Rainwater harvesting at home

Cut your water bills and reduce reliance on mains supply. Feel confident managing your own water resilience.

Whether you want to collect water for garden use, or for some domestic uses, this course will cover what you need to know.

Water is becoming less predictable. Your supply doesn’t have to be.

What will I get from this course?

By the end of the day you will:

• Know how to install a rainwater system at your home or project
• Be able to assess what size system you need
• Understand how to use rainwater to wash ourselves, wash clothes, flush toilets and water plants
• Know the basics of how to filter and sterilise to drinking standards
• Avoid common mistakes that waste water
• Have confidence to start immediately and have a clear plan for your setup

Course Content

This hands-on course shows you how to design and implement a rainwater harvesting system that works in real UK conditions, so you can reduce reliance on mains water, lower bills, and build resilience into your home or project. Droughts and water shortages are predicted to be more frequent and more severe.

By the end of the day, you won’t just understand the theory, you’ll know exactly what system suits your space, how to build it, and how to avoid the common (and expensive) mistakes most beginners make.

Beyond the practical skills, this course reconnects you with the rhythms of water on your property, turning rainfall from something that runs off into something that sustains.

You could piece this together online, but most people end up overwhelmed or install systems that underperform. This course brings everything together into a clear, practical process tailored to UK conditions.

We will look at:

• What can we use rainwater for? We can water plants, wash clothes, flush toilets, wash ourselves and drinking
• Where we can harvest water for our home and garden (roofs, hard surfaces, etc)
• Working out how much you can collect and how much you will need to store
• Collection methods
• Storage, including types of storage (various tanks, ponds,
• Appropriate purification for various uses. We don’t need to treat and purify all the water we use, and in some cases there is a distinct advantage not to.
• How to distribute the water to where it is needed.
• Size of system, storing enough water to make a difference to your water use will require more than just a few water butts!
• Economics
• Health and safety
• Legal considerations

We will do practical sessions on how to effectively set up water tanks from rainwater down-pipes, as this is very frequently not done properly, resulting in water butts overflowing or simply not filling properly. Also we will arrange a few water butts in series so that they fill one after another. The concepts apply equally to larger tanks.

We will take a tour of the Earthship’s ambitious water system. This work in progress system aims to treat the collected rainwater water to drinking water standards, then treat the output of sinks to flush the toilet and finally treat the sewage in a reedbed. Treating rainwater to drinking water standards is generally not done in public buildings in the UK due to the high legal standards required, but is common practice in many countries including Australia and the USA.

You will be given a guided walk of unique heritage water features by Paula Gardner of Stanmer Preservation Society. These unique water features include a “water catcher” which feeds water to a series of underground cisterns, and also wells with pumps powered by horses, donkeys & people!

Who is this course for?

The course is open to anyone over the age of 16, and no prior knowledge is necessary. It is relevant to anyone who wants to harvest water for the home or garden.

The tour will include a short walk of around one or two miles. Please do dress appropriately, as we will not be deterred by poor weather conditions.

Why do we teach this course?

Harvesting rainwater helps to reduce runoff and local flooding. The course promotes low impact living and reduced water consumption.

Course Tutors