sgt_woulds

I used to install solar panels. Back in the year 2000 we were one of only 3 installation companies in the country and our customers were an eclectic mix of uber greenies, (uber rich too - the average install cost for a 3kwp system was over £20k!) so we got to visit some very 'interesting' people. I don't have any pictures from the time as I lost my old hard drive a while ago, but I have seen similar things done commercially now. I knew at least 7 people with systems like this, and visited many times over the years - we used to have great chats about what worked and what didn't. Everyone who started with a small system like this eventually got a larger rainwater storage butt in addition, but their Heath Robinson creations kept working well. (One lovely lady ended up with 40-odd interlinked water butts extending from her front drive to her back garden and another had dozens of fire extinguishers welded together and hung in a ring around his eaves - he was a metal artist and it looked a lot better than it sounds!) The more ordinary systems looked very much like this: Gravity Fed Rainwater Harvesting System For Flushing Toilets and other – Freeflush Water Management Ltd.

You only need about 500mm head to feed a toilet cistern (with any flow restrictors removed) so a smaller tank can fit just below the eaves without issue. A 100 litre tank would provide about 20 flushes on a low-flush toilet. My preference would be to have this tank internally for maintenance, although I have been to customers' houses where this has been done externally as DIY and it works well, if a bit ugly. I agree a large underground tank is best, but not practical for all. Either option would be easy to design-in with a new build if stipulated, and better than introducing points of failure into roofs that are already designed to be as quick and cheap to build as possible with unskilled labour. Impossible to fix the mass builder quality issues, but we can fiddle around the edges to get minor environmental improvements perhaps. Given the number of hosepipe bans in the last few years - and weather predictions for the next 50 years - it is madness that this is not already mandated.

Then it wouldn't work in a house either?

'It wouldn’t work in a bungalow though' Why? The tank would be above the toilet so can work with gravity feed the same as a 2 storey house. A bungalow would probably have a larger surface area to gather the water per occupant than a house too. P.s. which company is this? how do they deal with filtration and maintenance when tucked in a hard-to-reach area?