This guy's got a good idea
Jstas
Posts: 14,806
Her Governator, you listenin' to this dude? Rescue your state AND save yourself some money!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/17/gsif.rainwater.solutions/index.html
The Jist:
Due is building test sites wit cisterns to collect rain water. Currently they collect about 1.25 million gallons of water for every inch of rain with the 5 small test sites.
Actually, the hell with California, do it all over the country! I dunno why we will adapt every other type of plumbing and method of water and waste transference from ancient times except for this. It's free water. It needs to be treated of course but it's free water. Doesn't have to be piped from anywhere. It falls on my house, and your house and that guy's house. Hell, it's been falling on my house and watering my lawn all week long!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/17/gsif.rainwater.solutions/index.html
The Jist:
Due is building test sites wit cisterns to collect rain water. Currently they collect about 1.25 million gallons of water for every inch of rain with the 5 small test sites.
Actually, the hell with California, do it all over the country! I dunno why we will adapt every other type of plumbing and method of water and waste transference from ancient times except for this. It's free water. It needs to be treated of course but it's free water. Doesn't have to be piped from anywhere. It falls on my house, and your house and that guy's house. Hell, it's been falling on my house and watering my lawn all week long!
Expert Moron Extraordinaire
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you!
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you!
Post edited by Jstas on
Comments
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Welcome to LEED 101...There is no genuine justice in any scheme of feeding and coddling the loafer whose only ponderable energies are devoted wholly to reproduction. Nine-tenths of the rights he bellows for are really privileges and he does nothing to deserve them. We not only acquired a vast population of morons, we have inculcated all morons, old or young, with the doctrine that the decent and industrious people of the country are bound to support them for all time.-Menkin
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Expert Moron Extraordinaire
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you! -
The LEED program with USGBC has been doing/encouraging this since 1993 at various scales-Usually only for the site it's on.There is no genuine justice in any scheme of feeding and coddling the loafer whose only ponderable energies are devoted wholly to reproduction. Nine-tenths of the rights he bellows for are really privileges and he does nothing to deserve them. We not only acquired a vast population of morons, we have inculcated all morons, old or young, with the doctrine that the decent and industrious people of the country are bound to support them for all time.-Menkin
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Is this what you are talking about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_in_Energy_and_Environmental_DesignExpert Moron Extraordinaire
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you! -
It's often the political will that's lacking at the very top. Working at the California Public Utilities Commission, I see a lot of that.
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Is this what you are talking about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_in_Energy_and_Environmental_Design
Yup, better site: www.USGBC.orgThere is no genuine justice in any scheme of feeding and coddling the loafer whose only ponderable energies are devoted wholly to reproduction. Nine-tenths of the rights he bellows for are really privileges and he does nothing to deserve them. We not only acquired a vast population of morons, we have inculcated all morons, old or young, with the doctrine that the decent and industrious people of the country are bound to support them for all time.-Menkin -
LEED... while many times is full of crap, does have some good points. We deal with it a ton these days in the construction industry.Honoured to be, an original SOPA founding member
Stuff...
RTi12's - front
CSi5 - center
FXi3's - surrounds
RTi4's - surrounds
SVS PB12-NSD/2 - sub
Denon 3805
Rotel RB-985 5-Channel Amplifier -
Let me know if you need any LEED AP+C's!
There is no genuine justice in any scheme of feeding and coddling the loafer whose only ponderable energies are devoted wholly to reproduction. Nine-tenths of the rights he bellows for are really privileges and he does nothing to deserve them. We not only acquired a vast population of morons, we have inculcated all morons, old or young, with the doctrine that the decent and industrious people of the country are bound to support them for all time.-Menkin -
Yup, better site: www.USGBC.org
OK, yeah, I know about that stuff. They did a whole story on it for a house they were doing on "This Old House". I've been looking at what I need to do to the house I'm getting to get it certified at a certain level here in NJ. I get a heavy tax rebate and another incentive if I can get it certified to those standards.
Since I'm planning on putting in some fairly heavy shop equipment for building vehicles that destroy the environment, I can use all the help I can get cost wise.
