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hello all,
i was just wondering how to go about collecting rain water with the view of being able to drink it.
i'm guessing it's going to be a case of putting some sort of tank in the garden to catch the rain, and then have some filter in the bottom of it. does anyone know of any websites for ordering this sort of thing, or how i can go about getting parts for something like this? also, if anyone's got something like this or has any ideas on how to build one, any advice would be greatly received.
many thanks
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I?ve just been reading about this in a book called the new autonomous house. It goes into it a bit and basically says that rain water is fit to drink without a filter but suggests the use of one anyway. The rain water is collected off the roof of a house and stored in a big tank. I haven?t read where they got their tanks from but they did look at the use of 25, 000 l tanks in New Zealand. You might need two such tanks depending on how much you use and how much it rains.

One thing you could do to reduce your water consumption is look at using grey water in the toilet systems.

The low impact living initiative have a basic factsheet on this and other related subjects.

Rainwater harvesting

It sounds pretty simple but I know in practice it can be problematic producing water which is clean enough for drinking. My roof is premanently spattered by birds, sea gull poo is probably not good for digestion.[/url]

I think current western stds for drinking water would technically prohibit drinking unpureified rain water - and you might be surprised just how invasive such regulations can be!

In practice tho I am confident that most fit and strong adults could adjust to drinking rain water - even with various undesirable things it.

Our bodies are used to drinking very high qaulity clean water, whilst you'd still want that for children I think it's significantly more than our bodies will tolerate (after a period of adjustment at any rate).

I remember as a kid drinking water from a stream/draiin that I later found out was as DIRTY AS HELL and I had no ill effects from it at all and neither did my friends, even tho we were just kids.

In that case we mabye just got lucky but it made me think that what's desirable for water purity and what's essential are not nesseccarily that close together.

Reusing grey water for other tasks is surely going to become a MUST in the near future.

Here's a good website I found before:

www.rainharvesting.co.uk

hatchelt wrote:many thanks for the links people...i'll get cracking on it and let you know how i get on.

That would be very interesting to see. Please do

Rainwater tanks are common here in Australia. A couple of refinements you might consider - a mesh on the entrance to the tank stops mozzies and similar creatures using the water to breed in. Some systems have a diverter which lets the first "flush" of water go down the drain (eg to let it wash the roof if it hasn't rained for a while) and only lets later rainwater fill the tank.

thanks for the tips Sherry...do your tanks over there have UV filters?

What would you recommend as something more portable e.g. if you had to move around ?

Would one of those kits you see in camping shops do the trick ?

Check this link out:
http://www.katadyn.ch/site/ch_en/home/o ... _products/

The "Pocket" is ?190 or so in the UK, but will process 50,000 litres on one filter. That's a LOT of drinking/cooking water!

seems expensive now, but if a fresh, clean water supply becomes problematic in the future it'll be worth its weight in gold !

How are we progressing here?

After our third thunderstorm in as many hours I'm very grateful for the butts outside, but I'm really wishing it was drinkable.

I got a leaflet from Cathod in the post today. It shows two plastic bins one a little higher than the other connected with a syphon tube. In the upper bin you but 3 buckets of gravel then two buckets of charcoal then s buckets of sand. Dirty water is poured on top. It soaks through the sand then charcoal then gravel to reach the syphon tube. It flows from this to the other bin which is the storage tank for the now drinkable water. Really cheap, really simple, it could provide safe drinking water for the world.

hatchelt wrote:hello all,
i was just wondering how to go about collecting rain water with the view of being able to drink it.

Many older houses in Spain have their own 'deposito' - a large underground tank which collects rain off the roof in winter for use in summer. Ive regularly drunk water from a deposito in Spain - tastes fine, and I'm here to tell the tale! If you're picky, a second filtration system with maybe a built in high intensity UV steriliser could be placed between deposito and kitchen tap.

Rainwater is as pure as it comes. All you need is a filter system to keep crap which falls onto the roof (dead insects, leaves etc. ) from being washed into your collection tank.

skeptik wrote: Rainwater is as pure as it comes.

Not sure about the pigeon poop additive from when they thud across my roof though. We also have mice living around here, although I am not sure they climb that far. I'm definitely thinking that some kind of filtration is necessary. I have 500 gallons outside that I really want to use as much as possible.