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daamsie t1_j5te3sa wrote

Interesting you refer to rain water as gray water in the US.

For me (and I think generally anyone in Australia) that word is reserved for recycled water, eg from shower, sink etc.

Rain water can easily be used as drinking water provided you have clean gutters, roof, etc and a little bit of treatment.

Rain tanks are incredibly common here and, unless you aren't on town water, are generally used for the garden more than anything else.

California's drought is interesting to watch from afar. It's all the same things we were dealing with 15/20 years ago here in our drought years. A good impetus for change if nothing else. And hopefully some innovation comes out of it.

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AncientBelgareth t1_j5tqlkh wrote

Many places in the US it is illegal to collect rain water.

Edit: My statement above is false

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canastrophee t1_j5u3yqe wrote

A lot of the fucked up water practices in the American West are because of legacy frontier water rights. Oregon doesn't allow collection of rainwater because of concern that it would fuck up how the watershed shakes out. Iirc, in California's Central Valley, where a staggering amount of produce is grown, water rights are attached to the land and are first come, first served -- the oldest parcel of land waters their shit, and then the second oldest, and so on until everything runs out.

I do recall correctly that in multiple years over the last 2 decades, landowners have made more money selling their water than they would have using that water to farm their land, and that without this legacy system, almonds would be such a water-expensive crop that they wouldn't be profitable. So. You know. Something something market value California almonds!

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thetomahawk42 t1_j5vuh50 wrote

Drinking water is treated to be clean and potable.

Everything else is grey water.

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daamsie t1_j5vvbd6 wrote

Maybe in North America that is the definition. Here we make a distinction between rainwater and grey water.

Rainwater needs no treatment to be used on the garden.

Grey water does.

That's why we don't refer to rainwater as grey water

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SEND_PUNS_PLZ t1_j5sgdyc wrote

I drought this will work but water you gonna do

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sandee_eggo t1_j5sk7tv wrote

Isn’t rainwater very clean? I mean, it’s distilled! Why buy a $5000 filtration machine? You just need a tank. A cistern. A personal dam.

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inkwater OP t1_j5sowf8 wrote

It's probably cleaner in various open places, and certainly cleaner than the public water supply when it's falling directly from the sky into a cistern. However, I wouldn't trust any rainwater for my own drinking water in a metropolitan area because there's so much garbage in the air now. The toxins from vaping and cigarettes, for example. I want that filtered out.

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TigBiddiesMacDaddy t1_j5sujz8 wrote

Nestle launched a successful lobbying campaign to outlaw collecting rain water. Nestle is pure evil, and I wish I was being hyperbolic

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Johnclark77 t1_j5t6vwk wrote

Nothing new for them, look up what they did with baby formula back in the 1970s.

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Wondershock t1_j5u07fj wrote

Rainwater is not very clean because of nucleation. Water vapor in the atmosphere will cluster around dust particles in the process of becoming rain, bringing down whatever pollutants/contaminants are up there.

So it can vary—if you’re near farmland there’s a strong chance your rainwater is non-palatable or even carcinogenic.

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sandee_eggo t1_j5u0f88 wrote

I mean, we’re just trying to flush toilets with it.

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Wondershock t1_j5ufl6t wrote

I understand that. I'm responding to you calling it "very clean" and suggesting it is so because it's "distilled."

Flushing and non-potable uses are great, but I never implied it wasn't suitable as greywater.

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pistoffcynic t1_j5u1iar wrote

When it’s coming down, yes it is. However, if you collect it off the roof, for example, there is bird poop that can contaminate the supply. Depending upon how your cistern is built, it could contain mold spores.

Water recycling had been used for space travel, had it not?

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zendick1 t1_j5v7riq wrote

rain forms on particulates, its not clean

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