One of the nice things about building your house from scratch is that you can work in all sorts of goodies that would be far harder or even impossible to retrofit to an existing property.
One of the best of these is our Rainwater Harvester.
Made in Germany by Hydro International, the harvester will collect rain water from our gutters and store it in a 3300 litre tank which will sit underground. A pump is connected to the internals which feeds filtered rain water into the house for use in the washing machine and toilets, and to outside taps for use in the garden etc.
The net result is a around a 50% saving in the amount of mains water you need to use. Good eh?
You can read all about the system and how it works here.