Commercial Rainwater Harvesting (Metric)

Our latest giveaway is a collection of metric manufacturer-specific Revit families for commercial rainwater harvesting systems. These include a selection of rainwater outlets, HDPE pipework, a filter and rainwater harvesting tanks.

Rainwater harvesting involves the collection of rainwater that would normally run to drain. Depending on the desired use, whether for flushing WCs or for conversion into drinking water, rainwater harvesting is a cost-effective method of conserving water and can save substantial money for investors and building maintenance.

These systems work by collecting rainwater at the roof and balconies via the rainwater outlets. This water then runs at a fall (unless siphonic) through the building to the water filter, where it is cleaned before it goes into the tanks for harvesting.

Rainwater harvesting systems tend to be more widespread in countries where water availability is a consistent issue, such as Singapore, Brazil and China. However there's no reason they shouldn't be used more broadly, such as in Germany, for purposes of environmental sustainability and reduced water consumption. From our time spent consulting and working with engineering firms, we believe that having a complete Revit system can help increase the inclusion of rainwater harvesting systems in commercial building design.

Complete rainwater drainage at roof level.

Water filter and tank piped up.

Rainwater tanks and pipework.

Rainwater Outlets

The rainwater outlets are from manufacturers Wade and Harmer with cast iron and aluminium models. They are for cold roof installations and come with a variety of gratings, including domed or flat in either round or square profiles. We have outlets with straight, 45° and 90° spigots, all of which can be used with the Harmer adaptor pipe fitting to connect to the HDPE pipework.

They are all intended to be placed at a finished floor level and have an instance paramater to shift the plate down to the structural slab level if needed.

Left – structural slab installation , Right – finished floor installation with structural slab plate offset.

With various levels of detail in all views, these outlets can be used from building design to construction. They will look the part on a schematic or in a render!

Left to right – coarse LOD, fine LOD and raytrace.

Rainwater Filter

The rainwater filter from WISY is a vortex ground model with a nominal capacity of 3,000 m2 roof area. The filter has options for clearance zones and base plate visibility. More importantly, it can rotate the inlet connection from 0° to 360°.

Water filter with variable inlet connection azimuth.

Rainwater Harvesting Tanks

The rainwater harvesting tanks are from manufacturers Enduratank and Dewey Waters. The Enduratank model is a horizontal cylinder with a capacity of 3,000 L. The Dewey Waters model is a sectional GRP. We've created a large number of capacities, but the Revit user can create any size tank they need and locate pipe connections where the project requirements dictate.

Left – Sectional tank, Right – Horizontal tank.

HDPE Terrain Fuze Pipework

When it comes to site installation, a good Revit pipe system can be invaluable. Our Terrain Fuze HDPE pipework from Polypipe has all the required fittings to configure the routing preferences. If you have Kinship and add the collection to your team, you can load the system with one click!

For the purposes of this collection, we also added access pipes and couplings/adaptors for connection to the rainwater outlets.

Pipe fittings available in the routing preference.

In the past, we would set couplings as flanges in our pipe fittings and pipe types. Now we nest couplings into the fittings themselves. We do this to avoid a problem in Revit, so that moving the 45° horizontal pipe does not move the stack locations.

Without nested couplings, the movement of this pipe will affect stack locations.

Unfortunately, solving problems in Revit often involves making tradeoffs. In this case, while we've fixed the problem of stack locations accidentally moving, we now have a new problem with graphics and visibility overrides with the nested coupling. In short, the nested coupling will always appear in its default setting and will not follow system colours or materials.

Our pipe fittings include the IsCustom option for the Fuze HDPE pipework. The IsCustom option allows the Revit user to create any piping system with a more fluid workflow. When there is an incorrect value for angle or nominal diameter (depending on the fitting), Revit will flag it as a custom fitting and will colour the fitting red without preventing the user from using that angle or diameter.

IsCustom feature at work.

This pipe range has been given a 2° tolerance. The 88° bend can produce an 86° to 90° bend and still return the correct Polypipe product code.

Pipe fitting model and product code for scheduling.

The reducer fitting is a true Revit reducer, unlike some of the reducers you may find nowadays from the Out-Of-The-Box (OOTB) library. This reducer will work with both JUSTIFY and SLOPE tools in Revit, switching seamlessly from concentric to eccentric.

Concentric reducer.

Revit's Justify tool used to change reducer to eccentric.

Collection Content List

1. Rainwater outlets from Harmer in a variety of gratings, spigot connection and materials.

2. Rainwater outlets from Wade in a variety of gratings.

3. Terrain Fuze HDPE Bend from Polypipe.

4. Terrain Fuze HDPE Tee and Wye from Polypipe.

5. Terrain Fuze HDPE Cross from Polypipe.

6. Terrain Fuze HDPE Reducer from Polypipe.

7. Terrain Fuze HDPE Coupling from Polypipe.

8. Terrain Fuze HDPE End Cap from Polypipe.

9. Terrain Fuze HDPE Access Pipe from Polypipe.

10. Adaptor for cast iron spigot to hdpe from Harmer.

11. Below ground vortex rainwater filter from WISY.

12. Sectional rainwater harvesting tank from Dewey Waters.

13. Above ground rainwater harvesting tank from Enduramaxx.

Click here to view and download the full collection.

All of our free Revit collections are part of Kinship Content+,  a service providing companies with on-demand Revit content creation as well as access to a pool of existing Revit families from other customer requests and our own internal development.

If you have any comments or suggestions for components you wish were in this collection, please let us know at hello@kinship.io.