Using rain as our water supply

[Qweaver]

Hi Mad, 
Our four tanks will hold over 5000 gal but we are currently only using two...Tanks 3 and 4.  We are also only using 1/4 of the roof catch area that we could use.   Yet we have plenty of water even with the long period of freezing weather that we've had.  One day of rain will usually completely fill the tanks.  I plan to have the other underground tank online in a few days.  We got the ditch dug to plumb it in yesterday.  We will use more roof catch area when I get the time to run the pipe.  We do conserve water but we use as much as we want. (Sarah had one of those 50 gal Zacuzzi baths last night)  Tank 2 is about half full and we will use it to top off 3 and 4 as soon as we get the pipe in the ditch.  It would have been MUCH easier to just put in one 5000 gal tank but we did not have room to do it.  Poor planning on my part.

[Randy88]

For about 25 bucks you can have the water in any system tested for quality, nitrates, chemicals, bacteria, you name it.   Before I'd ever even use any of it for bathing in I'd have it tested, if you putting it for coffee or anything else even heated I'd absolutely have it tested for quality.   Fresh water tanks were used around here for the last 100 plus years and most are now being crushed in because the water quality isn't even fit to wash closes in let alone shower or bathe in.   Any bird that lands and does his thing on the roof, rat, mouse that needs a drink, bird that dies and rots and is never found, that all goes into the tank.   In our area it costs about 15-20 grand to drill a well, the collected water systems are about nothing to install and I've seen chlorinators and all sorts of things on both systems to try to get safe water even for bathing out of either, city water as its called isn't economical to get into the country in our area but further south they have rural water systems since the well water isn't fit for drinking or bathing.   

I've known both types well water and collected systems that have gotten bacteria in them and were basically abandoned due to the fact it wasn't fit for any human to even touch them let alone use the water and until they destroyed the system they couldn't get it out either, something somewhere grew in the pipes and couldn't be killed.  Yes without light things don't grow but bacteria once in the system can't always be killed and bacteria doesn't need light do do its thing.   

With ever change of the season have collected water tested and do it regularly, especially if you've got small kids around the system at all, adults can tolerate higher levels of bacteria than kids can.    I've lived in two different houses that had bad water systems, and neither were fit to even bathe in, until I rented them nobody had the water tested, one was isolated to bad pressure tank that was leaking contaminates into the system and the other was bad water completely and the well was capped and another was drilled some distance away, that well was so bad it made pregnant animals abort and even killed some adult livestock.   I also rented a farm that had a shallow well on it and during the winter it was bad enough to do the same thing, every winter and nobody ever figured out why, this spring it too was capped, a neighbors spring water was the same story, that system was abandoned as well.   I've known of a collected water system that a poisoned mouse got into and died and the water was laced with poison that the levels were high enough to put the owners in the hospital and it took weeks to track it down to the water, another a bird had died and it too was poisoned by eating some chemicals and it was on the roof and nobody knew it, after it decomposed the poison along with the bacteria got into the system and made everyone in the house sick to the point some of the kids were hospitalized before they figured it out.    All city water is supposed to be monitored weekly for quality, sometimes even daily, when you own the system who's monitoring your water?   Over the years I've had about 20 head of livestock die due to bad water, I've been hospitalized and so have some of my kids, I've been sick many times to the point of almost needing hospitalization and the single most important thing I've learned it to have water tested regularly if its not from a city to know what your putting into your body or on it.   

[beenthere]

Randy
You are much more paranoid about water than I.

[pigman]

Obviously I will be dead by tomorrow.   I suppose I should be planning my funeral.

[Randy88]

Been sick a few times and also I do demolish some of the fresh water collection systems out there for others, also have installed a few as well or as they say whatever pays the bills, also know of a few that do testing and listen to the stories they tell about the unusual things that come up once in a while, that and suffered the financial loss of dead livestock due to water contamination.   I guess it gives one a different perspective on things than most.   If it makes me a pessimist rather than an optimist at times I guess I'd lean more towards whatever is the safest way to go and testing is always cheap, easy and simple to then know for sure nobody will get sick.

