Talk:Rainwater harvesting in Canada

Original comments on the Outline from Rosie

This is excellent!

I never even considered that there might be laws about rainwater harvesting! 67 pages from the CMHC alone!

Be sure to mention freezing problems.

Rosieredfield (talk) 00:29, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Comments from Ruth Yes this is really good, Canada deserves its own page. You need to think a little about images for the article. I assume the one you have already in your outline is from Wikimedia Commons? You could also take some of your own. RuthVancouver (talk) 21:02, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Review by Becky Tan

Your page is looking great! -Just a slight error in the paragraph under Residental heading.

-It was good to mention that UBC CIRS as an example, I definitely think it is worth to mention other places or building in Canada that are already part-taking in rainwater harvesting. Since you guys do have a heading for application of rainwater harvesting in Canada it would be great to include where in Canada is this used for agriculture, as well which industry, which residences? Maybe even some data or percentile.

-Especially since this page is a standalone page, it would be nice to have a few more pictures!!

-Overall, I think you guys did a really good job!!!

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Beeeckytan (talk • contribs) 07:05, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Comments from James

-I really like your formatting of your article, it looks very professional!

-Its good, Canada should have its own page and if you follow the format the main rainwater harvesting page does it should look great

-Small editing errors under your residential subheading

-For such a broader topic, it would be nice to see more sources and information…for instance in regards to Canadian company’s implementation on this issue, you may want to look at this for certain “Canadian” capture methods: http://www.fiskars.ca/Customer-Service/FAQs/Product-Specific-Questions/Rainwater-Harvesting-Systems/General

-Maybe see how rainwater capturing plays a role in LEED certifications/Canada Green Building Council

-Personally, I’d like more pictures/images of examples of where rainwater harvesting bylaws can have an effect in your Property Rights section…picture with a small subheading how its related to that particular bylaw — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jameshsin (talk • contribs) 04:38, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Comments from Annalise

Overall organization and content:

• I think the content presented and writing quality was very good and unbiased, and each section had a nice, logical flow! Great job!
• One section that I believe should be added would be a small subsection outlining the benefits to Rainwater Harvesting under "Potential impacts of Rainwater Harvesting in Canada" as some positive things that been mentioned. Some emphasis on issues related to implementation should also be added here.
• The last paragraph starting with "The majority of the country..." is a little vague- especially when discussing problems in the Okanagan. Is it a serious problem? Is there anything being done? The sentence should be clarified a little more.
• Lastly, adding some statistics could help make us aware of how popular this technique is currently- perhaps incorporate some numbers in the sentence, "Rainwater harvesting is becoming a procedure that many Canadians are incorporating into their daily lives."
• There were a few typos, specifically, there were quite a few under the "Residential" subsection that should be fixed.

Integration with other Wikipedia pages?

• All external links provided are highly relevant- I'm impressed you found many good sites to link to!
• Good job on linking the content/topics within your work to existing pages (perhaps link to "Lavatory Plumbing"- if you intend on keeping this word)

Standard Wikipedia page layout and organization?

• The overall layout and organization is done well. Under "Provincial Property Rights," it may be good to organize each Province so that each subtitle is bolded and larger in size. (As is, it's hard to distinguish each part)
• For the "lead" summary section, the content seems to be a repeat of the information under the section "Rainwater Harvesting in Canada." Is there a way to change the wording for wither section? For the Lead summary, it may be best to integrate more detail of what the page talks about.
• References are good (there is one link that says "line feed character" in red- please fix this!)

Illustrations:

• The first illustration were helpful me understand what Rainwater Harvesting tanks look like (I have never seen one before) and helped me understand the process of harvesting. The images were correctly attributed, but I would suggest enlarging the first image to make it more eye-catching. The captions used for the images were informative and explained the images well.
• Since Okanagan valley was discussed in the last section, I would recommend including a relevant image of the region (and if possible, use an image that relates to the water shortage there)

Suggestions from Ruth and Rosie:

• Have not yet been met (based on deadline submission)
• (1) Still need to include specific explanation of the problems associated with "freezing." This exclusion makes it difficult to understand why Ontario is so stern on regulating guidelines so that rainwater is in a controlled temperature environment. I highly suggest briefly including a few sentences about the problems, as it will serve to make the article more coherent.
• (2) Not enough images are included! It would be beneficial to include photos of more (local) water-harvesting tanks/facilities if possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AnnaliseKim (talk • contribs) 19:39, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Comments from Asia

Overall: Really well done! I have outline below some suggested revisions to grammar and content. Photos are great, I like the idea of enlarging them, and possibly adding one that shows a larger scale system well.

Firstly, I'm not sure why the first few sentences are duplicated under your first heading. If both of these sections will be in your final wikipedia page take out duplications.

