Modern Potable Rainwater Harvesting, 2nd Edition

Book excerpt: Modern Potable Rainwater Harvesting 2nd Edition is a major expansion and rewrite of the first edition by the same title. This book shows how to design, build, and maintain a rainwater system that consistently and reliably provides clean drinkable water to your whole house. This water is orders of magnitude cleaner than typical public water supply or well water simply due to the fact that source water is distilled water from the sky rather than ground water polluted with all kinds of toxins. Rather than trying to purify polluted water at high mass flow rates demanded of entire cities, a rainwater harvester maintains distilled water purity with low continuous flow through inexpensive filters and disinfection systems. This book discusses advanced oxidation processes (AOP), disinfection, biofilm control, filtration, plumbing and pumps, electronic controls, water testing, and system management using a spreadsheet. System sizing using a spreadsheet and local average rainfall data found on the Internet is discussed. How to survive droughts is discussed. How to build a low-cost high flow rate prefilter and motor-driven first-flush valve is taught. This valve is controlled by an Arduino microcontroller that receives inputs from a digital rain gauge, water level sensors, and user selection of first flush amount. Instructions are provided for building capacitive tank level sensors. Various types of digital rain gauges are discussed, including tipping bucket rain gauges (TBR), capacitive sensor gauges, and acoustic resonance gauges. The section on TBR gauges shows how to build a constant drip rate calibrator for TBR gauges with common plumbing hardware. Three different types of common capacitive gauges are discussed. Temperature compensation of the variation of dielectric constant with temperature or speed of sound in air is discussed, using both hardware and software. Three essential electronics controls are discussed including; a transfer pump controller, an Arduino-based pressure pump runtime monitor, and an Arduino-based first flush valve controller. C-code Arduino sketches are provided. Wireless control of the rainwater system is discussed, using a Raspberry Pi computer interfaced with the Arduino microcontroller through Xbee transceivers. Python source code for a GUI interface running on a Raspberry Pi is provided. Mathematical equations are necessarily provided for systems design, but a reader comfortable with algebra and trigonometry, or first-year calculus should have no trouble with the math. This book contains a vast amount of technical details on rainwater harvesting not found in any other book. Although primarily geared toward the self-taught DIY person, this book can be used in the classroom to teach potable water professionals.