OT Saving water in a downpour

I'm getting a bit fed up with the authorities telling us that rain in summer is no real help for our struggling(?) water supply industry. (Due to evaporation, transpiration from trees etc.)

A few days ago we had what I guess was a cloudburst, and I'd estimate that the rainfall rate maximum was of the order of 6in/hour. (This is based on the observation that a wheelbarrow in the garden which was 1/2 full before the storm was full to the top and overflowing after around 10-15 minutes of torrential downpour, and I've tried to take the shape into account. (At the same time my gutters were discharging huge quantities of water where their walls were slightly lower than elsewhere. Very dramatic, caught it all on video.)

So, seeing all this water go to waste via my garden and presumably, the local River Great Ouse, I started thinking about how we could improve the storage of water in these downpours and flash floods. In domestic gardens, we could increase the number of water-butts dramatically and arrange that when one is full, others are then filled. In Milton Keynes we have a number of balancing lakes designed not to store water for local usage (other than as nature reserves, boating lakes), but primarily to reduce flooding down stream of Milton Keynes.

I think the point I'm trying to make is that simply letting summer flood water flow un-impeded into the river system is wasting a huge resource, but apart from lots of water butts, I can't think of any better way of storing it. Is there more that could be done by increasing the number of underground resevoirs?

Any comments? Normally plenty of experts here!

Reply to
Malcolm Stewart
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"Malcolm Stewart" wrote in message news:44ce8749$0$10016$ snipped-for-privacy@free.teranews.com...

Do a Google on rainwater harvesting. A large tank in the garden. In the BeNeLux countries these are standard in new homes. They can be easily retrofitted. Making them standard here would be of no great use, as we have ample rain in the UK, we can afford to waste water, with only 12 % having water meters.

All they need is a water grid to pump from water surplus areas to waterless. The good point is that surplus areas tend to be soft water while the others hard, so the water would be diluted making it softer.

Fresh water filling rivers is a good thing. It promotes wild life and maintains the rivers banks.

Reply to
Doctor Drivel

You aught to post this bit on UK.sci.weather to get some expert help to interpret that fal rate as it is an astonishingly high number but then there was a flood in Wiltshire at about that date.

The video would help.

Whatever the situation, the collection was for a very small area. Spread out over your location it wouldn't be very much -in 10 square miles,say if the cloudburst was over a 1/2 mile section of it.

Rooftops and concreted paths, roads and pavements catch a great deal of water that goes straight back into the rivers with no time to drain into the ground.

Farmers went mad after WW II cutting down trees ripping out hedges, filling in ditches and planting drain pipes. There was once a great deal of uncultivated marshland and cultivated water meadow in Britain. All put to the pough these days; so the pressure is increased on the land to dry it out either in use, in the drains or both.

Large spread-out connurbations that Britain favours these days rather than cramming everyone into towers, increases the flow rate. Think what

1/2 an inch of water on your roof measures. There are tables online to work it out.

Look at the ratio of hard standing vss greenery in your area and multiply it by the number of towns in a road atlas or something and you get the picture.

If every home built had a cistern dug that would allow the collection of all water that fell on it to sink into the land instead of forcing it through to rivers, the problems would change from floodings to landslips.

The problem began in Victorian times when rivers and streams were annexed for sewers. Exacerbated in WW I with the deadly need for change in farming that brought. Then as the indusrtialisation took over, urban sprawl started to fill the valleys up from historic ancient towns that could not cope with the influx of effluent caused.

So now they have to divert rivers and enchain them and build flood barriers and the like. And all the while underground resevoirs are emptying. What you are enthusing about is an hi-tech answer and that means yet more money.

The alternative is buld more resevoirs. But the water companies are in the hands of asset strippers so you can't see them investing in resevoirs any time soon can you.

What you can do is: move, build to cope or grin and bear it. In biblical times householders -if rich enough, did build cisterns and lined them to store water through their summers. (Apparently such artifacts still exist in the Sahel where they were used to water stock and are still usable if repaired.) But life was simpler then and a public bath was a dip in a local river like everyone else.

We live in an hi-tech democracy, so whater the majority wants -no matter how unreasonable, the majority might get. So beware what you wish for. Some damned fool will press for it hard enough to get a vote for it.

But you know yourself from the history of the area what hi-tech has done over a number of centuries:

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Reply to
Weatherlawyer

A uri is not the best place to add an ellipsis. Try

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de Lacey

Reply to
Douglas de Lacey

Spread out? Where? Only 7.5% of the land is settled.

What picture is that?

Where is this urban sprawl? I know of none as only 7,5% of the land is settled and that includes greenspaces, which leaves about 2.5% paved.

The impact of people directly on the land is miniscule. Agriculture is the biggest influence by a million miles.

That they are.

Nope. I can see them giving out dividends though.

Reply to
Doctor Drivel

Consider your average sized bit of decking/patio.

If this was constructed so that you excavate 0.5m down, and put a membrane down, with pillars to hold up the decking/patio above, another membrane, then the patio/decking/... So you've essentially got a huge sealed plastic bag under the patio/decking. A 3m*3m*0.5m tank = 4500l.

Ideally you'd probably like to size this so that it fills completely with whatever spare water you've got in the wetter months, for use in the drier.

Reply to
Ian Stirling

every home should have a decent sized tank full of rainwater located under the roof downpipe to be available as a reserve in times of drought. Especially if you dont live near a river or lake It could be used in times of necessity by the bucket full for toilets, kitchen dishes etc. People should not depend totally on the utilities feeding them with water gas electricity etc etc.

Reply to
noelogara

No need enough water is in he UK. It needs a water grid, that's all. Water is NOT a precious resource in the UK. We have so much we can afford waste some and its doesn't matter.

Reply to
Doctor Drivel

Just put a large tank down there, they come in sections, and cover with decking.

Reply to
Doctor Drivel

Thanks for all the ideas. If only I could get a digger into my rear garden!

Seriously, I've felt for a long time that we need more reservoirs so as to stop these increasingly hysterical calls to save water; and that during dry summers, existing reservoirs should be cleared of silt so as to return their capacity to something like what it was when built. (The local papers have now carried photos of central Milton Keynes during the cloudburst which I mentioned, and I wasn't alone in getting a very high rate of rainfall.)

Reply to
Malcolm Stewart

At the risk of capsising yet another potentially useful thread: that's what they used to say about gas, oil, the rain forests. Oh, and what about the energy needed for its purification and transport?

Douglas de Lacey

Reply to
Douglas de Lacey

The staff at the John Lewis store probably thought they were being reverse flushed. (Storm drains running below the sales floors burst their covers.)

Reply to
Malcolm Stewart

Was it flushed away at all?

Reply to
Andy Hall

Meanwhile, staff in the S*n*f*o showroom didn't notice anything unusual.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

Some of the transportation cost could be offset by using a series of pumped storage schemes similar to Dinorwic. Pump it up the hill at night on E7 and let it continue its journey during the day, generating hydro power as it goes.

As the man said, there is no shortage of water in the UK, just a lack of imagination and investment.

MBQ

Reply to
manatbandq

"Malcolm Stewart" wrote in message news:44d22ec7$0$5348$ snipped-for-privacy@free.teranews.com...

What about the front?

Reply to
Doctor Drivel

That's where I planted some "miniature" conifers some 22 years ago. One so-called miniature is an abies nordmannniana, and then there's the taller thin one, still not positively identified, grown from a cone collected at Plas Newydd.in Anglesey in 1983. Perhaps after some major tree culling...

Reply to
Malcolm Stewart

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