Water - Catchment to Tap
Size, build, plumb and commission a complete rainwater system for a named climate: what a roof yields, how much storage the longest dry spell demands, cisterns and their plumbing, filtration and disinfection, pressurisation and solar hot water.
What you will be able to do
- Calculate catchment yield and size storage against the real dry spell
- Set, plumb and connect cisterns correctly
- Specify filtration and disinfection to a potable standard
- Commission and maintain the whole chain
Syllabus
6 parts · 19 lessons · 80 assessed questions · about 4 hours
Part A DEMAND AND SUPPLY
- 1Reducing Demand Before Designing Supply9 min · 4 q
- 2Calculating Household Demand10 min · 4 q
- 3Rainwater Harvesting Supply Calculation10 min · 4 q
Part B CATCHING THE WATER
- 4Roof and Slope11 min · 4 q
- 5Gutters and Silt Catch9 min · 4 q
Part C STORING THE WATER
- 6Sizing and Siting Cisterns10 min · 4 q
- 7Types of Cisterns10 min · 4 q
- 8Tire Cistern Construction8 min · 4 q
- 9Plastic Cistern Installation9 min · 4 q
- 10Plumbing the Cisterns10 min · 4 q
- 11Insulating and Burying8 min · 4 q
Part D ORGANIZING AND CLEANING
- 12The Water Organizing Module9 min · 4 q
- 13Mounting and Plumbing the WOM9 min · 4 q
- 14WOM Electrical and Commissioning10 min · 4 q
- 15Filtration - Spin-Down and Sediment Filters12 min · 4 q
- 16Drinking Water, Distribution and Cost19 min · 5 q
Part E HEATING THE WATER
- 17Solar Water Heating - Principles and System Types17 min · 5 q
- 18Sizing, Siting, Codes and Fluids26 min · 6 q
Part F MAINTENANCE
- 19System Maintenance10 min · 4 q
Before you start
Recommended: Course 1 (Site, Climate & Land Assessment)
About this course
Course competency
On completing this course you can size, build, plumb and commission a complete rainwater system - roof to potable tap - for a named climate, and keep it running.
That is the whole chain: calculating what a roof will yield, sizing storage against the longest dry spell, building or setting cisterns, plumbing them together, assembling and wiring a Water Organizing Module, filtering to drinking standard, heating with the sun, and maintaining all of it. A graduate should be able to walk onto a site with rainfall data and a roof area and specify a system that will not run dry.
Why this course exists
A house without water is not housing. Everything else the Academy teaches - structure, thermal performance, power - assumes someone can live in the building, and that assumption fails first at the tap.
Conventional practice solves this by connecting to someone else's infrastructure: a municipal main, or a well and the grid that pumps it. Both make the house dependent, both cost money forever, and both fail when the system upstream fails. A well without power is a hole in the ground.
A building that catches, stores, filters and reuses its own water is not merely more sustainable. It is cheaper to run, functional during outages, and buildable where no main exists - which is most of the affordable land. That is the connection to the Academy's mission: water autonomy is one of the things that makes a dignified home affordable in places where conventional servicing would make it impossible.
Course structure
19 lessons in build order: understand demand, calculate supply, catch it, store it, move it, clean it, heat it, maintain it.
| Part | Lessons | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| A | 1-3 | Demand and supply - what you need and what you can catch |
| B | 4-5 | Catching - roof, slope, gutters, silt catch |
| C | 6-11 | Storing - cistern types, construction, plumbing, burial |
| D | 12-16 | Organizing and cleaning - the WOM, filtration, distribution |
| E | 17-18 | Heating - solar water heating |
| F | 19 | Maintenance |