As per the title - we'll soon be moving to a house that has rain water. From what we can tell there is no water filter installed on the tap for drinking water.
Is one required? What would you suggest?
Moving to a House with Rain Water - What Tap Filter Will We Need?
Flying Ace on 02/08/2019 - 14:58
Comments
Yes one is a good idea presuming you will be using for domestic / drinking purposes - A few things are required, not just tap filter:
- First flush on the tank - get rid of the debris / dirty water from the first few hundred litres of each rain event
- Mozzie Guards / Leaf Guards on collection pipework and tank openings
- Tank in an appropriate location - e.g. shade (this one a lot of people don't realise, I had a bad algae problem from a dark coloured tank in the sun with a large opening on top)
- Filter/s - depending on your location, use, and what is in the watersee this site: http://www.yourhome.gov.au/water/rainwater
We only have tank water and no town water - everything comes from the rain.
Between the tank and our house, I've installed first a sediment filter, then a carbon filter.
Try to filter out as much stuff as possible before the water enters the tank. Clearning the gutters is a good start, and having a good sieve at the pipe entrance to the tank.
we installed something like this kit as we are 100% rain water.
although ours does not have the pressure gaugeshttps://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Whole-House-Water-Filter-System-…
.I lived for 15 years on tank water with no filters or autoflushes or anything like that. No ill effects that I could tell - or maybe it was the cause of all my woes. Who can tell.
I don't know why now it never concerned me. I won't do it again.
I have been on tank water most of my life. No filtration is usually required. A tank has a large settlement area below the water draw off point. Any particles will settle to the bottom. I would not put in a filter unless you had a bird problem. Then you will need something on your drinking water that will remove particles down to around 5 microns. Won't take you long to realize that town water tastes like chlorinated mud in comparison.
Where do you live? Different requirements if you live next to a coal mine vs remote Tassie.
I installed a secondary tank.
Gutters goes to main tank (currently 50Ml). Main tank goes to a regular pump attached to a float switch in a secondary tank (1000l).
The float switch is like the float in a toilet cistern - when the tank is full, the pump shuts off, when the tank is below a certain point, the pump starts.
I have that pump go through a home made sand filter then into the top of the secondary.
The secondary tank with it's raised height gravity feeds into a carbon filter and then into a constant pressure pump.
This way, your secondary tank is pretty much clean water that hasn't been sitting there for too long. You may want a bigger secondary tank if you have a big family but try to have it so the tank is essentially completely drained each day.
None of this matters if you're not confident the pipes between the outside and your terminal end is clean.
We moved from town water to rain water 3 years ago.
I was terrified I would die.
We have a first flush system on the downpipes and leaf traps and THAT'S IT.
No sediment or carbon or any other filtration/treatment.
LOVE LOVE LOVE the rain water.
Haven't died yet.
Apparently, this is how lots of people get their water, all over the world !
Try it, you might just like it !
Thanks for all the suggestions!
It was mentioned by an (overly cautious) family member that we will need a good filtration system as “we could get extremely sick drinking the rainwater”.
It seems perhaps that was a bit of an over exaggeration.
That person needs to get in touch with reality.
Reminds me of a friend that thinks dog poo near the veggie patch is going to cause contaminated food.
I used to work at State Rivers and Water Supply, in the clean water section, and one of the things we did was test rainwater samples when people suspected there was an issue. A sample came in one day and the supervisor, I presume showing off, took a swig of the water, spat it into the sink and said “there’s something dead in that tank”. You might want to check how sealed your tank is. I’ve, occasionally, I’ve heard of dead possums and dead snakes in rainwater tanks and it contaminates the whole tank and the water in it.
Is the rain water definitely connected to the mains ? Or is it just for watering the garden and for the toilet etc?