Section 1: Awkward: "Rainwater harvesting is becoming a procedure that many Canadians are incorporating into their daily lives" could change it to, "A number of Canadians have started implementing rainwater harvesting systems". It would be awesome to know how many are, or if number have increased as of late.

"There are a number of benefits to rainwater capture other than it being free of cost"....I would change this to "In addition to low costs, rainwater harvesting

carries many additional benefits." This puts emphasis on low cost as well as other benefits rather than diminishing the weight of cost effectivity. Also, it's not free because you have to get the barrels!

"the cost to distribute it is low and it is useful for landscape irrigation"- change "it" to "the rain water" In the next sentence you re state the benefit of storm water capture which you have already outlined. I think this paragraph needs some attention to make it a stronger opener. In your last sentence you refer to legislation but not specifically what the legislation is about. The earlier section speaks to this law so it could be okay if you are keeping that section, but at the same time then you are repeating yourself completely. Again, I think there is a need to reassess these first two blocks of text so you have a strong opener.

Section 2:

"right to harvest and own water from the sky, as well as further uses" -what do you mean by this, consider revising to the right to harvest and use rainwater". I think "water from the sky" is too creative language for wikipedia.

I think your article gets much stronger here, showing your research into different provinces. Wording is vague around B.C. e.g. "appears" and "likely", is there a way for you to get a more definitive answer and be able to convey that?

"reach below zero", change to "drops below zero" or at least change to "reaches"

awkward: "to avoid the water from freezing in the pipe" could change to "to avoid freezing of the water in the pipe system"

Section 3:

I think you should add more about agricultural uses because this could be of huge ecological benefit.

"up to 75 to 40,000 litres of wate", remove "up to" or change to "can hold up to 40,000" -again you need an -es on reaches

-green roofs can also be used commercially/industrially -I agree with Annalise that examples and pictures are great, add more!

Closing: I think this area could be strengthened as well. Speak more to potential challenges and benefits of rainwater harvesting. The Okanagen example seems a bit out of the blue. You could intro it by saying "One example of a community that has come face to face with water shortages is the Okanagan in B.C." (you don't necessarily need to describe the Okanagan because you can simply link to their page so people can see it's location etc.

I would not end on the note of the Okanagan. Following that example I would return to the overall context of Canada and use a concluding statement, perhaps referencing our potential to continue being a provider of global fresh water by maintaining supplies through rainwater harvesting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Asiawilcox (talk • contribs) 21:19, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Comments from Rosie

You've done a wonderful job, as have your reviewers, but there is still lots of room for polishing and fine-tuning.

Lead section: I suspect that the first three paragraphs (before Property Rights) are intended to be a Lead section. Reformat them accordingly.

Organization of information within paragraphs: For example, the first paragraph repeats information in confusing ways.

Sentence structure: Many sentences are awkwardly worded. Have a couple of friends who are good writers read the text and suggest improvements.

Law of Capture: Explain briefly what this is, and link to the Wikipedia Rule of Capture page.

Links: You haven't created any links from other pages to your new page - how will people find it? Only the first uses of 'rainwater' and 'rainwater capture' should link to those Wikipedia pages.

Sandbox box: Remove the 'This is a sandbox' box from the bottom of the page.

Rosieredfield (talk) 17:37, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Comments from Ruth

Comments on latest version! Great page! Good job! However a couple of things could be improved.

Note The Wikipedia bot has put this at the top of your page "This article uses bare URLs for citations, which may be threatened by link rot. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable.Several templates and the reFill tool are available to assist in formatting". You better correct this soon before the Wikipedia bot deletes stuff!

• Introduction needs to be a little bit more polished including explicitly mentioning that there is legislation around harvesting rainwater and perhaps why it is needed. Many people (myself included) would be surprised that there is legislation on collecting rain!

• Include what CANARM and CMHC stands for

• Nice choice of photos! I like that you mention and have a photo of the CIRS building although it would be good to replace "UBC" with "The University of British Columbia in Canada" as most people won't know anything about what UBC stands for.

• Change the title of the LEED section to include the words “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”, especially to make sure this is included in the contents section.

• I noticed a couple of spelling errors!

• This sentence doesn’t make sense: “Though data is not available on the percentage of farmers implementing this technology, because of a rise in ecofarming, many have implemented these systems.”

RuthVancouver (talk) 23:15, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Final comments from Rosie

You've done a lot of excellent work - congratulations!

That said, the writing is still often awkward and wordy, and the page contains a lot of general information that's not specific to Canada. But these issues can be left for other editors to correct. Rosieredfield (talk) 19:48, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Looks pretty good!

I was skimming around random articles and found this, and it got me curious-Do they harvest rainwater in the United States too?JTZegers (talk) 13:12, 13 May 2020 (UTC)