from the ground up - The Tyee

So Much Rain! Why Not Put It To Work?Exasperated that our wet winters turn into water-scarce summers? Get yourown 1000-gallon rain barrel.By Christopher PollonArticle first published on March 24, 2011 by TheTyee.ca.DANGER: Drinking this toilet water could be hazardousto your health.That’s the message required above every rainwaterflushingtoilet installed at Vancouver’s Olympic Village,where water is collected from the roof, stored ina giant holding tank, and pumped as needed for eachflush.The sign is necessary, because bringing rain indoorsbreaches a fundamental orthodoxy of the North Americanplumbing world: behind the walls, pipes carryingpotable municipal water mingle with those carryingpotentially unsanitary rain. On paper, building codesfor Vancouver and elsewhere in B.C. do not currentlyallow the practice of indoor rain water plumbing. Ina post-Walkerton regulatory environment, there isimmense discomfort on the part of building inspectorsat the prospect of mixing private and public watersupplies. (See sidebar.)In spite of this, there are about 25,000 rain watercapture systems operating across B.C. today -- used towater lawns and crops, flush toilets and provide drinkingwater for people and livestock. There are about5,000 rain systems on Vancouver Island and the GulfIslands alone, in areas where seasonal droughts anddodgy well water make it a necessity.As municipalities and cities explore ways to workwith the deluge of water that falls from the sky (morethan a metre of rain typically falls annually in Vancouver),the most promising use will be for irrigationof lawns and gardens in the near future. This could begood and bad.“I have a worry that rainwater is starting to gettrendy,” says Bob Burgess, a B.C. rainwater harvestingpioneer and founder of The Rainwater Connectionwhich designs and builds all sorts of rain capturesystems. “More and more people are doing it, anddoing terrible jobs of it. It may not be too long beforewe have our little Walkerton for rainwater.”Looking to the skiesA basic rain harvesting system captures water from aroof and channels it to a storage tank, where it is thenpumped to where it is needed. Along the way, the rainundergoes any number of different filters and cleaningmethods depending on the end use: to make it potablefor drinking, it will require filtration and any combinationof UV sanitizing and chlorine-injection; waterstrictly for watering plants will be cleaned less.Big municipal fleets are among the early adopters:White Rock currently washes some of its trucks withrain, as does Vancouver; the Regional District of Nanaimocaptures rain off two large Parksville recyclingtransfer buildings and uses it to wash their interior65