We are completely off-grid when it comes to water supply.
Our beautiful rainwater tanks.
We have two large rainwater tanks which are plumbed to receive the rainwater from the roofs of the house and shed. Our annual average rainfall is 400mm, and we have plenty of water for both the house and garden.
Rainwater flowing into our tank.
Water is pumped into the house by a standard electric pressure pump.
We have an evacuated tube hot water system which provides us with free hot water from the sun over summer, but does require significant gas boosting over winter. Unfortunately we have not felt that the system is as good as it should be, and we may upgrade in the future. We think this is more a reflection on the brand than the technology, as nearby friends of ours with a different evacuated tube system are achieving excellent results all year rou nd.
Waste water is sent to a standard septic tank system. We did not install a greywater system originally as we were confident we had enough water and didn’t have the excess funds available to buy one. We are now considering retrofitting one in, mainly for the convenience of automatically watering the garden / lawn compared to the manual watering we currently do.
katanning eco-house 