Water

Water is as fundamental as air in our livelihood. Living in populated areas, you take for granted that every time you turn the faucet fresh water will come out. When we were searching for homes, having a source of water not dependent on the grid was one of the things we looked for.

When we found this place, we had never used a cistern based water system, though we knew what it was.
For those of you who don't know a cistern is simply a large underground (in our case) tank that holds water until it's ready to use.

Typical rainwater harvesting setup, and very much like ours.

 The water is held there, and transferred into the house via a pump and hoses.
The water is replenished via runoff from the roof during rain or by the truckload during a drought. We try very hard not to use option B.

Cistern

It's just a big box in the ground. With a lid. And a hole for hoses. And a thing we don't know what is...

Right now, it's a great place to store pallets we're saving. 

At the left there you'll see a bucket upside down with a rock on it. That's to keep the most awesome doggo ever from peeing in the cistern every time he goes out.

Mayhem - aka Most Awesome Doggo Ever

Seriously, his only flaw. 

The "Pee Shield". 

All of those hoses! They're all doing a job, and a very important one. These hoses transfer water from the collection barrels to the cistern. 

Back porch - carries out the majority of the house roof collection.

Garage collectors - adding these increased our collection by at least 1,000 gallons per rain storm! 

Close up of the roof to barrel system. 

Front half of the roof collector.

Another front collector.

All of those hoses run from these barrels to the cistern. There the water is held until we need it. We do not drink the water, as it is not currently potable. It is used for showers, toilets, laundry, and dishes. 

We hope to add a small pond for overflow collection as well as gray-water reclamation at some point. 

Well, there you have it - hope you've enjoyed this tour of the water system. 

See you soon! 

~E