Rainwater Harvesting Roofs

There are some important factors about the roof to consider when planning for a rwh system.

Rainwater harvesting roofs.

The good news is most roofing materials are suitable for rainwater harvesting. In fact it is quite common to harvest water from green roofs in germany and switzerland. However there are two issues. There s just a short list of rooftop surfaces that rainwater harvesters should avoid.

Calculating your roof surface area. Roof material the material of the roof is not as important as contaminants that may be on the roof. For single storey homes your roof surface area will often be greater than your floor area unless you have a flat roof. Dew and fog can also be collected with nets or other tools.

Doesn t that sound like a lot of water that you could harvest and use for free. Rainwater harvesting is collecting the run off from a structure or other impervious surface in order to store it for later use. For the majority of rainwater collection a roof acts as the primary catchment area. While metal roofing or plastic sheeting e g.

Around 600 gallons of rainwater can be harvested from about one inch of rain if it falls from a thousand square foot roof. That is why my husband and i began harvesting our rainwater. Rainwater harvesting furthermore it is possible utilise rainwater harvestingof a green roof contrary to claims from other industries. Rainwater harvesting or rainwater collection is the process of collecting the run off water from a structure in order to store it for later use.

Well we thought so too. The rain will collect in gutters that channel the water into downspouts and then into some sort of storage vessel. Ceramic ceramic roofing works with rainwater harvesting. Rainwater harvesting rwh is the collection and storage of rain rather than allowing it to run off.

Cement cement roofs can be used with rainwater harvesting. For landscape purposes the common asphalt shingle will work fine. Rubber rubber roofing works with rainwater harvesting. These tend to leach contaminants and retain mold and algae which make it impossible to use for whole house potable use.

Wood cedar shake shingles these can be used for rainwater harvesting systems that are for irrigation use only. Greenhouse roof has the highest collection efficiency most surfaces are a ok. For the vast majority of tank based rainwater harvesting systems the catchment area is the roof surface. Rainwater is collected from a roof like surface and redirected to a tank cistern deep pit well shaft or borehole aquifer or a reservoir with percolation.

As your roof surface is the catchment area for harvesting rainwater it s important to know how large or small it is so you can calculate how much rainwater you can expect to harvest.