[tyb525]

Monk, anyone?

[Larry]

For my collection lines from the down spouts to the tank can I use S&D pipe?  That's the cheap green stuff.  I'm only going to put the pipe 6" to a foot deep. 

Kathy wants a water supply for here garden, and flowers.  Not planning to use it in the house but that could change.

[Al_Smith]

The big old farm house I grew up in had a large cistern ,around 12 by 20, 7 feet deep .We seldom ran out of water which being rain water was naturally soft .We didn't drink the stuff ,bathing,washing clothes etc .was the use .

Now as far as sulfer,that can be aeriated with pretty good success .However any time you inject water with air you stand the chance of introducing bacteria so the stuff needs to be treated with something like chlorine so it's fit to drink .Then the catch 22 is you have to get the chlorine out so it doesn't taste like a swimming pool .

I don't know if an r/o filter will remove the rotten egg taste or not but it works for iron real well .

[SwampDonkey]

Sulfer, heck that's declared safe up here. It's in all the wells in Grafton pretty much, the folks have it filtered out in the fridge, but you can bathe in it and drink the stuff. Smells like rotten eggs.

As to the cistern, every farm house around here had them, we tore ours out 25 years ago for more room to store wood but stopped using it 40 years ago when the electric pump was put in.

[Al_Smith]

A friend of mine uses a pond for his water supply which is filtered and sanitized somehow .Of course that would not be an option in places where you don't get much rain or the soil conditions are such the ground won't hold water as in a pond .

[bandmiller2]

Up here in the northeast we are pretty much blessed with good water.I have municipal water but could dig 20' and be in good water.In the spring the water table is above my cellar floor.My old house origanally had a dug well. Frank C.

[r.man]

If you have a good drinking water well with a poor recovery rate a viable solution can be a small cistern tank in the basement and a second pump. Generally a 400 imp gal, I think that would be about 500 american gal, tank that fills at a slow rate from the well. Even if your well only recovers a quart a minute that works out to 15 gal an hour and 360 gallons per day if you draw the max per hour from your well. Most households don't use that much water even if they are not conserving.

[petefrombearswamp]

My good wife grew up on a farm in central NY with  spring for water.
When the taste got a little "off" My FIL would go to the spring and pull a dead woodchuck or whatever animal had fallen in and drowned and the water would be great until the next time.
She is EXTREMELY  healthy.
Maybe more body in the water?
I lived on a farm with a spring and the only problem was frozen lines in the winter.
The water tasted great.
My current home has a 125 deep well with 31 plus GPM recovery, but needs chlorination and filtration to be palatable.
I now have a $2500 chlorination/filtration system.
The old days were better.
Pete
 

[petefrombearswamp]

I forgot to mention, both systems had lead pipes.

[sandhills]

I don't know about the lead pipes Pete, but have fished a few dead gophers and a mouse out of the cistern when the water just wasn't tasting quite right  .  Don't tell the ex wife though.......on second thought she is the "ex" wife, go ahead and tell her. 

[Qweaver]

We have now been on roof fed cistern water for two years and love it.  We have four tanks but rarely use more than the main tank and in fact have only used the main tank in 2011 and never got below 1/3 full.  The tanks are closed to the outside so no animals can get into the water.  I do filter to below bacteria level for drinking.

[sfletch]

We are looking at putting in a rain water system and I noticed the issue of debris and small animals in the tanks.

Has anyone used a simple sand filter as a means of removing debris from the water before it enters the tanks?

[bandmiller2]

If'n you got a cistern in your cellar you don't want seagulls on your roof. Frank C.

[saltydog]

The home i live in now is also the place i grew up.People came from all over to get water from the hand pump on our well.I was gone for years then moved my family back to care for my mother in all 9 people livin here .The well went dry one dry july we had a new one drilled it was 120ft.When they filled the old well(they had to to get permit for new well) the old well was not capped and was only 18 ft deep. pretty much groundwater.This house was built in 1880s water never killed anyone im aware of.