Water and sun are the two main components that enable plant and human life. The sun shines every day but water is not always available. With off grid living we want to save every bit of water we can by using less water, harvesting water from rain, grey water management and reusing water where possible. We also want to try and have multiple sources of water incase there becomes an issue with one source, in case of drought.
We can harvest water by collecting it from roofs and storing them in tanks and by channeling water into ponds and lakes. Another way of harvesting is to slow rain water down as it travels through the land, instead of allowing it to wash away topsoil onto our neighbor’s land. We want to allow the water to soak into the land and be stored in the land itself, this can be do through swales, ditches and keyline systems.
Any water that is used will then be reused as many times as possible. Water from the kitchen can be filtered to remove any food and then channeled through a reed bed, where nutrient hungry water plants can remove the nutrients. The water can then be channeled to irrigation systems, ponds or lakes.
Aquaponics or Permaponic systems use 75% less water than growing plants in the ground. This is due to the water being pumped around the system many times rather than it sinking into the ground. We will add homemade nutrients and microbiology to the water to ensure the plants are high in nutrients. Ww can also save water by using sunken beds or hugaulture systems. Join our mailing lists to get our designs on these systems when we publish them.
Water in any ponds or lakes that we have will be prone to evaporation, so any shade we can provide to the water will be fundamental to saving water.