Rainwater Harvesting and other plumbing considerations

For awhile, I've been interested in the idea of harvesting rainwater from the roof to use for potable and non-potable water needs in the house.  I first heard of it in Bellingham, WA, at a water conservation expo, and the idea has fascinated me ever since.

Here in Montgomery County, MD, they are pretty big on stormwater management (SWM).  The soil on our lot (indeed, in most of Poolesville) does not infiltrate very well, if at all, so most SWM concepts are out the window.  However, rainwater harvesting is one of the options the County allows for meeting SWM requirements.

My current plan is to use six 1,700 gallon tanks buried in the ground near the house to collect the rainwater.  They look like the picture below.  The green thing on top is a childproof manway.

We have town water available, but the quality, frankly, isn't all that great (it's extremely hard) and water main breaks are a frequent occurrence.  I would still connect the town water to our system, downstream of purification devices.  I drew up a schematic, below.  Hopefully you can click this link here to see it full size.

Aside from the tanks and getting the rainwater to the tanks, it's not much different than having a well.  We'll see if the County goes for the non-potable users...a read of WSSC standards indicates only toilet flushing would be eligible for that; lawn sprinklers and outside hose bibs have to be potable, which is ridiculous in my view.  If that's the case, then we'll just make it all potable and simplify it.

I'm also going to put in hot water recirculation.  There will be 3 main trunk lines for hot water serving the 3 main areas that have bathrooms and the kitchen.  Each trunk line will be part of a loop that comes back to the water heater where there will be a pump.  Each loop will have a motorized valve on the return leg.  I'll put motion sensors in each bathroom and in the kitchen, so any time it detects motion and the temperature in the loop is below X degrees F, the valve on that loop's return leg opens and the pump kicks on for a short time period (like 20 seconds or so).  If I size the pump and trunk lines correctly, it should only take 7 - 10 seconds for the cooled water in the trunk line to get flushed with hot water.

Shoe spice racks

One thing we've wanted in a house for a very long time is a kick ass mudroom.  SWMBO is also rightfully big on shoe storage.  We always end up with shoes everywhere in the entryway.  Partly because we've never had a mudroom, partly because we (including I, I will admit) have a lot of shoes, and definitely because we've never had proper shoe storage.  

Enter the shoe spice rack.

If you've ever perused pictures on kitchen design, you've probably seen these pull out pantry deals that are tall, narrow cabinets that slide out and have shelves for spice or food storage.  See an example below.

Our intent is to do the same thing, but for shoes and in the mudroom.  I think we have the space to put four of these things in the mudroom, floor to ceiling, one for each of us.  No excuses for leaving shoes strewn about.  Here's a picture of one somebody implemented.

Getting started

So you may have gotten an invite from Google to this blog.  I'm just fiddling with the idea of documenting the potential construction of our house, but wanted to keep it private and thought I'd try that function.  I didn't realize Google was going to send email invites.

Just to give you something to look at, here is a front, rear, and frame pic of the house design we are going for.  There is quite the possibility that we won't end up with this house, but it's where we're starting.  Might as well start with what we want and cut back from there, right?

So we're going to try to build a timber frame house.  The frame you see in the upper right would be completely exposed on the inside.  Big timbers, 8 - 10" thick.  There are some slight modifications that the architect is working on; for one thing, it's the Eckert Highfill House, not just Highfill.  But this is pretty close to how the design should end up.