DIY Rain Water Harvesting pump question

Dtp1979

gifted wrote: »

Good man, you do realise that I'm looking at me goldfish now and checking him for strange growths (just ****ed him into the bowl a year ago without a water test )

Also a load of em on EBAY. Testers that is. Not growths or goldfish!

Dtp1979

scudo2 wrote: »

Try testing pure rain water in a plastic container and let us know how you got on and what the results were over time, thanks MD

I tested in a ceramic container over 3 weeks.

scudo2

Dtp1979 wrote: »

I tested in a ceramic container over 3 weeks.

Contains metal and will affect results I think, but could be wrong.
Ta.

Dtp1979

scudo2 wrote: »

Contains metal and will affect results I think, but could be wrong.
Ta.

Maybe so but it's a hand crafted Nicholas moss mug!!! Fancy I know!

scudo2

Dtp1979 wrote: »

Maybe so but it's a hand crafted Nicholas moss mug!!! Fancy I know!

Don't change your name to "High Tech" what ever you do.!!

Dtp1979

scudo2 wrote: »

Don't change your name to "High Tech" what ever you do.!!

Haha. The only reason I used it is because its made from natural material and wouldn't contaminate the water

azul

Dtp1979 wrote: »

Maybe so but it's a hand crafted Nicholas moss mug!!! Fancy I know!

Wow!! that is a fancy mug!

Dtp1979

azul wrote: »

Wow!! that is a fancy mug!

Tell me about it!! Needless to say I wasn't there for the purchase. I'd rather spend that kinda money on a new drill rather than 6 mugs!

corkgsxr

scudo2 wrote: »

Not recomendind it for humans but the stitter the water the better for my fish !
Hate changeing it as once they all died over night after a change. Cork county council you murderers !!!



Haven't a clue what the ph. was.

Probably very high chlorine that day.

I always use water from the hot tap. My theory being the water sitting in the attic will have lost the chlorine.

darwin sligo

scudo2 wrote: »

I done the same thing when we had flooding in Cork city a few years ago resulting in no water for three weeks. Gutters into water tanks. B&Q submersible pump for €60-00 connected to my garden tap out the back pumping back up to my storage tanks. Plenty of showers, baths and washing machine once it rained once and again, plenty of water even from drissel.
Not for drinking though without UV filter protection.
Great job while everybody else qued up in car park at water tanker with there buckets for three weeks.




Bet you'll get some negative replys to this but I couldn't care less. It worked for me and my family at the time.
None of us died or got skin cancer !

i would have to agree, with the new charges coming in soon for water (toxic water) anything you can do to save the few quid and keep away from main supply is good, weather its a barrel at the end of the garden to a 500+ euro system to collect the water from above is a good idea, i have read a few very good idea's here but its really down to what you can afford really and as long as it works for you, ill be knocking up something myself soon though i know i wont be able to drink it as it will be most likely the barrel, but it will free & cleaner than the water we get now and soon be paying for,it will only be used for the toilet system & washing up as i wouldn't be able to afford anything high tec though id love it,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhA2abeOm7o&feature=share

scudo2

darwin sligo wrote: »

i would have to agree, with the new charges coming in soon for water (toxic water) anything you can do to save the few quid and keep away from main supply is good, weather its a barrel at the end of the garden to a 500+ euro system to collect the water from above is a good idea, i have read a few very good idea's here but its really down to what you can afford really and as long as it works for you, ill be knocking up something myself soon though i know i wont be able to drink it as it will be most likely the barrel, but it will free & cleaner than the water we get now and soon be paying for,it will only be used for the toilet system & washing up as i wouldn't be able to afford anything high tec though id love it,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhA2abeOm7o&feature=share

My attempt was only a tempory measure. You have to do it safely for long term use.

cerastes

Banbh wrote: »

I think the figure from Uisce Eireann is 150 liters per person per day. If so, a family of four would use 4,200 liters a week.

Unless my figures are way off, I can't see it being possible to off-mains, though you could certainly make sure that you don't give a cent to rip-off Ireland's latest scheme.