The bonus is that since it was my grandma's house and the state came through on the housing assistance program and upgraded all her appliances, got rid of mold and sealed up most of the house in the attic and foundation, it's already halfway there.
I'm not going to be able to meet the top standards unless I gut the house and rebuild completely ($250K+ proposition) but I can get a pretty high rating and qualify for a big break. I think I can just eek in to a Gold standard though and qualify for about 58 points right now. Just bringing the house up to current code will get me another 10 points it seems. I have some plans for renovation of rooms with waste plumbing that will get me up around 70-75 points. Then if I get the ductwork sealed when I replace the heater and A/C unit, I'll get the last few points I need to eek in to Gold standard and that will get me a chunk of money off my taxes. Plus it'll save me money on the water, electric and gas bills.
But now that I'm looking at all of that, I might go and get a rainwater cistern that I can run a lawn watering system with. Can't really drink it without treating it but collecting rain runoff from the roof, driveway and such and using a self contained sprinkler system could keep the lawn looking nice and cut the summer waterbill in half. Might have to look in to that for my parents house too.Expert Moron Extraordinaire
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you! -
By the way, for those wondering, you can build a cistern that collect rainwater from a gutter system. The larger the roof, the more water. If you have a large enough holding tank, you can store enough water for lawn and garden irrigation unless you live in a more arid climate.
Here in the Northeast, rain is abundant at times. Especially in the March-April-May time frame. Build yourself a big enough cistern and you can store several thousand gallons of water for irrigation throughout the growing season.
You can put in an automatic sprinkler system and use a pump like one of these:
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/category_6970_107+771243
To feed that irrigation system. If you give them your water pressure, a rough drawing and measurements of your lawn, you can go to http://rainbird.com/index.htm and if you have the time to wait, they will layout an entire system for you and give you a list of parts to get to put the whole shebang together. Some parts they sell, others they don't. But at that point, all you gotta do is build it.
As for building a cistern, people put swimming pools in all the time that hold way more water than one would need for even moderate watering in a growing season. A cistern about 1/5th the size can hold enough rainwater and get replenished by rain through out the season to support your watering needs.
The initial cost can be expensive but the benefits financially and environmentally are quite extensive. It also reduces your load on the public water system and the power needed to run the sprinkler system is a small fraction of teh cost in the water bill you would save.
If you REALLY want to get nuts, you can find solar powered pumps but they are expensive and not very powerful. They would require multiple pumps for even a small lawn. At that point, you are just making a statement.Expert Moron Extraordinaire
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you! -
Drill a well for lawn water. It's probably cheaper than building elaborate water storage systems.>
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>This message has been scanned by the NSA and found to be free of harmful intent.< -
Polkersince85 wrote: »Drill a well for lawn water. It's probably cheaper than building elaborate water storage systems.
A well would run almost 3 grand just to survey and drill and another 1500 in equipment and permits here.
I can get a few tubes and a 500 gallon plastic tank for about $600. The sprinkler system would be part of the cost either way. I don't have to drill for rain. It falls on my head, free of charge. I don't need a permit for a rainwater collection system. I also don't need to meet any EPA standards or get a zoning waiver for a well.
But sorry, I'll bow to your obviously impressive intellect and ability to think of the obscenely obvious and put it out there in a manner that tells me I'm stupid because you didn't think I thought of it first. So I'll go drop 10 large on a well and sprinkler system just to water my lawn because you have deemed a simpler option and have chosen to ignore the other benefits such a system brings with it. Thanks, what would I ever do without you?Expert Moron Extraordinaire
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you! -
Besides, drilling a well defeats the whole helping the environment point....There is no genuine justice in any scheme of feeding and coddling the loafer whose only ponderable energies are devoted wholly to reproduction. Nine-tenths of the rights he bellows for are really privileges and he does nothing to deserve them. We not only acquired a vast population of morons, we have inculcated all morons, old or young, with the doctrine that the decent and industrious people of the country are bound to support them for all time.-Menkin
