Nature reveals my secrets to water harvesting through my 20-year journey of transforming my Tucson home into an urban oasis. Get the details at CityNatureBook.com.
And if you’re on the go, take water harvesting with you. Water Harvesting 101 is an audiobook and eBook combination that will teach you the nuts and bolts of water harvesting and show you how to put them to work. Available exclusively at WaterHarvesting101Book.com.