“We see with clarity how irrigation’s structure informed social structure (inventions such as the calendar sprung from agricultural necessity); how in ancient Greece, the communal ownership of wells laid the groundwork for democracy; how the Greek and Roman experiences with water security resulted in systems of taxation; and how the modern world as we know it began with a legal framework for the development of water infrastructure”.

Giulio Boccaletti. Water: A Biography

“Water (chemical formula H2O) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odourless, and nearly colourless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a solvent. It is vital for all known forms of life, even though it provides no calories or organic nutrients. Its chemical formula, H2O, indicates that each of its molecules contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, connected by covalent bonds. The hydrogen atoms are attached to the oxygen atom at an angle of 104.45°. "Water" is the name of the liquid state of H2O at standard conditions for temperature and pressure.

A number of natural states of water exist. It forms precipitation in the form of rain and aerosols in the form of fog. Clouds consist of suspended droplets of water and ice, its solid state. When finely divided, crystalline ice may precipitate in the form of snow. The gaseous state of water is steam or water vapor.

Water covers about 70.9% of the Earth's surface, mostly in seas and oceans. Small portions of water occur as groundwater (1.7%), in the glaciers and the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland (1.7%), and in the air as vapor, clouds (consisting of ice and liquid water suspended in air), and precipitation (0.001%). Water moves continually through the water cycle of evaporation, transpiration (evapotranspiration), condensation, precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea.

Water plays an important role in the world economy. Approximately 70% of the freshwater used by humans goes to agriculture. Fishing in salt and fresh water bodies is a major source of food for many parts of the world. Much of the long-distance trade of commodities (such as oil, natural gas, and manufactured products) is transported by boats through seas, rivers, lakes, and canals. Large quantities of water, ice, and steam are used for cooling and heating, in industry and homes. Water is an excellent solvent for a wide variety of substances both mineral and organic; as such it is widely used in industrial processes, and in cooking and washing. Water, ice, and snow are also central to many sports and other forms of entertainment, such as swimming, pleasure boating, boat racing, surfing, sport fishing, diving, ice skating, and skiing.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water

Water is something I’ve always taken for granted, here in England it’s around us all the time, we have water we can drink directly from the tap, and we even use the same water to flush our toilets. We have rivers, lakes, and seas clean enough to swim in, albeit often very cold. As if by magic water regularly falls from the sky. So why bother even contemplating a design around storing water when it’s only a few turns of a tap away.

I am regularly faced with, “what's the point of that” when I mention to people, I’m going to harvest rainwater from my house roof. The follow-up remark from people is “you’ve too much time on your hands”. Perhaps I do have too much time on my hands or perhaps I invest my time wisely.

Researching water and our relationship with it is fascinating, James Rebanks books “The Shepherd's Life”, and “English Pastoral” talk about how upland farming has changed in the Lake District. He paints a fascinating picture of what life was like from his grandfather's times farming to James’ today and how they are now working to hold water on their land rather than working at constantly draining it. He is slowly returning to how his grandfather used to farm.

Moving from the spate rivers of the Northern Dales to the slowness of living on the Southern waterways, Danie Couchman in her book “Afloat: A Memoir” tells a very different story from feeling isolated living in house shares in central London to finding community and connection to nature whilst still living in central London when she moved onto a boat. Danie goes on to travel around the waterways sharing with the reader an insight into a very different world on the water, and a rediscovery of how the country's waterways shaped our landscapes and cities.  

In this section of the design, I will begin with visiting each of the twelve permaculture principles and how they could relate to water. I will then collate a summary of my findings using a PMI table before exploring my site with a survey to discover what I have and what I need. To conclude, I will investigate the options I have to collect and store water.     

OBSERVE & INTERACT

I’m now happy with the design layouts of both the front and back garden. It’s taken a while for me to get to the point that I’ve been holding back from these past few years but now I’m ready to think about setting up a water harvesting system in both of my gardens.

I will have had about ten months working in the current incarnation of each garden, over this time I’ve given lots of thought to what I would like to achieve from each water harvesting system and now with the coming growing season of 2022 fast approaching, I’m going to start and set up my water storage solutions.

CATCH & STORE ENERGY 

Water is something we get a lot of in England, often when we do not want it. Having the ability to catch and store water has always been an aim of the design of my house and gardens since moving in.

With this design, I would like to store as much water as is practical. The first storage location will be in some form of water container, once these are full the next option will be in the soil.

OBTAIN A YIELD 

The harvested rainwater will be used to water the soil helping to provide moisture that can be taken up by the food crops I grow turning the water into food. The best kind of water that can be used on the soil is rainwater.

