6.21.2009

Rain, Rain, Go Away! Come Back When I Can Harvest You!


Yesterday was the first day of Summer and as of this posting, the Roof and Rain Water Harvesting System have not yet been completed. Rain delays have plagued the project since we began in May. Friday my Father and I began assembling the roof rafters so at least it seems we are progressing, however slowly.

Jen brought to my attention that 6.5 inches of rain has fallen on our heads over the last four weeks! 2 inches more than the average for this time of year in this area of Pennsylvania. We wondered what that could have meant for the Arkhaus project had my system been capturing all of this water.

When I first began designing the catchment system I came across a very convenient formula:

Collectible Rainwater (Gallons) = 0.5 x Rainfall (Inches) x Area (Square Feet)

So here are the results of our little theoretical exercise:


0.5 x 6.58 x 192 Sq. Ft. = 631.68 Gallons!

That is an incredible amount of water!

Now to take that a step further, we can also figure out how much water we would be consuming in a month using this calculator. After plugging in all the data, high-balling the estimates to be safe, we came up with these figures:

Interior per capita gallons per day: 15 (or 456 a month and 5475 a year!)

There is no way that we will be using that much water every day! But even if we did, it seems evident that the months of May and June would have provided more than enough water to satisfy all the Ark's needs!

Of course I am positive that once we get this system up and running, Pennsylvania will slide into a deep drought sure to last months if not years! It should be noted that the longest the Pocono Mountains Climate Division of Pennsylvania has gone without water was for an incredible 22 months between July 1964 and April 1966! That seems like a very long time, I will have to ask some of the older members of my family about it to see if they recall such a severe drought...