What else do I need with my tank?

Posted by Callum Vallance-Poole, on March 28, 2022.

With your tank, you will need various other parts to help everything run smoothly. Filters, guards, pipes and extension rings are all examples of other equipment you may need to purchase depending on what your rainwater harvesting system will be used for. 

What Is A Rainwater Harvesting System?

Rainwater harvesting systems come in a variety of shapes and sizes but all serve the same purpose. Regardless of their size, it is designed to capture rainwater that can then be put to functional use around your home or space.

Rainwater is classed as non-potable water (which is not of good enough quality to drink) and can be repurposed for activities such as car washing, washing clothes, flushing toilets and watering your veg garden. 

The benefits of installing a rainwater harvesting system include being able to reduce overall water consumption by as much as 50%, which will have a positive effect on the local environment. 

Benefits Of Rainwater Harvesting

  • Energy-saving – reduce the amount of mains water that has to be treated and pumped to your house.
  • Reduced risk of water shortage – alleviate the pressure on the mains supply during summer months.
  • Reduced risk of flooding – hold stormwater run-off that would otherwise go directly into the drains.
  • An excellent water source for your garden – free of chemicals such as fluoride and chlorine that are used to treat mains water.
  • Better for your laundry – rainwater is “soft” water, making it ideal for laundry as it can eliminate the need for conditioners.

How Does A Rainwater Harvesting System Work?

It’s not just commercial and industrial organisations that can capture rainwater for reuse. There are also easy-to-use and install options for domestic properties, like our GRAF rainwater harvesting system.

This simple system captures rainwater at roof level and safely directs it into an underground harvesting tank through the downpipes. Using the integrated filter, the water is processed and moves through the distilling well into the tank.

A floating suction hose is used to draw the water from just below the surface – where it is at its cleanest – and finally directed into the property and used until the tank is empty. 

There are four main components to the system:

  • Underground tank
  • Tank cover  
  • Filter package
  • Pump package

What Components Does My Rainwater Harvesting System Need To Include?

Very simple and low-cost solutions are all that are needed to water gardens. If you have a large garden requiring a lot of water or want to use rainwater in your house too, we recommend an underground system (e.g. Carat house and garden package). You should always fit a filter upstream of the tank.

To extract water from the tank you will need a pump, installed either in the garden or, if fitted with an automatic start-stop function, in the tank. Systems for use in the house need domestic waterworks, which supply consumers with rainwater via a second supply network. If the tank is empty, the domestic waterworks automatically supply mains water to the supply network. We would recommend using a reversible flow fine filter for the best water quality.

What Else Do I Need?

Alongside the tank, you’ll need various accessories to filter the water and extract it from the underground tank. When rainwater enters the tank, we generally filter the rainwater on entry. This is to ensure the cleanliness of the water in the ground tank. On extraction from the tank, via a pump, this is also filtered here too, to ensure the water being fed to the outlet point is the best that it can be.

There are various technical packages that we can incorporate for the pump supply. More commonly, you would see a submersible pump in an underground tank, which would pump water on demand to the outlet points or appliance, when demand is created.

Premium systems would incorporate a wall-mounted solution, where you would have a mains water cistern located alongside the pump. The mains water backup system helps maximize the volume of water in the underground tank for rainwater, whereas other systems may use a mains water top-up device to fill the underground tank up in long periods without rainfall.

We can also provide extension sleeves or rings to help achieve finished cover levels. Depending on the level of the underground drainage coming into the tank, the tank may become very deep in the ground. The standard supply with the tank offers a varying invert range via the telescopic lid. If this doesn’t prove to be sufficient enough to meet the incoming drainage, an extension ring can be implemented to help meet these levels.

There are various accessories we can offer to extract water from the in-ground tank. These come in the form of external hose connection points. These can be discreetly hidden in an underground cover or they could be more extravagant like an external tap pillar, where water can be extracted to a point further away in the garden, to fill up a watering can, et cetera

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