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as long as you follow the rules and
include the basic components
then you should be safe and abundant
with your tank full of blue gold
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have you ever heard
of blue gold blue gold is water and it's
called blue gold because it's a valuable
resource that wars are being fought over
and people are making fortunes from and
you are just letting it fall from the
sky off your roof and down into the
gutter and then going and paying
somebody else for it so let's look at
what it takes to start collecting all
that free blue gold and make you a
richer person so we're starting at the
roof now this is not a video about
roofing materials and honestly i find it
really boring to talk about them
but really quick i'll lay out some facts
and you can pause the video and read
them if you'd like regardless of what
your roof material is you can collect
blue gold although the water quality
will vary depending on what material the
collection surface is
whatever the material is you'll need a
gutter now your gutter has to be sized
properly to handle runoff during a big
storm so water doesn't pour off the roof
and spill over the edge
the gutter is also the place where
debris collects that washes off the roof
and that debris can build up in the
gutter or be washed down the downspout
now there's this great invention called
a leaf screen that's made specifically
to keep leaves and other debris
out of your water system so the water
flows from this downspout and hits this
screen it's positioned at an angle
the big degree falls off the steep angle
as water passes through
and then inside there's another finer
screen where small particles are
filtered but still there's going to be
contaminants in the water that will get
through the leaf screen
fine dust and particles that are built
up on the roof between rains so there's
this thing called a first flush diverter
now a first flush diverter takes the
first flush of dirty water that flows
through the downspout and the leaf
screen and it drops it down into this
pipe without heading on to the tank
now there are lots of different designs
for this but usually there's some sort
of slow release on the end of this pipe
like a drip emitter and so anything
heavier than water
sinks to the bottom
of this pipe and the water slowly drains
out of the bottom of the pipe while the
cleaner water continues on to the tank
but these systems are really high
maintenance because the emitter or the
small hole at the bottom of the pipe
tends to clog
right because all the stuff is
filtering down
and so it needs a lot of attention and
cleaning to keep it functional so the
first flush of dirty water is diverted
away from the tank and as the water
drips out of the first flush diverter
and the pipe empties between rains the
system is reset ready for the next rain
tanks can be made of lots of different
materials
concrete plastic metal and even wood
now regardless of the material
every tank has several really important
components
so you need an access port to get into
the tank to clean or repair it sometimes
the tank needs a vent so when water is
flowing
into the tank and overflowing from a
full tank it doesn't create a vacuum and
implode the tank that can actually
happen
you need an overflow that's the same
size or bigger than the inflow so when
the tank is full and it's raining super
hard and water is pouring in water
doesn't overwhelm the pipe and start
pouring out of the vent
you may have the overflow going into a
second tank or a third tank or a fourth
tank and so on
and then of course the outlet is how you
actually distribute the water now this
tank needs to be completely insect
rodent and amphibian proof otherwise
you'll have creatures living breeding
and then dying in your tank which will
degrade the water quality so all
overflow pipes vents and outlets of any
kind have to be screened to keep
critters out now if light can get into
your tank you're going to get algae
growing which also will degrade your
water quality if you're going for
potable drinking water
so having a dark color or opaque tank is
needed to avoid algae growth now even
with all of these protections you're
still going to get a layer of sludge
building up in the tank over time so
you're going to want to plan for that
firstly by making sure that your outlet
right here is not at the very bottom of
the tank and is placed above the sludge
layer there's actually another school of
thought that says that to put the outlet
at the very bottom of the tank
is better because the sludge is always
incrementally coming out of the tank
instead of building up on the bottom so
a lot depends on your final use of the
water and how clean you need it to be
now another good method for reducing the
impacts of the sludge layer is to
actually
bring the inlet pipe
down through the tank
to outlet at the bottom of the tank if
possible so the falling water doesn't
disturb the sludge when it comes down
and enters the tank now not a lot of
people do this but it can really enhance
your water quality
especially if you're going for the very
highest quality of water if you live in
a place with a clean atmosphere
a metal roof and you follow these basic
rules then you should actually have
water clean enough to drink so the water
tank should not just exist in isolation
because at some point it's going to
overflow and that overflow can be
utilized as a resource
now i drew the tank's first flush
diverter the overflow
and the outlet here all watering this
sunken basin but you could have this
water hooked up to supply a lot of uses
you could have the water pressurized to
supply a home for flushing toilets or
pressurized for an irrigation system the
tank itself as a structure can serve as
privacy screening in the landscape
or you could put a trellis over the tank
and grow vines right on it so this video
is really just a basic introduction to
the rules of thumb for rainwater
harvesting from a roof into a tank
and the variety of types of system are
more vast than i can share in just this
one video
there are manufacturers who make a lot
of custom parts for rainwater harvesting
and you can also diy a lot of this
but as long as you follow the rules and
include the basic components
then you should be safe and abundant
with your tank full of blue gold so good
luck out there friends and happy
harvesting
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you