rainwater catchment v3, Tangles, solar yield in the rain

Rainwater - some good news

Finally had a successful run of rainwater catchment, though it was rough at start.

I rejiggered the tarp when the clouds gathered again:

This method has more surface area but is less likely to funnel rain where i want it.   More experimentation needed.   It rained medium-heavy for a short while and I was feeling optimistic - before I went to bed there was a steady stream of water going into the bucket.  Rain let up and I got up in the night to check on it – the bucket had been spilled (knocked over and several feet away in the mud) when the tarp moved in high wind.  Argghhhhh!  The water from the brief period of good rain was  lost.

I fixed it so that wouldn’t happen again, getting cold, wet, muddy, and a little perturbed.  :-(  With the lighter rain I couldn’t get a steady stream so bucket aiming was off.

It rained lightly much of the rest of the night.  Even so,  there was a nice reward:

Woot!  The downside is I got mud in the bucket in my late night dash to get it set back up.  :-(  I might have captured the whole 5gal if I hadn’t let it spill earlier, or had positioned the bucket better after the spill..

I ran this water (and about another gallon from another bucket) through coffee filters for coarse (~20micron average) filtration:  sediment, vegetation, bugs.  It yielded 4 gallons of water tinted light peach by the mud:

It has no smell but does have a light mineral taste to it.  If I were going to use it for drinking in a glass I’d run it through a 1mic water filter I have here.  My reading suggests 5mic is sufficient to remove most organic and nonorganic coloring from minerals.

Instead of filtering it I’ll  likely be using it for washing self, dishes, and clothes (running low on clean socks in particular).    It means there is 4 gallons of fresh water in the tank I don’t have to use for non-drinking purposes.

Tangles

I think I have mentioned before that Muffin’s name could easily be Tangles because she is forever tangled in stuff.

Why?  How?

solar harvest in overcast

While I was filtering the water today it was still raining lightly.  Here is the overcast sky and solar yield at that time:

Normally by that time of day I’d be finishing up Absorption (14.6v tapering to ~2A).    I’ll still get there this afternoon but I sure won’t be running any crypto miners or other heavy loads,