It is possible to use rainwater for all your water needs with suitable treatment. But for most people the cost outweighs the savings in using metered water. The following uses require no treatment at all in most cases.

• Flushing toilets.
• Watering the garden
• Washing the car
• Filling up swimming pools (providing the pool water will be treated).

The following uses may require some additional filtering

• Supplying a washing machine
• Bathing

It depends on a number of factors, but it is possible to get a good idea from the following

• Flushing toilets typically uses 30% to 40% of all domestic water.
• A garden hose will use typically 2 gallons a minute.
• Bathing accounts for typically 15% of domestic water.

To find out exactly how much water is used by flushing toilets, the family members could keep a tally by marking a piece of paper for a week each time they flush. Most modern toilets use aproximatly 8 litres for a full flush

There is the initial outlay, but it is possible to keep costs down by starting small and building up the system over time. The typical cost for a basic system is about £100.00 and for a complete 2000 litre system, around £350

The main problem and disadvantage is the space the water tanks take up. But it is possible to site them almost anywhere

It will take about a weekend's worth of work to put in most systems but it does not have to be done as one block of work.

It is of course possible to put together a system with out the manual (as I did). You can benefit from my experience, I bought parts that did not work as I expected or proved to be unsuitable. I also spent a long time working out problems, the advice given elsewhere is not always clear, full or accurate . I hope the manual will help you to build a robust money saving system.

Commercial systems use buried tanks as this is a good way of providing storage with out losing space. The cost of the special tanks and the excavation work required puts the price up. They are generally fully automatic and the whole system is installed for you. You obviously pay for this convenience.

The main drawback with commercial systems is the cost. It can take 7 to 10 years to pay back the initial outlay. For most people this is not satisfactory.

Yes, you are. There are regulations governing contamination of mains water. The most important feature of any rainwater harvesting system is that it must not be possible under any circumstances for the rain water to contaminate mains water. This means you can not bring the rain water and mains water together by using two taps to provide an easy change over, as this would cause contamination if both taps were open together.

Compliance with this regulation is best achieved by using an air gap approach. This is fully explained in the manual.

Apart from the financial cost of metered water there is also an environmental cost. This is due to the amount of energy required to pump and process water to a high standard so that it can be used for drinking. Thus to use this water to flush our toilets is a waste.

By capturing and storing rain locally and using it for toilet flushing, garden watering etc we help to conserve the resources that would have been required to provide the water.

It is also possible to use recycled components for a major part of the system by building a system yourself. It is also possible to source parts locally to reduce the transport impact.