Avoid These 5 Mistakes When Rainwater Harvesting | Things The Books Won't Tell You

[@ourselfreliantlife]

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[@hildebertocarreiro9232]

U pile those rocks nice .u can build a home like Spain rock n cement house vila

[@hildebertocarreiro9232]

Get gutter guards

[@hildebertocarreiro9232]

Get pressure cookers still water 💦 safe

[@hilaireoloughlin]

Simple, no pretence, straight to the point. Thanks for the great tips.

[@jensv874]

Best tip I can give you is dont use plastic tanks but concrete. Concrete counteract/neutralise acid rain water.

[@claudiamcbride9746]

Flexible PVC is great for rainwater harvesting. Can be curved and go around bends without needing fittings to make the turns.

[@deborahmcsweeney1650]

We studied with Billy Kniffen who was with Texas A&M Extension. I think he trained the guy who wrote those books. We got a book from Billy called Rainwater Harvesting Planning and Installation offered through Texas A&M Extension. It has so much critical information that we call it our rain water bible. LoL! You might look for it! I hope your tanks fill up this summer!

[@lexliller2004]

Love the rocks around your cistern. Looks nice.

[@theupsideofdownsizing]

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience with us Jim! It looks like you have your system really dialed in. Let the rain begin!

[@ourselfreliantlife]

It's definitely a lot better. I think going as simple as possible is always the way to go. Much more sustainable and less chances of things going wrong.

[@wdwerker]

Always wise to listen to folks who learned the hard way !

[@robertbuckley9303]

Great video! These are tips that would be hard to anticipate without the experience that you've gained the hard way. One of the functions of any pioneer is to scout the territory and report back to the folks following behind. Thanks for breaking trail.

[@donaldwarriner1640]

You're so articulate with thoughtful presentation that inspires me to do this in the future. Thank you.

[@capistranogardener6100]

Jim...great job!!! May I suggest that you form the filter screens over a ball or cone before installing them...that way any debris will deflect and not clog the screen. Keep up the great work...very inspiring indeed.

[@elizabethblane201]

Such a great, organized, concise video. Seriously underrated channel!

[@vincentalaimo7527]

If you’re going to use silicone please use aquarium safe silicone… other silicones have toxins in them.

[@thebirdsnest9396]

Great warning. Thanks.

[@lmlowe9100]

@@sandhills2344 maybe he does care about toxins but didn't realize there were toxins in either...or maybe he plans some type of filtration system down the road.

[@bigglilwayne7050]

E -6000 and/or NP-1 are by far the best

[@lnwolf41]

Why not get a couple of 55 gallon drums, use the first one for a debris filter, the second one fills 3/4 before dumping into your other tanks. Some people set up a diverter, so the first 5 gallons dump on the ground taking all the crap with it, so you just get clean rainwater.

[@StoneKathryn]

Thanks Jim for going over how you have changed your system since the first time you were harvesting rain water. I really enjoyed this.

[@christineherrmann205]

This video made me wonder why you guys didn't drain the poly tanks while there was no rain and move them closer to shed, so that initial catchment was poly tanks with cistern as overflow? Probably something I'm missing.

[@honthirty_]

The poly tanks are their ONLY supply of water. That is why they didnt drain them.

[@kennethalmond8922]

Great video. One thing I notice is those looooong horizontal stretches of pipe over the cistern. They will sag within a year based on my experience. This may be OK for you and if not, think about support to keep them straight before they kind of melt-sag based on sun :)

[@foamer443]

Good point and being black won't help.

[@hirsutusi5536]

It might be wise to add a cleanable U trap between the horizontal collector pipe and the down-across-up link to the tank farm. Your filters will keep out most bugs and big particles but dust and sand may get through and over time block that underground gray pipe.

[@CherylSpelts]

Can you show us how much you've collected with the last week of storms? I am so looking forward to seeing the payoff, to all your work, with rainwater pouring into those plastic tanks! :)

[@ourselfreliantlife]

It's dark in the poly tanks, but I know we've collected close to 500 gallons so far.

