Rain, Rain, (Don't) Go Away

It's funny for me how after a lifetime of living in urban areas, you just come to expect that if you turn a tap on water will come out.  Living in the Cottage we quickly discovered that this is not always the case now!

First it was when we ran out of rainwater on one of the rainwater tanks.  Then it was when the main pump failed.  Then there was a time when the inlets to the washing machine were blocked so we couldn't wash clothes.  Then there were all the issues in the gardens and paddocks.  I think you're getting the picture!

Our water set up for our household purposes is highly reliant on rainfall.  Given the name of the blog, you can probably appreciate that this isn't a significant level.  In average terms we are supposed to receive just over a foot of rain each year (approx 390mm), but our actual rainfall for the past two years has been significantly below that (only 230mm throughout 2015).

Historical average of local rainfall

We are very fortunate that we do have access to a water system (the GWM Pipeline), however that water is untreated and supposedly only for livestock, gardens and general household usage. Our drinking water, and preferably the household water, is reliant on rainwater.  Our water infrastructure consists of four 5,000 gallon/20,000 litre rainwater tanks, plus another tank for the Pipeline water. Two of our rainwater tanks are on the main house, with another on the back Hay Shed, with these three connected to a small pump and the house directly.  The Workshop shed (middle right of below photo) has the fourth rainwater tank plus the pipeline tank connected to a bigger pump.

Little Desert Cottage:  House (top), Workshop (middle), Hay Shed (bottom)

Normally we operate off the rainwater for the house, and the pipeline water for the gardens and stock water.  The pipeline water needs to go into the tank primarily because it is lower pressure coming into the property (it comes in on only a 1 1/2 inch poly pipe), but also so that there is some water on site in case of supply issues (eg. major fire events could cut supply, but at least we'd have water available to fight the fire).

That's normal set up.  We generally go through a tank of rainwater every 4-6 weeks, but that's reliant on consistent rainfall to keep topping up empty tanks, so this is were the fun starts.  Here's three critical steps we need to take to keep on top of our water management to always have water available.

1. Maintenance

Fun in the rain

Whether you're in an urban location or out on a rural property it is critical to make sure whatever water is falling on the roof can get into your rainwater tanks! While we don't have many trees around the main house itself, I'm always amazed at how much leaf litter can build up the roof plumbing.  Then when we do get a heavy rainfall it can't get into the tanks quickly enough and overflows (therefore is lost as potential water for us to use).  Clearly preventative work such as keeping gutters clear is helpful (as well as reducing your fire risk), but it sometimes means getting out in the rain to clear away any other blockages that arise.  After our last downpour I discovered a blockage, but the force of water coming through kept bringing more material.  It was only by climbing a ladder in the rain that I could keep on top of it, otherwise we'd have lost another 1-2,000 litres.

2. Proactive Management

This week's forecast

It looks like we should get a reasonable amount of rain this coming Friday, but perhaps even a little rain in the next few days.  1-5 mm isn't much but with our roof area, including the workshop and hay shed, approaching 900 square metres, every millimetre of rain (1/25 of an inch) is 900 litres (225 gallons).  The difficulty is that this is spread over 3 buildings - if any of the tanks are completely full, they'll simply overflow and that water is lost.  To help with this, we regularly move water around.  Generally we'll operate off the main house tank, and we can switch to the Hay Shed tank to draw on that.  Otherwise, we can switch the main pump over to the Workshop rainwater tank, and then run that water through the garden taps to run a house into the main house tank.  Using these methods I can operate with most of the tanks fluctuating at 50-80% of capacity.  This way we've usually got water in the main house tank, but still have room to capture everything that falls.

Most of our tanks are currently around 50%, so we've got around 40,000 litres stored.  If we happen to get 15mm over the next few days, that will add around 13,500 litres to our tanks.  If the 40,000 litres were in only the back tanks (so they'd be full), we'd only collect around 5-6,000 on the front tanks.


If a massive storm hit and we received two inches of rain, all of our tanks would be overflowing - but we'd have enough water to get through until May (end of autumn rains)!

3. Reactive Maintenance
Even with everything that you try to do proactively, there's always something that comes up.  Here's a shortlist of some of our challenges this past year:

• Burst pipe on a far border of our property that I never drive along,
• Cows damaging valves in water troughs (causing them to overflow),
• Cows 'tripping' electrical systems to stop pumps working (no water for livestock on the hottest day of the year),
• (Me) digging through pipes that I didn't know where under ground in garden beds.

Some of these are easy to fix, others take a little time and effort.  My background as a professional and living in urban areas used to be to default to calling a plumber.  Not so easy here!  With all these maintenance requirements, it's a case of having to work backwards to find a solution. Turn the pumps off, find the issue, work out a temporary fix and then find a permanent solution.



Life on a farm is very different to life in an urban environment.  Water is just one of the many challenges we face.  Despite the steep learning curve, I'm thankful that this aspect of our life has taught me how to deal with manual and physical work to find a solution, and not just simply relying on tradesmen to fix my problems, or even having to rely on the pipeline for our water as our first option.

What challenges do you have with your water supply, and how do you overcome them?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.