Har Adar, Israel
When my parents started building their new home, I decided I gonna make it an ecological house.
So after setting up the wind meter to check out if we can set a wind turbine, we went on to the next project – the Cistern.
It was pretty common thing in Israel till the middle of the 20th century that every house will have a cistern to supply water. But cisterns does not always give enough water for agriculture and industry, especially in this half desert country. That is why since then, Israel have build pipes all across the country to supply water. Above all the National water carrier of Israel leading water from the “wet” north to the dry south.
But that wasn’t enough. Water, as the source of life, has always been a cause to wares, especially here in the Middle East. None of the countries has enough, but Israel had solved most of its water problem: reuse of water for agriculture, reduce use of water for gardens, building reservoirs and finally building big Desalination planets that put stop for shortage. Now, even the dry years, we have enough water.
But all of those things cost a lot of money, the Desalination planets are the most expensive and also demand a lot of electricity.
Now we have the luxury of choosing our water sources. the cheapest will probably will be to gather water – that what I doing, building a cistern in my parents house. =)
Take Care
Gad
The Open cistern – the north wall, good solid concrete.
The western wall (not that one…=). half concrete and half trash. We had to cast concrete on the open part.
The southern wall – cracked stone. We can keep break it and make the cistern bigger, but anyway we’ll have to cover it with plaster to prevent water to seep to the cracks.
First the steel rebars, some are stuck into the trash to hold the concrete from falling.
Then we built the formwork into which we’ll pour the concrete.
In order to hold the building cast, we put the planks against the other side of the cistern. The rebar in the bottom is for the next cast of the floor of the cistern.
Tulli the cat, resting in the sun =)
Making the concrete! Just poor even parts of sand, gravel and…
…and cement and mix! Well the mixing can be hard when done by hand. You don’t want to add to much water cause it makes the concrete weak, but it also make it hard to mix
And you got concrete!
Then you cast the concrete. It was smart to fill the buckets and pour the concrete to the formwork but we left an opening too small for that.
That’s it, you want the concrete to sit well and fit all the corners, so we hit on the holding cast and push it in with a rebar. We have to water it a lot during the next few days and we’ll take it a part in 3 weeks, when I come back home again.
The bottom of cistern after we took the concrete out of it.
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