[@tessahugo5448]

It`s always such a pleasure looking at your videos.. I really love all Jess arts, she is so talented. Love all the types of work that you do, we can learn from you. Cape Town South Africa

[@Doitgood52]

There is no substitute for good planning/design 🔥⛈🦠

[@jefferybublitz7968]

Hello friend, I've watched about 8 episodes of ur efforts out there, & I'm enjoying ur progress, as ur moving along. That 14,000 gallon cistern was an impressive build. Nice design too.***!!! Love Brthrn Jeff B.

[@bobjoatmon1993]

I'd be interested in how much water you end up getting in the underground cistern (during the monsoon season) Also, please answer why you didn't move the poly tanks closer to the end of the shed (between the shed and underground cistern) as that would have simplified your piping considerably

[@bobjoatmon1993]

@@onlyscience7120 yes, that's theory I'm asking what he ACTUALLY got

[@bobjoatmon1993]

@@onlyscience7120 that's ridiculous logic. I'm not asking for that level of precision and no one else expects that either. I lived in a RV for years and know about what a person uses per day on average and it's 8 to 20 gallons. Yes, they've got plants and livestock but the day after a rain in that large of an underground cistern their use MIGHT be 1/10 of an inch, if that. So a BALLPARK estimate of the water he captured is entirely feasible and practical.

[@teddiriggs517]

Flex seal....yeah baby! Glad you used it.😁

[@jayfroman3257]

I like making dirt, catching rain and converting sunshine into energy. I have other hobbies but those are among my favorites.

[@ReapWhatYouSeauxLeJeune]

Awesome video thanks for sharing

[@duwomaiishgabrielle9498]

❤️❤️I love you two! You are so down to earth! 😂😂it’s such a wonderful undertaking!

[@CBsGreenhouseandGarden]

Thanks for the tips Mr. Jim. Time to catch some water now! Good luck and keep us updated.

[@ourselfreliantlife]

Thanks CB! Will do.

[@scottrobinson491]

Thank you guys for your time and energy in sharing your journey with us.

[@BuckJones1909]

Thank you so much for these little but very important clips of gems of information!

[@catgynt9148]

Thanks for sharing this video and your rainwater harvest tips. How often do you sweep the perimeter of the cistern roof to minimize dust and dirt from entering your cistern? Wishing you and Jessica a blessed summer season with abundant rain and moderate sleeping temperatures. Peace brother.

[@samyoungblood3740]

Thank you both for sharing your experiences in this whole process.

[@jamesramey3549]

Curios, have you thought about moving your poly tanks closer to a direct flow and then have the overflow go to your cistern? Just a question since you brought it up. I am interested in moving somewhere to the desert and your videos as well as others are a big help.

[@bfox5767]

It looks great! I hope you collect a whole lot of water from your system.

[@conquererification]

Dreamed of moving out there before I moved. When googling the areas I always saw these gaint green circles. I hope those who can drain wells are listening and reevaluate thier systems. Will check out your other vid and pick up a copy of those books. Thanks

[@EricWhiteChooseGod1st]

Beautiful rainbow. Very well thought out, I appreciate the tip about the 90's most.

[@captnjerry4950]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge. This will help many!

[@PaullaWells]

I hope to build a small system for my garden one day. I appreciate the info. Thank you!

[@brucestmartin777]

Such a ambitious and ingenious system.. just amazing Jim .

[@charlesweaver3427]

Thanks for the sharing. One possible solution to replace 90° elbow is to combine two 45°'s. You can vary the length of the connecting pipe between the two 45°'s as the situation requires. This might create more of a gentle 90° turn.

[@davec9244]

jest gutters, live in Oregon have to clean my gutters twice a year they plug up, I know down in your neck of the woods no gutter on any houses you are going the right direction thanks

[@PaulOtis]

having the screens like you do now can allow you to remove and clean/replace as needed as well. Great info Jim & Jess!

[@ourselfreliantlife]

Exactly right! Thanks Paul!

[@tuskratscrew703]

thank you....buildin a system right now in costa rica....very dry and very wet all in one place....

[@Dr.Gunsmith]

Great explanation 🙏

[@saintracheljarodm.holy-kay2560]

Good usable information, take care and God bless amen.

