The Free Rainwater Harvesting Site Analysis Tool

 


When Doug Pushard founded HarvestH2o.com over fifteen years ago, he had a vision and a hope.

Doug wanted to create a virtual community of individuals, families, communities and business who would share sustainable water practices. He also hoped that the website would empower people to actually apply these practices in their everyday lives. Toward that end, he has published several “do it yourself” tools and rules of thumb over the years.

Now he is adding an important and exciting new tool to the HarvestH2o.com website – the first rainwater harvesting site analysis tool. It is a free tool that is available to all who visit the website.

“Water is the precious common denominator that we all share,” Doug said during an interview with the HarvestH2o Newsletter at his office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “And many individuals and builders want to harvest rainwater from their roofs and lots but do not know where to start the process. The HarvestH2o Site Analyzer provides valuable information that previously would have required hours of work.”

The HarvestH2o Site Analyzer provides a wealth of valuable information pertaining to how much rain it is possible to harvest as well as other critical information required to properly design a rainwater catchment system for a specific home site.

This analysis includes:
  • Amount of rain in gallons that can be collected off the roof.
  • The evapotranspiration rate for the area that is used in calculating how much irrigation and water should used on the property.
  • The monthly rainfall for the property.
  • The monthly high and low temperatures for the area .
  • The peak storm event rainfall that should be used when calculating tank size, pipe sizes, and drain sizes.
“All this information is available somewhere on the worldwide web, but it is not always obvious where to look,” Doug said.  “This is all information I use in my designs to make sure they are properly sized and designed.  Now it is available to everyone.”

The HarvestH2o Site Analyzer can be accessed at: http://www.harvesth2o.com/Site-Analyzer.shtml.

This first version covers all of the United States.  All that is required is that the user fill in some information relating to the site where the system will be installed and the tool then generates the HarvesH2o Site Analyzer report.

The HarvestH2o.com website has hundreds of useful articles on rainwater collection, greywater, stormwater, and water conservation.  Over the last 15 years it has become one of the world’s leading sites for all types of rainwater collection and water reuse.