University of Twente Student Theses
Development of a Tiny House Rainwater Catchment System (RCS)
Riepen, M.M.J. (2022) Development of a Tiny House Rainwater Catchment System (RCS).
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| Abstract: | Living fully off grid for Tiny House owners means that they are not connected to any network, such as the electricity network or water network. Electricity can be collected using solar panels. However, few solutions have been realized or are widely used for the collection of clean water. The solutions that do exist are never big enough to collect enough rainwater for a Tiny House household of 2. The estimated water usage of a Tiny House household of 2 persons is 48 000 liters of water per year. Taking the average rainfall of the Netherlands into account, a rainwater catchment area (ground area) of around 60 squared meters is needed to collect enough water for two adults. Existing Rainwater Harvest systems use the roof of the Tiny House as the Rainwater Catchment system (RCS). However, the most tiny houses have a smaller roof area than what is to collect water. Furthermore, the roof may contaminate the water with bird droppings, leaves and other pollutants. This bachelor thesis describes the process of developing a RCS for a Tiny house household of 2 persons that reduces the water contamination of existing RCS’s. First, a literature research on water usage, portability, Dutch weather and existing products was conducted. After the research, different requirements were stated and concepts were ideated. One concept was chosen with the help of the stakeholders. New more specified functional and non-functional requirements were stated for this concept. The final concept was used to build a scaled down prototype of the new RCS. The prototype includes a rollable Collector sail that only opens when it rains, to prevent the chance that pollutants will be collected by the Collector. Evaluation was done with multiple Tiny House owners and showed that such system could be used and would be functional, especially if water becomes more expensive. However, the dimensions are too large for next to the Tiny House, so it would be more interesting that the new RCS would be used next to an existing roof RCS. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 50 technical science in general |
| Programme: | Creative Technology BSc (50447) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/89729 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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