Lowtech Graph lists low-tech options for every need of a home. Here you can compare them, find tutorials to build them, and link them together into a circular system. Why low-tech?

Sourcing / extraction

Where the water comes from before anything is done to it: a well, a spring, the roof, or the mains. This choice sets everything downstream, because each source needs different treatment and arrives at a different pressure. The options differ in what they depend on, in how much power lifting the water takes, and in how steady the supply is through a dry summer.

Solutions

• Drilled well with an electric pump: A narrow hole drilled down to water held underground, with a pump to bring it up. Groundwater keeps flowing even in a dry spell, so the supply does not depend o
• Rainwater harvesting and storage: Gutters and downpipes that lead rain from the roof into a storage tank. A simple diverter sends the first, dirtiest water of each shower away before the tank fi
• Spring capture: Where a natural spring exists on-site; often gravity-fed with no pumping required.
• Drilled well with a hand pump: A pump worked by hand with a lever or wheel, drawing water from a well. Each stroke lifts water up the pipe. It is slower and harder work than a powered pump, b
• Drilled well with a rope pump: A loop of rope threaded with small washers, pulled up through a pipe from the well by a hand crank. Each washer lifts a little water to the surface. It is cheap
• Hydraulic ram pump (belier hydraulique): A pump driven by a flowing stream. Water rushing down a pipe is suddenly stopped by a valve, and the shock pushes a small part of it up to a higher tank. It lif
• Fog collector (cloud net): A tall mesh net between two posts that catches the water droplets in passing fog. The drops run down into a gutter and flow to a tank. In the world’s foggy regi
• Mains water: Drinking water from the public network, arriving already treated and under pressure. There is nothing to pump, store or treat at home, and it keeps flowing in a
• Free-standing rainwater catchment: A tarpaulin stretched on a frame of poles that catches rain and funnels it into a container. It works where there is no roof to collect from, or none clean enou
• Spiral pump (coil pump): A coil of pipe wound round a wheel that turns in a stream. Each turn scoops up water and air, and the chain of them pushes water up a delivery pipe. It lifts wa