All the Water from Your Roof

[nightshade]

It intrigues me that modern houses are not built as standard with energy saving or water saving devices
Water is one omission in particular,I can remember seeing films where in the middle of a desert a cave leads to a cistern of cold clear water.
Gibralta is an island with little or no water except what it catches as rainwater and stores in cisterns,so why do we not do it? water butts take up a lot of standing room comperable to what they hold so why not build a simple corrugated metal box and line it with butyl to either fit into an unused space or bury it in the garden this could hold several 1000 ltrs
and although my idea is a little,(ok a lot) simplistic you get the drift this bulk rainwater collection should become standard but no doubt the water companies would want a cut
and the government would tax it
Would it have an overall effect on the enviroment I wonder

[Tormentil]

My MiL used to have a system similar to that on her allotments, many years ago.

[nick_rowe]

It's staggering that roof water collection is not made compulsory for new builds. It's so simple and can provide the default supply for all toilet flushes and garden use, but topped up by mains if needed.
The government should introduce new building regs to cover this asap.

[speckled wood]

Not a new idea, something I read was that when the now long demolished Sheffield Victoria Railway Station was built in the 1850s the rainwater was collected off the roof to flush the toilets.

Truthfully we could save a lot of water by simple measures, saving the bath water to flush the toilets (as done in Japan) is one option.

[nightshade]

I seem to remember seeing on some coastal buildings grooved concrete slabs that collected sea-mist (by condensing it) or rainwater to add to a cistern /resevoir

[nightshade]

The issue of rain water storage is a big issue in Texas and called rainwater harvesting
I found this submarine tank sys.Rainharvesting Systems - Rainsava rainwater storage tanks
on a uk site now that is a lot of water!

[Airehead]

Solar panels likewise.
The snag is, I for one can not afford a new house even without them, and I am sure that both solar panels and water collection with the necessary filtration and goodness knows what other legally enforced safeguards would surely double the price.

Re taxation - my understanding is that once you start using any water source that exists on your property, you pay rates for it.

[glsammy]

We collect our rain water from our small shed,(sorry, my sophisticated bird hide!) This simply falls into two 45 gallon butts. It supplies all our Garden watering needs throughout the year.
As were a semi-detached, we've no down-pipe from our roof, otherwise we'd have a larger butt to get that as well.

[nightshade]

Nothing to stop you adding one

[Wild-Woman]

During the interval at a RSPB meeting the other night, when we had an almighty thunderstorm, we stood in the doorway watching across from the church hall to the church , several of us mentioned about how much water was coming off the church roof. There wasn't a water butt in sight. A member will be mentioning at their next gathering at church. Big roofed buildings like this really ought to be doing something about water harvesting. It's common sense really. Julie