[@petersamios5409]

Thanks for the information. You are absolutely correct about the hard 90's - you want to avoid those, You may want to split to multiple 30's or 45's to make the bends and limit those. Also, as someone else mentioned, I'd move the two tanks closer to the roof. I'd also cover them to try and keep the water cooler and less evaporation. Why the exposed black pipe- is that for cold nights?

[@paulaaron1109]

Jim. Excellent video. Straight to the point. Thank you.

[@andrewyang1446]

Thanks for the video! Was recently wondering about filtering the water from harvesting which might contain bird poop. Would love to see a video on how people treat harvested water. Thanks!

[@janettaylor3182]

Good to see you'll be saving and using you're own water supply and looks good how you've done it to me...I understood why you changed it now from the old system all trail and error but that's how you learn love watching you both always amazing 👏

[@michaelf1434]

With the wet system, are you concerned with freezing this winter? I remember you having problems in the past on your poly tanks.

[@cowgirl2mk505]

We live off grid in the high desert of norther NM, and catch our water. We bought the property with a system in place and have been making improvements - or at least try to make improvements as we can. I am curious why you went off of your roof clear down below ground and then back up again instead of supporting a stretch above ground between the roof and the cement cistern (using a downward sloping pipe). I'd be worried about water backing up because it had to rise again. Also, do you think you'll get sediment buildup in the ground level pipes? Love your solution for the long expanse of gutter. I may try something similar in an area where we have issues. Did you use 4" or 6" pipe?

[@ourselfreliantlife]

We used 4" pipe. Sediment may accrue, but we'd expect it may take awhile before enough collects to hamper flow. Check out our last video for the explanation of our "wet" system. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pXTVnoSAjqaDh5o

[@UpperSkyDJ]

Its so true that you learn by doing and sometimes re-doing.😉 Thanks for sharing, you brought up ideas that I can incorporate into my eight yr old water catchment system. Also love Brad Lancaster's books 📚.

[@anapilarshaw2823]

Thank you Jim and Jessica for sharing your rainwater harvesting experience. These are very helpful considerations and I appreciate your generosity. ❤

[@PieterFranken-e4v]

Thanks for sharing! These are super helpful tips and suggestions ....

[@backcountrypreps6171]

Hey Jim quick question. Why did you go from your roof rain gutters down underground and then back up why not just suspend the pipe from the rain gutters directly to the poly tank

[@ourselfreliantlife]

Check out this previous video. We install it and go over why we did it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pXTVnoSAjqaDh5o

[@backcountrypreps6171]

@@ourselfreliantlife just watched.. Lol should of done my home work😆

[@jimh4167]

System looks great If you find the 4 inch screens building up with dirt They make 4" to 6" PVC adaptors Might help with clogging Also if some of you may have problems thinking these sweeps may be to restrictive In electrical the 4" PVC sweeps have a much larger radius

[@seekerbee4494]

To think you could have only put out such an excellent video on water catchment was from all your previous missteps. Nice job!

[@lmlowe9100]

Two questions... 1) Why didn't you build your pole barn high enough to park your RVs under? 2a) Why drop down to (under)ground level, the ten foot section at the end of your gutter run? 2b) Why not just run the pipe straight across to the cistern and then over to the black holding tanks? (Ok, technically three questions...lol} Thanks and I enjoy your videos.

[@foamer443]

My thoughts precisely. Adding those four? extra 90's plus the rise on the other side will be a huge resistor in the water flow. Installing a pipe stand either beside or on top of the cistern I think would have been far more practical and probably less work in the end.

[@TripleBRanch]

I thought the same thing. As he was saying “keep it simple”, he’s got that drop, 10’(?) stretch underground and then 6’+ back up to the top of the cistern. Why not just run that span overhead? 🤔

[@thelonghorncow5084]

Thanks for sharing! Most of Arizona have desert like environment but I wonder Why people/you don't live in the Northern part like Flagstaff areas??

