People have been washing their hair with rainwater for years. Some claim it has mystical benefits, that your hair will be shinier, more manageable or that the water is cleaner because it comes from the sky. There is a grain of truth to all this. Rainwater is soft water. Hard water doesn’t wash as well as soft water. You can’t lather as well and it leaves more soap scum behind. If you are accustomed to a hard-water hair wash, then rainwater will do wonders for your hair. Those people who most benefit from a rainwater hair wash probably live in a hard water area.

Rainwater still has chemicals in it, but it won’t contain some the heavier chemicals found in hard water. Rainwater is not safe to drink without filtering it first. If you live in an acid rain area or any place where a layer of smog casts a pallor over the town, I’d avoid using rainwater for hair. Luckily, most of the hard water areas are in the middle of the United States. Lot’s of good clean rainwater there.

For those of you just looking to save water, washing your hair with rainwater is one of many ways in which you can preserve the potable water in your faucets.

Source: Planet Green

Showering in chlorinated water

Chlorine is a toxic chemical. It is used in water treatment to reduce and kill forms of biological agents, such as bacteria and viruses found in water systems. Chlorine is harmful to you when you drink it and when it is absorbed into our skin and inhaled into your lungs when you shower. It has been estimated that the “shower steam” in your bathroom can contain up to 100 times the amount of chlorine than the water, because chlorine evaporates out of water at a relatively low temperature. If you bathe or shower in unfiltered tap water you are inhaling and absorbing chlorine into your body.

Conditions contributed to or aggravated by chlorine exposure:
· Respiratory Conditions (nose, throat, lungs, sinuses): Asthma, bronchitis
· Hair: Dry, brittle
· Skin: Dry, flaking, dandruff, itching, rashes (especially with infants and children)
· Eye conditions

Chlorine is universally used to chemically disinfect water. It kills germs, bacteria and other living organisms. Chlorine readily passes through the cell wall and attaches to the fatty acids of the cell, disrupting the life sustaining functions. The human body is composed of billions of cells. Most people are aware that the quality of their drinking water can be improved by filtering their tap water or buying bottled water. However, many do not realize that they are addressing only a part of the problem.

One half of our daily chlorine exposure is from showering. Chlorine is not only absorbed through the skin, but also re-vaporized in the shower, inhaled into the lungs, and transferred directly into the blood system. In fact, the chlorine exposure from one shower is equal to an entire day’s amount of drinking the same water. Drinking filtered or bottled water only does half the job.

Source: Heart Spring

Some excellent advice; save water by using rainwater to wash with, for your health.  If you want to drink rain water harvested off your roof, it needs to be filtered.  According to many women, especially those with long hair, rainwater IS the best water to wash your hair with.  Apart from hard water problems, many municipalities over-chlorinate the water supply.  White River (Mpumalanga, South Africa) municipal water is dreadful to drink because of this.  And don’t think you are getting aware from chlorine exposure if you filter your municipal water for drinking but use it unfiltered for showering.  As the article above points out, half of your daily chlorine exposure is from showering! Rainwater does seem to have other ‘feel good’ properties that are difficult to define.  Chlorinated water from swimming pool backwash water can also have a negative effect.  As an environmental consultant in Mozambique, I sometimes took advantage of a tropical downpour for an impromptu shower (clean water is hard to find in the middle of nowhere!).  The feeling of well-being after taking a ‘rain shower’ is difficult to describe.  Washing a vehicle with rainwater also seems to give superior results compared with municipal water.  I’ve always wondered what the long term effect of all the chlorine in municipal water has on a car’s paint job; I have no desire to test it on my vehicle!

Harvesting rainwater is therefore good for your health (and your hair!), saves water and saves you money.  Rainwater tanks provide a useful reserve of water in times of water shortage.  Water Rhapsody’s rainwater harvesting system is designed to augment or even supplant your existing water supply but is integrated into the plumbing so that if either source is depleted, the system automatically switches over to the other source.  The number of water tanks, your roof area and your rainfall statistics determine how much rain water you can harvest and store.

A flexible system to digest the food content of “Grey Water” Grey water contains BOD (biological oxygen demand), and the BOD needs to be removed before filtration can take place.

The process of digestion may be anaerobic followed by aerobic, or simply aerobic, and the filtration may remove suspended solids only or both suspended and dissolved solids.

The applications to which this process may be put are the re-use of car wash water, irrigation through a drip or automated pressurized irrigation system, and for the re-use of clarified water to flush toilets through conventional cisterns.