The Guides
Some water questions aren’t about a single contaminant — they’re about a whole situation. Living off-grid, catching rain, figuring out which uses in your house actually need treating. These guides take on those bigger situations end to end, with the same rule as everything else here: match what you do to what you’ve actually got, and don’t buy what you don’t need. Start with whichever fits your setup.
Off-Grid Water
When you leave the grid, you become your own water utility — responsible for finding the water, making it safe, and proving it’s safe. This guide walks every off-grid source (spring, stream, rain, hauled, well), where the real risk lives in each, and the one microbial line you can’t cross.
Read the Off-Grid Water guide →
Rainwater Harvesting
Rain is clean when it falls and dirty by the time it’s off your roof. This guide covers what’s actually in harvested rainwater, a treatment ladder that matches the cleanup to the use — garden to drinking — the legality (it’s legal in all fifty states), and the hard line on making it safe to drink.
Read the Rainwater Harvesting guide →
Water by Use
You don’t need drinking-grade water for the toilet. This guide breaks your home into tiers — garden, livestock, chores, bathing, drinking — and shows how to treat each to the standard it actually needs, so you spend on the kitchen tap that matters instead of over-treating water you were only going to flush.
Not sure which fits, or dealing with something none of these covers? The honest first step is always the same: find out what’s actually in your water. Test Your Water →