[@charolettewilliams8834]

Thx for the video. My question is regarding freezing temperatures. Do you have to insulate pipes to keep from freezing? I am using 55 gal blue barrels and worried about water freezing and cracking my barrels. I havent seen anybody address this.

[@kezzatries]

You should also put a slight down turn on your sheets of iron, this will stop water running back under the panels

[@Mouse2677]

Nothing will seal the gutter when they are 100" long as the expansion and contraction of the Aluminum is going to either take the joints apart or take the screws loose and then they come down.

[@TerraFirmaX]

hmmm, that's a good point.

[@kebertxela941]

Hopefully that will take a couple years(or better a few),might be a good time to start a fund to start saving to replace.

[@ard8785]

Gutters don't need sealants esp. IF they are properly spaced and placed, correctly angled and sloped and well-placed proper supports. Sealants have chemicals which are dangerous to health and unsafe for drinking... I am speaking from experience. Many decades thriving on rain-water for drinking and other house use from my rain-catcher.

[@ncooty]

Great video. Totally agree about Brad Lancaster's books.

[@jacklily999]

Well spoken thoughtful video. Thank you for sharing all these tips. You might have read Geoff Lawton, an expert on water retention for soil.

[@jonijones8123]

Excellent information but I have a problem with having screened catchers a little ways down from my roof and when it rains really hard they overflow. Somewhere I read that there is an optimum distance between the heights of the downspout intake and the height of the intake on the storage tank. Do you know what this distance should be. The distance between the downspout and the top of the tank is now is about 12". thank you

[@RVBadlands2015]

Super good info when I set up my rain water harvesting.

[@KrissBartlett]

Good Job there Jim !!!!

[@timklassen421]

Thanks Jim one of are customers might try water harvesting her well only yields 2 gpm and she has a lot of horses she has a indoor riding arena 200 by 75 feet and may opt to only use halve of it we get a lot more rain here in Alberta thanks for the tips.

[@AnAlaskaHomestead]

Thanks for the good tips. If your only water source is rain water you need to have the ability to catch as much of it as you can while it’s raining. We get pine needle build up in our gutters and in the screen that covers the downspout. We lose some water because of it but luckily for us in SE Alaska, rain is not in short supply😂

[@TomBTerrific]

Good information and tips. Experience is the best teacher.

[@bobbebbington5356]

Jim, if you are anything like me you will do it at least three times before you get it right. The system you have should work well but you will have fine dirt build up in the pipe underground which will be a problem over time. Build a diverter to catch the first flush and this should solve the problem.

[@funkydave100]

how large is your poly tanks and your cistern? and how did you size it because im in a similar situation here in mexico where i have some what similar weather patterens as you do in arizona

[@jeanhawken4482]

Research is the way to go. Your doing a good job

[@jmbpinto73]

Someday in the future, You could expand the roof a bit to cover the RVs, and colect a bit more rain while saving the RVs roof from the scorching sun.

[@bobjoatmon1993]

Well, hopefully eventually they will move into the earth bag house and not be living in the RV at all.

[@joansmith3492]

super good video!! great info. I hope it makes you lots of money.

[@gissie391]

Can you get circle large surface area over the storage tank too.?a step system down slopes just to get a water flowing faster.

[@anthonyromero2605]

Thank you so much for your humerus you and knowledge

[@rojerww]

Thank you for sharing. I may end up missing out on this whole season’s monsoons as I have yet to get a cistern. I’m hoping to buy one or two this week in Santa Fe but I’ll still have to do all my gutters and pipes. I’ll have 360’ of gutter alone - 105’ each side of a pavilion alone and the rest across 10 edges. No way to keep it as simple as yours is currently. I wish. My PDC instructor suggested I try ferro-cement but I’d already seen what you went through. My thoughts are to take 4” PVC pipe and cut in half and hang that with lags and brackets maybe but I do like what you ended up doing. So thanks again for sharing.

[@thebirdsnest9396]

I thought of pvc cut in half also but Jim said he tried it and is now using standard ducts so I guess it didnt work out but he didnt elaborate. Maybe he will share that with us both here.