A lot of the 150 litres might be flushing the toilet, Im sure there are ways to economise on the usage in an emergency when the supply is reduced or cut off, so might not need a 4000litre tank?
Low flow toilets or even just flushing when its brown (in shortages only)

Maybe even using the clean water for bathing, flannel and a basin (in water shortage only) rather than a shower or bath, Id rather have my clean water for cooking/drinking and have a seperate collected supply for flushing the loo.

I even recal when the freezing conditions were here, someone was on tv complaining about not having water, they had a bath full of water which they emptied and never considered keeping it there and using a bucket to help flush the loo or fill the cistern with.

Dtp1979 wrote: »

OP i had the exact same idea as yourself only I was gonna use 2 ibc tanks. Leave the mains to the kitchen sink and bathroom where i brush my teeth. Everything else would be pumped to the attic from ibc tanks ( with a mains filler in the attic for back up of course ). I was gonna treat the water with filters and uv but the one main concern I have, as was pointed out to me in another thread, is that rain water is acidic. I asked myself would I bathe a baby in this water..... And the answer is no I wouldn't. So With regret i scrapped the idea.

Maybe it would still be possible for flushing the toilets only, thats what Im thinking. Its an idea for the future, run a plastic pipe up to the attic to a seperate tank via a basic filter and pump it using a lidl pump and then a pipe to the toilet, I know theres a formula to work out the pumping requirement but I need to look it up.
I wouldnt do anything else with it other than flush the loo though.

Banbh

I forget to mention in answer to the original op that I have a Rule in-line pump that I got on ebay for about €20. I can use it to pump rainwater to the attic or for car-washing, garden watering etc. It runs off an old car battery.

cerastes

Banbh wrote: »

I forget to mention in answer to the original op that I have a Rule in-line pump that I got on ebay for about €20. I can use it to pump rainwater to the attic or for car-washing, garden watering etc. It runs off an old car battery.

Quick google suggests they do marine stuff,
Someone told me about running a caravan water pump from a small solar array and said it would pump to a tank, but Im not sure what the height was, might be similar.

I wouldn't mind trying something like that before anything else.

Banbh

Yep. Rule specialise in marine pumps. I've been using mine for about a year and have often lent it to a neighbour. It will easily pump up six meters to my attic through a hose. I haven't tried pumping up through a tap, as a previous poster has done, as this would need the pump to be able to push up the water in the pipe and the water in the attic tank.

I also use the Rule pump for watering from the rain barrel to the polytunnel - about 10 meters with a slight uphill. I have an old car battery which lives under a plastic cover beside the water barrel and I give this a very occasional charge from a battery charger in the shed.

I was thinking couldn't you use an old phone charger to power this pump as they are converters from 240 volt AC to 12v DC? Maybe someone is already doing that.

positron

Apologies for bumping up this old thread, but I am rather keen about this idea.

My slight change to what the OP has done would be like this.

Take two 1000l IBC tanks, and place them one or top of each other (if that's possible. Side by side is good too). Run rain water into (top) one, and that is good for using around the garden etc. Route the water from first one to the second thru a completely DIY bio filtration system (another barrel shaped tank or re-purpose a wheelie bin for the job, fill with gravel and find sand, let the water flow into it slowly). Clean / filtered water slowly flows into second IBC tank. Install a cheap motor to pump water from second tank into the normal attic tank (attic tank floats should be in such a way that it fills from rain water feed first and the the mains water). A bio-filtered water should be good for flushing and shower right?

Does all this make sense at all?

positron

Details of the bio filter idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaCOlRlw3K4

Banbh

That should work perfectly well. My council supply comes directly into an IBC tank and is pumped automatically into the attic when the pressure up there drops. It's simple to install - I did it myself and I'm not a plumber.

You could also run a line of this filtered water to the kitchen tap through one of those very effective under-sink filters and be completely independent.

The question is: how effective is the filter? If you could arrange a test of the filtered water, then you would have a perfectly safe method of preventing the parasites (and I don't mean the ones IN the water) from ripping you off.

I still can't estimate how much storage you would need to go completely off-line. Weather in Ireland is very unpredictable but you would need to be prepared for droughts of up to five weeks.

I was thinking of buying water, during a drought, from someone with a surplus and so avoiding the new tax.
Where I live, it was common in living memory for a water tanker to come around and deliver water to the houses, into a concrete tank that was fitted beside every house.