Rainwater Harvesting is the collection of rain, from roofs, which would otherwise flow wasted down gutters into the drain or into a septic tank. It can be stored in tanks ranging from 200 litres in size to 20,000 litres. A typical size for a residential house is 6,500 litres. The stored rainwater can then be used in the house for flushing toilets and washing clothes etc and outside for watering the garden, washing cars etc. Although the water is very clean it is not considered potable by UK standards.
Clean, pure water
The tanks we supply come with filter, pump and other standard equipment to keep collected water clean. The larger the tank you have, the more money you will eventually save and the more protection you will give your garden during droughts and possible hosepipe bans.
Chemical free
Using collected rainwater is much better in some applications that drinking water as it does not contain any chemicals.Your garden will respond much better to water without chemicals, and when used for washing clothes you will find you need to use much less detergent as there are no chemicals, and the water is softer.
Save up to 50% mains water costs
Each person in the UK uses approximately 160 litres of drinking water per day, more than half of which need not be drinking standard water. Using the water that is otherwise running down your drains would mean that you were not shipping water in from miles and miles away, but providing more than half of your water requirements yourself, and cutting up to 50% off your mains water bill.
It typically takes 1.5- 2.0 kWh to pump 1 cubic meter of water (1,000 litres). For a typical house using rainwater for WCs, washing machine and the garden, pumping costs are between 5-10p per week. To put that into context, the supply and waste water charges associated with 1 cubic metre are in the region of £2.50. A net gain of around £2.40 per cubic metre.
It takes around 5kWh of electricity to supply 1 cubic metre of water (this of course is used by your water authority), but harvested rainwater uses around 0.5kwh per cubic metre.
So, in essence, it is both financially and environmentally beneficial to install rainwater harvesting.
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