[@rojerww]

@@thebirdsnest9396 - I’m not certain I saw that episode. If I give it a try - I would use sch. 40 - not thin wall (sch. 20?). Thin wall wouldn’t be any better than the stuff that got perforated by golf ball sized hail. A “neighbor” in the construction business did that. He’s hardly ever home so I’ve not seen what he did.

[@ourselfreliantlife]

I think ferrocement could still work. We just need to refine our technique

[@steve37341]

Couple observations. The code suggests/requires that there be a downspout for every 30 feet of gutter. That was why you had such problems with just two downspouts. Second, there are special seam sealers for gutters. The pro guys use. They dry like epoxy and stay sealed, keeping the gutter sections from pulling apart with heating and cooling of the seasons. A sort of white/yellow color when dried.

[@ChennaiPaiyan739]

Thank you it was helpful to generate my system in the woods 🎉

[@allthingsgrowing]

I'm curious. Can you tell me a little bit about your water treatment over time? Do you have to treat water for algae or anything? Like adding tablets? Etc?

[@dgreen341]

What did you describe the 120 foot roof as when alon applying for a permit.

[@Tunzbig]

Thanks for Taking the time to make this

[@robertvincent4847]

I do not know if you do J but if you don't have a screen over your over flow pipe as you do all your inlets it will allow all things alive small enough to get into your water

[@jmbpinto73]

From where i see, the second overflow pipe is redundant, as it's about the same level as the overflow opening at the other pipe.

[@direbearcoat7551]

Why does the pipe go all the way down into the ground before going back up again?? Why not just let it go straight across before making that turn to the black water tanks?

[@dethmaul]

He said that in the other video. The scaffolding would get in the way.

[@roverdogs_keithwhelchel]

how do you get your water pressure up for house? Pump setup etc

[@MeBeingAble]

i just saw on another channel that uv light can disinfect/sterilise water for drinking. what do you do?

[@bruce-le-smith]

super informative, thank you!!

[@mrearthshome1375]

In regards to your gutter system and getting the water to the main tanks, why not put one pipe from the gutter going downwards to the tank?

[@jimh4167]

Ha I have a request Please You have a large rain roof With a wet drain to your tanks When you get heavy rain.. With your rain gauge You can monitor the flow in the 4inch PVC. If If hits maximum flow the screened tees in your system should over flow And which ones started / where over flowing If you can keep tract of those numbers That could help some of us designing a similar system.. ,(I have read what the books say their flow rate should be But yours is the real world) 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍 Thank You

[@bigglilwayne7050]

Did you paint the pipe black or is it ABS?

[@jellyellis6813]

Love yall

[@SpringRiverHollar]

Hi guys , I'm far from being a expert like some of the people so I'll just follow along and pay attention . Keep it close , keep it simple.....gotcha👍

[@williammack3350]

Thank you for the information guys. I used to do MEP engineering drawings, and the slope is highly crucial to pressure and rate of flow. I'm assuming the angles in the pipes are there to allow easier passage through there. Does it affect the water's ability to travel with ease? Just curious 😀

[@phillaboody]

Have you considered how you are going to clean out the pipes you put underground? and the sand and dirt on the roof will find its way into the lowest point in the pipes and that is underground. You might want to consider putting a 'First Flush' system in as that would be much easier to clean.

[@deborahlush2426]

What about using the gutter guards to keep debris out in the first place?

[@bvisel4558]

Great info, and the editing was awesome

[@kevinwilliams8662]

Enjoyed the show

[@mikeunum]

Very well done but logical things to think about.

[@diasporareturnee]

Thanks for these! Very helpful

[@TheUserid82]

It can be worth it to put in a temporary holding tank at the point of water collection to reduce the amount of big pipes needed then go with a gravity drain or a direct drive solar pump to move the water from the temporary tank to the main tank over a few hours. Say you average 200 gallons off the collection surface per rain so a 500 gallon temporary storage would work and a little 5 gallon per minute direct drive solar pump would move 300 gallons in an hour at peek efficiency so drop that to 3-6 hours with the distance it is pushing water. You can get a 500 foot roll of potable water pex for under $200 so much cheaper then running 500 feet of 3-4 inch PVC pipe even when you include a pump and panel.