APPLY SELF-REGULATION & ACCEPT FEEDBACK 

The cosmetic look of the water harvesting system will play a part in this design, anything that is visible in my garden from my neighbour's window needs to look pleasing to the eye. Permaculture design likes to reuse whenever possible, this often means things can look rather odd due to mixing and matching many things together. Each element I put into this design will need to be considered before going ahead with it. A downside to this will be the cost, I will probably need to spend much more than I would if I didn’t have to consider my neighbour.

USE & VALUE RENEWABLE RESOURCES & SERVICES 

Plastic will play a large part in this design, storing water in a small garden will involve some sort of container and there is a very high chance this will be made from plastic. The pipe fittings and pipe will also be plastic. The offset to these items will be by removing the need for external water sources in the garden, in this case, the water would come from a tap connected to the local water company's water system.

PRODUCE NO WASTE 

With having to buy in materials for the water harvesting system it’s going to be important to look after what I use. Keeping all equipment in a good working condition will be built into this design. Cleaning when necessary and storing away if not in use.

A large part of this design is going to be educating myself on how much water I’m using in the gardens and how much rainwater I can effectively harvest.

DESIGN FROM PATTERNS TO DETAILS 

Keeping a log of water consumption will help me improve the system I set up and will show me if I need to be looking to add extra storage or if I’ve overestimated how much water I have available to use.

INTEGRATE RATHER THAN SEGREGATE 

As much as the gardens are on different sides of the house water can easily be moved between gardens, the intention is to store at least double the amount of water in the front garden than in the back, if needed I can use extra water from one garden with the other.  

USE SMALL & SLOW SOLUTIONS 

Year one of this design was to put in place the locations of the water systems, year two is to put in a basic water harvesting system, and year three will be to tweak the system.

I have had no experience with harvesting water so additional storage space may be needed. With limited space in the gardens for water storage, it makes more sense to start with a system that can easily be added to if needed than to add more storage than I can use.

USE & VALUE DIVERSITY 

Getting creative with any excess water will be part of this design, adding an overflow pipe long enough to allow gravity to feed the water around the garden to be stored in the soil will add a little diversity to the storage system.

USE EDGES & VALUE THE MARGINAL 

Using the runoff water from the house roof is a great way to add value to a resource that has been going down the drain. I do have a smaller gutter and downpipe that I could tap into if needed.

CREATIVELY USE & RESPOND TO CHANGE

Having water available to be used in the garden is one thing, having water available that could be used if the power grid went down in the house puts a whole different perspective on the value of storing water.

It’s often overlooked but if we found ourselves in a situation where the power grid went offline for a prolonged period, this would have a major impact on pumping tap water into our homes.

Once I get an idea of how much water I’m capturing and using, extra storage to enable me to use water in the house will also be taken into consideration as a priority.

Using a PMI analysis, to help summarise what is a Plus, what is a Minus, and what is Interesting concerning harvesting rainwater or using tap water.

This is a useful design tool used in the research section to help guide the design process through thinking about water from many different perspectives.  

PMI Conclusion 

Watering the garden with tap water is very convenient, I’m not on a water meter so it’s very cost-efficient removing the need to invest in any additional equipment. Tap water has minimal effect on the soil microbiome, it’s safe to drink and it’s only a turn of a tap way.

Unfortunately, tap water comes at a cost, both to the environment through landscape manipulation and with the collection, processing, monitoring, storage, and distribution. By removing the need to water the garden with tap water we are moving in the right direction to help reduce our reliance on this heavily processed resource whilst at the same time becoming more responsible for how we use water. Harvesting rainwater is worth the time and investment in doing.    

• There are two small gardens one on the front the other on the back of a small two-bedroom terraced house.
• Both sides of the house have a downpipe from the roof gutter going directly into an underground drain.
• Where the downpipe goes into the ground both on the front and back of the house the ground is uneven soil on a slight slope.
• Access to the downpipe on the front of the house is not very good. Access to the downpipe on the back of the house is better but as with the front, there is no path or solid access.
• The house has an apex roof with equal amounts of water flowing off each side.
• The size of the roof is 49m2
• Avg. annual rainfall 1091.00
• Collectable rainwater per annum in litres - discounted by 20% to account for water loss 36064
• The back garden is designed as a forest garden and requires minimal watering throughout the growing season.
• The front garden is a more traditional kitchen garden with various raised beds. This garden will require more watering throughout the growing season.
• Inside the house, there are around 50 house plants most of which are watered once per week.

