Harvesting H2o (6 page)

You need to cut some holes and install some pipes or tubes. PVC pipe is great, but hose or rubber tubing also works. Whatever method you use, it must be waterproof and sealed. If only using one barrel, all you need is an overflow output at the top and a flow valve at the bottom (other than the screened intake opening on the top). Otherwise, install an overflow line near the top of the first barrel into the second, and repeat until the last barrel in line, where the overflow output simply spills unto the ground. Put flow valves at the bottom of each barrel. During a heavy rainstorm, you will fill all the barrels in your line and overflow will spill from the last vessel. A lighter rain may fill only the first barrel or two. Use the water sequentially, draining it from the flow valve of the last barrel in line which still contains water.

An alternative method would be to put the overflow lines at the bottom of each barrel (except the last). This setup works better if the barrels are on sloping ground, with the last one in line being at the lowest point. All the barrels will always have about the same amount of water in them. Because the system is somewhat gravity-fed, you only need to install a flow valve on the last barrel. In this arrangement, you need overflow valves installed at the tops of each barrel.

Install pipe fittings on your flow valves that you can hook a hose up to. What a great way to water your garden.

Want to collect even more rain water? Get a couple of children’s inflatable swimming pools. A good rainstorm will put maybe 50 gallons of water into each of these, and it will be much less contaminated than the roof runoff water.

If you don’t wish to build additional structures just to collect rainwater, but do want the ability of collecting more, you can fashion temporary structures using plastic tarps. Even a small 12 by 12 foot tarp may collect enough water in a rainstorm to overflow a 110-gallon barrel. The tarp should be well supported on the sides and have its low spot in the center, where a hole in it has been cut, and the collection vessel placed underneath. Try to position the tarp holders securely where the wind from the storm will not be able to disrupt them.

In an emergency situation, clean bed sheets can be hung from clothes lines and then rung out into a stopped up kitchen sink after the storm passes. This will probably not yield more than a couple of gallons, but the water should be drinkable as-is.

Other Sources of Water in the Wild

This section mainly applies to survival situations, but is good information to keep on hand. If you are an off-grid homesteader, you can probably drill a well or two and collect rainwater from your roof, and never have to worry about your water supply needs beyond that. The one possible exception to this lies in the harvesting of spring water, so we will start there. I have read the accounts of some homesteaders who depend on springs entirely for their supply of drinking water. While I don’t think this is really all that wise, and would recommend drilling and rainwater collection instead, it does prove that it can be done.

If you have a spring creek running through your land (or nearby in the wild) that is a wonderful thing. The flow can dry up during hot summer months, however. When that happens, you may be able to pick it up again by digging down several feet at the lowest point of the dry creek bed. Otherwise, you will need to trace the spring to the source, up in the nearby hills most likely. Just follow the creek bed up. At some point you will probably find the bed of the creek getting muddy, and beyond that a trickle still running above ground. Keep going. At that point, you may as well to go all the way to the source, known as the head of the spring, where it first comes out of the ground. Water collected from the head of a spring is usually safe to drink without treatment, but get it tested first by bringing a sample to your county’s local water service.

If you live in a hilly or mountainous area, you can probably find springheads year-round by tracing running creeks up into the highland. To find a running creek, start in the very lowlands. Water naturally seeks the lowest point by gravity. So, go down into the lowest valley, find a running stream or creek, and follow it up into the hills and mountains until you come to the source. One bit of warning: Don’t do this immediately after a rain, because there will be many temporary springheads which will vanish in a day or two.

It should also be noted that the presence of springheads indicate a low water table, so very shallow wells can be dug nearby using only a post-hole auger.

As you are walking through the woods, you will likely discover other sources of water. You probably already know that stagnant water is highly contaminated, but in reality all surface water is contaminated to some degree. The safest water you will find in the wild, other than directly capturing rain in a sanitized vessel, is at the head of a spring. The next safest source would be very fast-moving water over rocks, such as from creeks and streams at higher elevations. I wouldn’t drink that without treating it first, however.

Even stagnant water from the woods can, of course, be distilled or filtered through a reverse osmosis system (such as a marine water maker) to create drinking water. Therefore, ponds and wildlife watering holes can become a usable source of wild water. Just be aware that such water is completely undrinkable and will probably make you very sick if consumed without properly treating it first.

After a rainstorm, water can be found holding in very small ponds at the tops of boulders, or in the depressions in rocky outcrops. Rainwater trapped in rock depressions is a cleaner source than a lake or a natural pond in the ground, but it still needs to be treated because it will contain insects and bird waste. If you have areas of rock outcrops nearby, they can be a good source of water after it rains.

Snow and ice can be a source of water, but the yield is quite low. It must be collected and hauled back to your home and placed in a melting vessel, such as a stopped up sink or a bucket next to your fireplace. Boil it before consuming it. You have heard the expression
don’t eat the yellow snow
, right? You actually shouldn’t eat
any
snow. It is unsafe and is not a source of hydration; in fact, consuming snow can cause dehydration. Melt it and boil it first.

