Roof and water
Rainwater tank
housing school farm public building
It is a container that stores rainwater coming from the roof for later use. It can be buried or above ground.
What it solves
It provides water in the dry season or when the supply fails and reduces the flow that rushes out to the street in a downpour. In the tropics it serves for irrigation, toilets and cleaning and, properly treated, for drinking.
Today
Divert the first flush from the roof, cover the tank and put mesh on every opening so mosquitoes cannot get in. An overflow to a rain garden is advisable.
Common mistake
Leaving the tank uncovered or without mesh, which becomes a mosquito breeding ground.
Tomorrow
A tank shared by several houses or by the neighborhood school stores water for supply cuts and for watering. Caring for it together, cleaning gutters and filters, matters as much as the tank.
Fact As a general rule, contamination of the harvested water is halved for every millimeter of initial rain that is diverted.
Where it comes from
- 1Maya Mesoamerica and the Puuc hills, Yucatán, pre-Columbian period
The chultún was a bottle-shaped underground chamber with a stucco apron that led the rain inside. - 2Minoan Myrtos Pyrgos, Crete, around 1700 BC
Its cistern held more than 80 m³ of rainwater. - 3Al-Andalus Iberian Peninsula, Middle Ages
The word aljibe comes from Andalusian Arabic and names the underground rainwater tank. - 4Venice Italy, for centuries
Its collection wells provided drinking water in the middle of a brackish lagoon.
Masters
- Glenn Murcutt Magney House, Bingie, Australia, 1984
He gives the roof a valley shape to gather the rain and store it in a cistern for later use. Roof and tank are designed as a single system.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Roof and water
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.