Using rain as our water supply

[sandhills]

Peach James, where are you from?

[SwampDonkey]

I'd never drink cistern water, it was only ever used around here for washing. All these old homes had them. Always a mouse or rat floating in them.  : Had hand pumps or piped from spring for drinking water.

[mad murdock]

Thanks for the correction on the head/psi thing.  I could not remember the correct figure, the only thing I do know is that gravity never goes out, like the power does, and it sure is easy on the pocketbook.

[pigman]

I'd never drink cistern water... Always a mouse or rat floating in them. 

When we find a rat or mouse in the water , we just make soup. 8)

[Handy Andy]

 I grew up on cistern water. Hate the taste of chlorine.  Been considering putting in a cistern.  These large tanks you guys are installing, are they plastic,  concrete or what? Figured if you put in a large concrete tank, you'd have to build it from scratch.  The old cistern at the farm was a slab of concrete in a hole, with brick laid up to near ground height, and then a slab on top sloped so water ran off with a cistern pump in the center.  Had a chain of cups that you cranked and water came out a spout. My dad laid a pipe in off the bottom to the house and they used a pump to bring it into the house.  When the power was out we cranked the cistern pump and brought the water in the house in a bucket.

[SwampDonkey]

Cistern water is rain water off the roof, piped into a holding tank. I've never seen it used for drinking, and wouldn't care to partake in it. ;)

[Peach James]

Sandhills, I'd tell you but then, I'd have to say "stop" again

(being Canadian Forces, that's all we were allowed to do...say "stop" again...not so much now ;D

I hope I got the profile edited this time to show- if not,
Shirley BC, Canada.  About 25 miles west of Victoria, BC.

(and if not, I'll try again...nothing like sucess to motivate a person!)

[Qweaver]

Cistern water is rain water off the roof, piped into a holding tank. I've never seen it used for drinking, and wouldn't care to partake in it. ;)

Well water fell on the ground, city water fell on the ground, spring water fell on the ground.  My roof is pretty clean compared to the ground.  My rain water is filtered and all the little critters are killed and removed before we drink it.  Millions of people drink rain water.  We like it.  :D

[SwampDonkey]

Ground water is cleaner in my book, thanks. And I don't need to filter it or boil it or anything but drink it.  8)

[Qweaver]

We have a well at our home in Galveston county Texas.  We have to treat the water for minerals.  All of our family ( six homes) here in WV had wells until they hooked up to city water.   They all had to treat their well water and it did not taste good.  The city water tastes bad and is expensive.  This is why we decided to go to rain supplied cistern water.  Our water is clear, soft, free of bacteria, cheap and tastes good. What more could we ask.  A properly designed system will not have leaves or animals in the tanks.  There is more maintenance than being hooked up to city water but I'm willing to do that.

[woodsteach]

Qweaver

Do you have a diagram/drawing of your system and its components?  We are planning on building a shouse/houseshed in the very near future and would like to incorporate the rainwater system.

woodsteach

[Qweaver]

Here is how my system will look when it is done. Right now we are only using the coarse filter and running our drinking water through an Aqua Rain filter.  Our system is by no means ideal because we are forced to locate our tanks at different levels because of our location on a hillside.  I plan to take tank 1 out of the system and move it down to our sawmill.  We have never run short of water and we are currently only using two of the tanks.  We will have 3 tanks in operation within a few days.  Right now tank 3 is full and tank 4 is 2/3 full.  Tank 2 is about half full and we are digging a ditch to hook it up to tank 3.  Should be done tomorrow.  I think I will only coarse filter flushing and bath water.  I should also add that we have covers on our gutters that keep leaves and small critters out.

[Qweaver]

Actually here is a better diagram of my system.  The shut off valves and one way valves are required to 1. be able to shut off water for filter cleaning and 2. to keep the upper tanks from over flowing the lower tanks.  We have everthing ready to go except for the UV light.
There must be very little dirt/trash getting into the tanks because I have only had to clean filters one time last year and they look OK right now.  Our current setup is working so well that I have just put off spending the $800 to buy the light.  The gutter covers have really helped.  There is also an expansion tank piped in on the outlet side of the pump that is not shown on the drawing.  25 gal. I think.

[woodsteach]

Thank you for the great diagram.

Woodsteach

[mad murdock]

Qweaver,
What is the total capacity of your system? looks like you have quite a bit of storage.  How long (in hours or days of steady rain), does it take for the system to fill?  Looks like a well thought out system.

[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 .