FRESH
WATERType your paragraph here.
WATER IS LIFE! We design only off-grid capable homes, and we consult too upon your chosen designs and teach DIY builders, just how to do it themselves.
For a great water system, we always recommend a rainwater catchment system, over a well due to the overall costs, as that with a clean roof surface for your collection and a properly sized cistern to hold water within you have a great water supply. These water reserves could be placed in several places upon the landscape or in just one location such as at the home, initial gravity flows can give you less than normal line pressure, but enough to draw water without electricity, then add filters and a pump and you have standard 60 psi water pressure. On the landscape we have even run a ram pump, to redirect water to higher ground, to multiply that gravity pressure for landscaping or to bring more water to the tiny home from other locations when roofs are small collection surfaces, so throughout the land, water can be available too. We Custom design all of this to your needs!
As a cost example, the last well we had dug for a home we designed, cost $20,000, and it smelled of sulfur with a very bad taste! That was a lot to spend, to get bad water. It could be cleaned up a little, by adding an open-air pond, with constant 24/7/365 agitation and aeration, then filtering & UV Stabilizing, but in the end it was just too expensive to go forward and we just used that water for the animals and landscape, so now, we advocate for our clients to only build rainwater cisterns, in place of wells initially and this is much cheaper, than what we spent on that last awful well.
As partially stated above, cisterns and collection are sometimes located upon several parts of a project, [all depending upon the projects size, and requirements of the several systems or as may be needed], and a properly designed cistern (build of concrete and not plastic) will allow us to triple filter our clients drinking water supply and also to UV stabilize all that drinking water, too. Distillation, while it's possible to capture naturally distilled water and one can use that water too for ironing water, battery addition water or other distilled needs, [IT'S NOT REALLY GOOD FOR ANYONE TO DRINK DISTILLED WATER AS IT CAN PULL MINERALS OUT OF A BODY], but the natural way of distillation as in a cistern and condensation forming up high in the tank lid is far less of a supply than almost anyone needs and distillation equipment is inexpensive [it can be as simple home pressure cooker and copper line to a cooling tank or a greater system] just to provide ample distilled water quickly, or should larger than that be required from time to time, many other distillation systems could be set up too, (all of which is easily stored in the ample closet space, that a Georgia Adobe Home(TM) has).
Buying a thousand or two gallons of fresh water initially, just to fill 1 of the cisterns the first time, is often available in most areas with a commercial independent water supplier, just until the house collection surface is built & complete, so that you have water coming into your tanks as the house completes, and "it's normally very affordable to purchase once", and after the metal roof of the home or collection area is complete, with directional gutters, the roof starts collecting lots of rainwater. Standalone cisterns can be built from many local components, and they can also have their own collection surface, made best of metal or cement. Always a manhole with a raised edge must be included in the top of a tank, for proper access of yearly maintenance and/or cleaning and one should have plumbing that's designed to dispense the water to your usage area and hook ups to the other tanks at the home can give a greater supply. We like to have connections to all the other cisterns installed for any later additions of water reserves, so the homeowner can just tie on the new tank, plus always have a shunt on each tank to isolate it and a flush valve & piping on each tank, to empty each tank individually, all directed well away from the building, during our normal yearly cleaning of each of our cisterns. By having more than one tank built, (a plastic tank if you must but we don't recommend you add plastic tanks ever because of the possibility of any particulate plastics getting into your fresh water from plastic tanks), but with properly designed tanks, one can clean and empty one, then allow it to refill, before tackling the other tanks, so as to conserve 75% plus of your water reserves, with a four tank system, so at least 4 tank system, is our standard plan for our clients and cleaning can be spread out through all four quarters of the year, without ever draining more than 1/4 of the water supply.
A 1000 sq ft roof area, will collect around 620 gallons an hour from just a 1 inch of steady rain fall, so plan to build at least 10,000 gallons of storage for ample supplies, in perhaps 4 small [or more] - 2,500 gallon water tanks is the best minimum system we suggest (a better system would be five times this (Think Olympic Pool Size) and we normally set them in longer rows, all across the Northern walls buried side of the new structure, at minimum of about 4 ft higher than the interior finished floor on very compacted soil for stability and for gravity feed, thus no electricity is required to flow fresh water from the pipe into the building. Insulate the tanks very well and insulate the back of the building too, using a closed cell foam insulation, a water barrier too, and thereby allowing the tanks to converge into one 2-inch pipe point, all set up inside the building, (we like all this terminating inside a water closet built to contain any spills, along the back Northern wall) with all the shut off's, tees, gages, and a massive floor drain all along the eastern closet walls floor, just in case anything disastrous ever happens in that water closet, to allow any spilled water to flow away from the living space, from inside the closet only. Gravity delivery, then gives one ample water pressure, and a spigot just before the pump, pressure tank and filters, always allows bucket or hose connections, to draw water from just gravity pressure only, thus no power required, when other equipment may fail (for example if your area is hit with an E.M.P. attack or the pumps electricity flow stops). We also plan for EMP attacks by incorporating EMP protectors into our buildings design.
This is only part of how we design and build Georgia AdobeTM, Earth sheltered, passive solar, passive ventilated REAL Rammed Earth Homes, that can basically heat and cool themselves, make their own water, power, gas sometimes, grow lots of food and are generally paid for, when built as we plan and consult to our clients, to build for themselves, upon the day one moves in.
Give us a call to start your home project at 706-363-6453
HEADLINES LIKE THIS US GOVERNMENT ARTICLE, WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO BUILD A GREATER SIZED HOME RAINWATER SYSTEM!