A guide to water systems that explores every facet of designing water resources wisely, efficiently, and in concert with nature. -- Richard Freudenberger, Executive Editor, Back Home Magazine<br \><br \>All sorts of alternatives to your standard plastic water tank, accessible by anyone from homeowner to builder to civil engineer. -- Amy Wynn, Builders Booksource<br \><br \>If you run a water system, for a weekend shack or a whole community, you need this book! --Doug Pratt, Real Goods Technical Editor
On average water systems, this book will pay for itself a hundred times over in errors avoided and maintenance savings. --Zane Satterfield, P.E., National Drinking Water Clearinghouse
Practical design solutions, comprehensive illustrations, and plenty of photosa thorough treatment of a topic thats vital to our survival. --Claire Anderson, Home Power Magazine, Mother Earth News
Water Storage describes how to store water for home, farm, and small communities. It will help you design storage for just about any use, including fire safety and emergency, in just about any contexturban, rural, or village.
This book includes:
General principles to help you design, construct, and use any water system
A look at common mistakes and how to avoid them
How the different kinds of storage can serve youtanks, groundwater, and ponds
How to determine the optimum amount of storage for your needs
How to determine the best shape and material for your storage
How to manage aquifers sustainably for inexpensive storage of water in the ground
Plumbing details for inlets, outlets, drains, overflows, access, etc. storage accessories and gadgets such as automatic shut-off valves, remote Level indicators, ozonators, and filters
How to build your own high-quality tank from ferrocement
Original design innovationspublished here for the first timeto improve the quality of stored water, increase water security, make maintenance easier, and reduce environmental impacts
Real-life examples of storage designs for a wide range of contexts
This book offers underlying design principles as well as design specifics. If you run into a situation not specifically covered, there's a good chance you'll be able to use these general principles to figure it out yourself.
Installed water storage typically costs fifty cents to three dollars or more a gallon ($60-200/m3). If you've got this book in your hands, you're probably on the verge of making decisions about hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of storage. On an average water system, this book could pay for itself a hundred times over in savings on construction and maintenance.
Most of the information otherwise available on water storage comes from vendors. Oasis Design doesn't sell water storage hardware, so you don't have to worry about being steered towards stuff you don't need. Rather, we make our living by providing information to help people have a higher quality of life with lower impact.
From the Back Cover
What you need to know to design and build water storage of any kind. Water Storage shows how to make your storage--and your entire water system--perform better. It will help make your access to clean water more secure.
You'll learn what kind of storage will serve you best--tanks, ponds, groundwater; how much storage you need, where to install it, how to properly plumb it, which accessories would benefit your home, farm, or community, and how to sustainably manage your aquifer.
Water Storage includes original design innovations, real-life examples, and complete instructions for constructing tanks from ferrocement.
About the Author
Art Ludwig's day job has beenecological system design since 1980.
He is the author of Create anOasis with Greywater and otherecological design how-to books andarticles.
He lives with his wife and twochildren in a cabin surrounded byfruit trees in the mountains aboveSanta Barbara, California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1: Thinking About Water
To achieve your design goals for a water system, it is helpful to know what your goals are. The first order of business is to consider:
Why Store Water?
Nearly all water systems include some form of storage, most commonly a tank. Storage can be used to:
cover peaks in demand smooth out variations in supply provide water security in case of supply interruptions or disaster save your home from fire meet legal requirements improve water quality provide thermal storage and freeze protection enable a smaller pipe to serve for a distant source
We're going to consider each of these reasons to store water, then look at design principles to help you frame the goals for your project.
Cover Peaks in Demand
The most common function of water storage is to cover short-term use flows that are greater than the flow of the water source. For example, a tiny, one gallon-per-minute spring supplies 1440 gallons a day. This is several times more than most homes use in a day. However, almost every fixture in the home consumes water at a faster rate than 1 gpm while it is turned on. Even a low-flow shower head uses about 1.5 gpm.
By using water stored in a tank, you can supply water to the shower faster than it is flowing from the spring. On completing the shower, the water will be coming in faster than it is going out, and the tank level will rise back up.
If you had a 10,000 gal tank, you could run a 100 gpm fire hosecreating the kind of blast used to bowl over hostile crowdson the stored water from this tiny spring, for an hour and a half! Hopefully the fire would be out by then, as the tank would take several days to refill.
Smooth Out Variations in Supply
In some circumstances, your storage needs will be affected by variations in the water supply. For instance, if the supply is rainwater, you will need enough storage to make it through the intervals between rainfalls. A six-month, rainless dry season requires a heck of a lot more storage than the most common kind of variable supplya well pump that cycles on and off.
If you have a well that taps stored groundwater, a tank will save wear and tear on your pump, because the pump won't have to switch on and off every time you open a tap.
Provide Water Security in Case of Supply Interruptions or Disaster
In many places, the water supply chain from source to tap is long and made of many delicate links. If a cow steps on the supply line, a pump breaks, a wire works loose, the electricity goes out, the city misplaces your check, or there is a natural disaster, your water flow could stop. By locating your storage as few chain links away as possible from your use point, a large measure of security is added...
----------- Short on Water By 2025 at least 3.5 billion peopleabout half the world's populationwill live in areas without enough water for agriculture, industry, and human needs... Worldwide, water quality conditions appear to have degraded in almost all regions with intensive agriculture and in large urban and industrial areas. World Resources Institute, October 2000 -----------
