Stuff around the shop... Cisterns.

[Lassen Forge]

We have a history of our municipal water supply flatlining in the summer, so we decided to start buying IBC containers (275 gallons, or technically, 1000 liters) to make an emergency cistern for when this happens next time. Our neighbors lost their water last year for 5 months - and their concrete cistern was so silted they worked their butts off to get it usable. In 100+ degree weather, last thing I want to do is crawl into a concrete tank and find out why it's not working.....

The first 2 showed up today. I realized (1) they are narrower on one side to the other, so that might be a good thing, and (2) they're on pallets, so I can raise their elevation on a few construction bricks (bigger, taller, and wider than the red ones I grew up with) and give them a bit of gravity boost...

Biggie for me - Once set up we can get water all over the property - to the shop (!!) and kitchen and even the shower (!!!!!) off these tanks. The other thing is we will have space to put in another 1100 gallons (4000 liters+) of capacity behing our house. We can keep our garden wet, our dishes clean, and actually keep my cooling dunk pool wet for the (new) forge!!!!

I need to work on breaking the heat and sun off them to keep the algae at bay (sorry, I won't be painting them American Flag Blue!!! ) Our neighbor/semi-contractor, Bruno, has ideas, as do I. Then a pressure pump,second water line pump, and maybe even tie them into a water heater for maybe a hot water heater and... welll...

This is like building a new shop! And subscribing tot he grand theory of "Happy Spouse, Happy House!"

Now that I've seen them I am jazzed on the prospects of what we can do. And I can't wait to bring it all to fruition!

 

[WisJim]

Our munipal water ran low a couple of days ago, to the point where some parts of town had no water at all, so we are glad we have three of those IBC containers (people call them "totes" around here) and 8 food grade 55 gallon plastic barrels for rain water collection. We normally don't use that water in the house, but we were glad to have it available. They are blaming the water problem on excessive lawn watering, but that shouldn't exceed the capacity of 3 wells feeding 3 water towers, at least in my opinion.
Always good to have more than one source of water!

 

[Dagny]

Where did you get the barrels? I am by Cornell.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

As you might or might not know, we’re running two interconnected, buried (no algae), IBC for irrigation for far more than 10 years now. We’re using a mesh net to mechanically filter the worst debris/leaves/sand before the rain water from the roofs goes into the IBCs.

That mesh net needs maintenance, especially before torrential rain, otherwise it can’t cope with the amount of water and clogs almost immediately.

Even with that in place, I have to maintain additional mesh filters inside the connectors of our various hose nozzles/ attachments and I don’t run that water through the pressure washer - ever. As during every maintenance cycle I clean out fine sand from those filters and I can see the pressure inside the hose rise but at the tip of the nozzle its more like a dribble.

I’d recommend looking hard into serious filtering options if you really want to run that water through water heaters/appliances/shower heads. …

Hope this works out for you as planned!

Kind regards,
Olli

 

[theoldwizard1]

Great idea, but water sitting around for a long time tends to "go bad".

 

[nadogail]

Where did you get the barrels? I am by Cornell.

I have seen Food used Grade Drumbs almost free Craigslist
They often are a disposable item from food processing Pizza makers often get their sauce in them.

 

[Codyboy]

Great idea, but water sitting around for a long time tends to "go bad".

All water on earth is as old as time.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I have a tote for water. Up until this year I had it up on top of a trailer, about 16' up. That worked great for gravity feed. This year it's on the ground and I'm using a sprinkler pump to create pressure. I will have to add a filter like Olli suggests because I plan on using it for my pressure washer.

 

[steve308]

Submersible UV light and a whole house filter should be part of your system.

 

[Recoveryman]

Great idea, but water sitting around for a long time tends to "go bad".

Make it intergrated with the house water system so the supply keeps changing with the daily use until problems arise then isolate it and use. Recoveryman

 

[WisJim]

I have good friends who, when they built their new off-grid house, decided to use a rain water and cistern system. They found a stainless steel bulk milk truck tank at a salvage yard and had it buried in their yard. Rainwater from their roofs goes through a strainer system into a 500 gallon bulk tank (from a dairy farm) and then into the buried tank. The water gets additional filtration before going into the house for daily use. Their system has been in use for probably 20 years or more.

 

[GirchyGirchy]

Submersible UV light and a whole house filter should be part of your system.

You gotta make sure you can kill all the germs from whatever finds its way in!