In desperate situations, morning dew can be harvested. The yield is pitifully low, but potentially life-saving. You’ll need towels (or a good absorbent shammy) and lots of plant life in the immediate area. Wipe the dew off the grass and plant leaves, then ring out the towels into a sanitized container. Make sure the plants you wipe the dew from are not poisonous! You could also put out a large plastic sheet at night and harvest the dew from that first thing in the morning. If the dew is heavy, you could hold the corners of the plastic tarp up and have the dew all run down into the middle and collect there. You might get a couple shot-glasses worth of water that way from a good-sized tarp

Local plant life may provide additional methods of producing small quantities of water. If there are fruit trees around, you can become hydrated by simply eating the fruit – this includes the fruits of the prickly pear and barrel cactus which grow in the wild. That is, by the way, the best way to get water from a cactus by far. The old legend of finding life-saving water in a cactus is mostly only true in cartoons. The only types of cactus which are safe for retrieving water from are the barrel and prickly pear cactus, and they both produce edible (even tasty!) fruit. If these types of cactus are around, just find some that have fruit and eat it. If there is no fruit on them, you can get water from a barrel cactus by scraping out the inside flesh and pressing it, or chewing it to suck the water out then spitting out the flesh. You may need a machete to cut the top of the cactus off first. The same can be done with a prickly pear cactus if you can positively identify the species – but, and this is a big but, prickly pear cactus is very similar in appearance to other forms of cactus which are toxic. The one sure way to identify the species is by the fruit, and if there is fruit, you should just eat that instead, as you will get more fluid from it than from the cactus flesh.

Certain plants have conical leaves or flowers that will capture rainwater in small quantities. Make sure you know the plant is not poisonous before collecting such water.

Finally, plants with thick green fleshy leaves hold water that can be forced to condensate out of it. To accomplish this, you need to create a distilling condition, which is best done in the heat of the day. A pit can be dug in which a bucket is set into, surrounded by thick green fleshy leaf clippings. Stretch a plastic tarp over the pit and seal it the best you can with rocks. The water from within the leaves will evaporate as the day gets hot and collect on the inside of the tarp, then eventually drip down into the bucket. A simpler method of forcing plants to condensate is to just cover them in a plastic trash bag and close the bag around it as tight as you can; there should be a little water gathered in it the bag after the hottest part of the day.

Practical Water Storage Solutions

After securing the renewable resources for your water supply needs, and then arriving at the method of treatment for your drinking water, the next natural step to consider is the storage of your potable water. This is not a huge issue if you have a deep well with a backup pumping solution in place. In that case, you know you can always draw good water from your well, and it’s why having a professionally-drilled well is a worthwhile long-term investment. The only thing that could go wrong is an earthquake which destroys your well or moves the water table away, which is a legitimate concern. For that reason, it’s a good idea to keep equipment on hand for rainwater collection and shallow well drilling.

Most preppers and homesteaders are interested in storing up an emergency supply of potable water. There is an interesting assortment of water storage containers being sold to this market, but you may be more prone to a do-it-yourself type approach. Either way, you need sanitary, food-grade containers. They fall into four general categories: tanks, barrels, buckets, and jugs.

Tanks

A tank would be anything bigger than you are. You can get them in metal or plastic up to 250 gallons in capacity. Plastic ones have a much shorter shelf life. The Poly-Mart brand makes quality plastic tanks out of polyethylene with a five-year warranty, which is about the longest warranty you will find on this type of product. Some of them are thick enough to ward off freezing temperatures. If stored indoors away from sunlight in a pest-controlled environment, I would expect the actual shelf-life to be at least 2-3 times the warranty. One nice thing about the plastic tanks is they typically hold significantly more water than a similar-sized metal tank. They are also much lighter and easier to move.

The HTP brand of water storage tanks are made from stainless steel and are billed as an add-on to your water heater system. Now we are talking my language. They basically double your hot-water capacity, and boast a heat-loss rate of less than 1 degree Fahrenheit per hour. The problem is that your plumbing draws the water from this extra tank instead of the hot water heater directly, if used as intended. What I would do is simply hook it up to the hot water heater to fill it, then seal it up and reconnect the hot water heater to the plumbing as normal. That would be a very convenient way to fill an extra 45-gallon water storage container. And who says you can only have one? I envision a series of them all rigged together just like a series of rain barrels.

Of course, hot water heaters themselves are good storage tanks all by themselves. Picture a line of five hot water heaters all piped together in a single line. The first one is heated in the normal manner. So is the last. The three in the middle are not. Hot water is taken into your plumbing from the last tank. Get the idea here? The great thing about hot water heaters is they sanitize incoming water (it does need to be clear water on the intake, so if it is fed from a shallow well, I would run it through an inline filter of some kind). The water is drawn through all five tanks and reheated in the last one before being delivered to your sinks and faucets. The fourth tank, second to last in line, will always hold room-temperature, sanitized water. You could use the HTP storage tanks as the three in the middle if you like. In an emergency, you have 200+ gallons of good, freshly sanitized water in a setup like this – but of course, you need room for all the tanks in your plumbing scheme.

Barrels

Water storage barrels are just smaller tanks, typically holding 15-75 gallons each. They are often referred to as drums. All the units I could find for sale in this size range were plastic (polyethylene). This seems like the least convenient way to go if you ask me, as barrels are big enough to be heavy and difficult to move, but must be filled by hand. The coolest barrel setup I have seen was a set of 8 of them being sold by a large warehouse discount store, 55 gallons each. They include bungs, bung wrenches, water pumps, siphon hoses, and water treatment tablets. The brand name is Shelf-Reliance. Don’t use the water treatment tablets, however – purify the water you store first in your own chosen manner and just fill the containers with it. This system stores 440 gallons of water.

Buckets

Buckets are smaller than barrels, but there is some crossover here. Let’s call buckets containers that hold 3 to 20 gallons. The best source for finding these is homebrew supply stores. Home brewers use food-grade plastic buckets for fermenting their beer in. The most popular size by far is 5-gallons, but you can get them up to 20 gallons in size. The buckets come with airtight lids. You can get both the buckets and the lids with or without holes drilled in them. For water storage, you will want lids with no holes, but you may want the hole at the bottom of the side of the bucket. It can be sealed with a rubber stopper, or you can install the plastic spigot that the brewers use. The spigot is nice when it comes time to dispense the water, but it adds the risk of losing the water through a leak (or the spigot getting opened by the bucket being bumped into something) over long-term storage.