Equipment

• 2x 220L plastic ex-food barrels
• 1x 100L water butt

The location of where both downpipes are

Downpipe Rainwater Diverter

Options for diverters to tap into the downpipe to collect rainwater come in many shapes and sizes. They seem to come with a few different features from a very basic model that just diverts the water without a filter to the storage tank, to the high-end models that come with filters and often with a switch to control the flow of the water by sending it to the storage tank or directing it down the drainpipe.   

Basic model

The cost of this model is very low, but the downsides are it has no filter to remove moss, leaves, etc flowing into the storage tank, the other main downside is it has no turn-off switch. 

High-end model

The high-end models come with filters and a switch to send the water directly down the drainpipe, this would be good in winter when we get a lot of rain, and the water storage is full.

One method of using a water diverter is to have it level with the full waterline of your storage tank so that when the tank is full the water will overflow back into the drainpipe. I’m going to have a slightly different approach to my overflow so the ability to turn the flow on and off to the tank will be more important.

After spending several hours researching the many different models of diverters, I’m going to go with the 3P Filter Collector Universal, Rainwater Diverter, and Filter with link kit. This model has excellent reviews and seems to fit all my needs.

The only area I have a concern about is fitting the device to my downpipe. This is a concern I have with all the diverters and not just this model. The house gutters are the same ones that were installed when the house was built in 1980, I’m not sure in drainpipes go brittle over the years so I may need to be careful when I cut into them.

Water storage comes in many shapes and sizes with a sliding price scale depending on the water holding capacity and the cosmetic look of the container.

My requirements are going to be decided by the following factors.

• Size of the available space for water storage
• The cosmetic look of the water storage container

Size of the available space for water storage

The back garden – I have limited space in the back garden for water storage so I will need to maximize the available space. To start with I would like to have a minimum of 300 litres of storage. In previous years the 220L barrel I’ve used has lasted about 3 weeks with minimal watering of the garden.

The first year of collecting water from the downpipe will be a learning curve and I may need to add additional storage the following year.

The front garden – with a bit of creativity I have more space to store water in this location, the water consumption of this garden will be much higher than the back garden but again, I’m unsure about the actual amount. The following year after setting up a water harvesting system additional storage may be needed. To begin, would like to have a minimum of 600liters of water storage available.

The cosmetic look of the water storage container

In the back garden – I will hide most of the storage containers by the side of a small shed next to the house. I will not be able to see very much here so I’m not too bothered about the look of the containers.

The front garden – I need to be much more conscious about the look of the containers for this garden. With experience, my neighbour complains if she can see things in my garden that she doesn’t like the look of. The obvious container would be an IBC tank, this would also need to be sat on pallets to give it the needed height so I would be able to access the tap to fill a watering can, once the IBC was on pallets it would be very visible over the neighbour’s fence.  This would not go down well with my neighbour.   

 I will probably need to have multiple containers positioned in a way to reduce complaints. The colour and design of each container also need to be taken into consideration. Anything too bright will not be approved or anything that looks too scruffy will also draw attention to the container.

With limited knowledge about how much water I will gather at certain times of the year, I need to have a plan around what happens if my storage containers get full when I’m not at home to turn off the diverter and send the water down the drainpipe.

I’ve talked to a couple of people regarding ways to deal with the overflow water situation, their ideas were helpful but basic.

Option one

To keep the barrels all level with the downpipe connector, then once the containers are full the water will flow back into the connecting pipe and back down the downpipe.

This sounded a bit complicated having to make sure each water butt is level for the system to work. I’m wanting to position one of my butts in a different location from the others in the same system. 

Option two

To connect the overflow directly back into the downpipe allowing excess water to go down the drain.

This sounds like a simple solution that would work, at the same time I could be using any excess water more productively in the growing season than just letting it go down the drain.

Option three

My thoughts on how the overflow water could be used.

For the water storage system in the back garden, I could add a long overflow pipe to the water butt, attach it along the back fence making sure to keep the pipe on a gradual decline away from the height of the overflow point, and then locate the end of the pipe into an area of the garden where extra water could be stored in the soil.

The only downside to this is the fact that the downpipe is on the lowest part of the garden so I would need to be extra careful with my calculations in deciding if the end of the water pipe is low enough for water to run through it using gravity alone. If not, the water container would just overflow.

In the front garden, I would fill three water butts and then have an overflow pipe into a raised bed, this overflow pipe could be moved to a different raised bed when needed.

These would be the most interesting and fun option to try out, it would also give me more hands-on learning about how much water I’m dealing with than just pipping excess water back into the drain.