Water Storage

[hqueen13]

All hazmat materials must be posted on the outside of the containers. I looked ours up. They both carried "hot pot 922", which is the main ingredient of ...moth balls! Anyhoo....they are getting a good cleaning and rinsing...the cleaning with amonia. None of the rainwater will be used for drinking. It is all going to be used for non ingestion. We won't be using those water reserves for the garden till next summer.

Oh it wouldn't have to be hazmat to do damage. Some of the chemicals that my other half worked with when he worked manufacturing Durock and Joint Compound would be caustic to a garden, even though they're not "technically" harmful. Ultimately, you just want to be sure you know what it is that was in it and what it was used for, and any implications that it might have to harm anything that you douse in the water Food grade containers are the best, of course, but the industrial ones are usually easier to get a hold of.

We worked with a local conservancy group and held a rain barrel workshop here, and had to rinse out the 55 gallon blue barrels... they had maple syrup in it! Whole driveway smelled like maple syrup for a week!

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

We are always still looking for food grade containers that are close enough to get. These just happened on us by a good neighbor. He himself had just got some.

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

Amazon is the best platform to end of your search.Go though It.

Oh, we find them online already. It is the SS cost amount that we are searching for. Free, or very, very cheap. A wad of bills will get you anything you want, plus freight. But, that is not very SS or frugal.

 

[Icu4dzs]

I managed to get about 15 barrels that held hydrochloric acid (muriatic) for swimming pools that hold 30 gallons each. Once they are rinsed out thoroughly, I would trust them to hold potable water. I just leave the water in them for a long time and then throw it out (like the chemist recommended) so I could put potable water in them. Of course, I do have 3 wells and a 1000 gal rainwater cistern and a large 10' deep stock pond so I am not TOO concerned about water in terms of having it. Using the water is probably more the issue. If you are concerned about any water you have, you CAN make it potable with a number of different methods. The first and easiest is the chlorine bleach method which will kill everything in the water (assuming it is in there) and do a very credible job.

The other way to do this if you can't get chlorine bleach is to make an eluting chamber with activated charcoal (cowboy charcoal works well, not charcoal briquets soaked with chemicals) Crush the charcoal up into very fine powder and put it into a 4 inch PVC pipe (unless you have a glass chamber/cylinder) to run it through.

If you make a chamber with sterilized sand inside an old nylon stocking to start with and then put the charcoal filter in line after that, you will get a pretty good water specimen that you should be able to drink. Of course, heating the water to a boil before letting it pass through these two chambers will pretty much assure you of bacteriologic safety as well as taking out a lot of chemicals with the charcoal.

Of course it is really easy to go buy some filters at Sears or wherever you shop for the first chambers now while they are still available and reasonably cheap. You might spend a total of $50 to get some large plastic chambers and some filters, but the cost right now is negligible when compared to needing it in the future. I made a water purification tool to take camping with me by putting two of the big "whole house" filter chambers in line, one with a particulate filter and the next with a purification filter. It hooks up to a hose and can be put in line anywhere you can hook up a hose. I am NOT afraid to drink water after it comes through my filter system no matter where I go.

If you want to feel a little more safe get some brita filters and keep them handy. I bought some and put them in a sealed bag (vacuum sealer) and set them aside after I discovered the fact that they work really well. I used to keep a bottle of water on the sink for drinking but noted after a while that it "grew things" and had a slimy layer inside the bottle after a while, but when I put water from a Brita filter in it and left it for long periods of time, none of that happened, so I now have a bunch of them for "travel" purposes.

In either case, the more actions you take to purify water, the less you have to store. Knowing HOW to purify water is by far and away more useful than carrying it around since it weighs quite a bit.. Carry your dry goods and find/purify you water insitu is a much better option when on the road.

Of course there are different uses of water and some folks actually re-cycle all the water from their house (gray water) not black water. This can be used for garden purposes etc. Dish water probably has quite a bit of unwanted detergent, etc. in it but shower water is almost completely clean and useful for gardening.

Trim sends

//bt//

 

[hqueen13]

OMG! I am jealous of you 1000 gal cistern, Trim!!!
The barns here have metal roofs, and we are dealing with some heavy runoff due to the lay of the land and the buildings. I am DYING to install a water catchment system including a LARGE cistern so that we can water the fields when the rain stops. Even being able to put a little bit of water onto the pastures when the rain quits would be better than nothing. We have an ideal situation for it anyway because everything is 'down hill' - the barns are at the top of the hill, and the cistern could easily be gravity fed, and then gravity feed into whatever spraying system we have.
The sad part is that I haven't found anyone willing to fund the project and supply the cistern and other parts. It would be really awesome to be a 'green' facility and be able to show what you can do using the water that runs off of the buildings.

We will be installing rain barrels this spring, and I am excited about that!

 

[Icu4dzs]

OMG! I am jealous of you 1000 gal cistern, Trim!!!
The barns here have metal roofs, and we are dealing with some heavy runoff due to the lay of the land and the buildings. I am DYING to install a water catchment system including a LARGE cistern so that we can water the fields when the rain stops. Even being able to put a little bit of water onto the pastures when the rain quits would be better than nothing. We have an ideal situation for it anyway because everything is 'down hill' - the barns are at the top of the hill, and the cistern could easily be gravity fed, and then gravity feed into whatever spraying system we have.
The sad part is that I haven't found anyone willing to fund the project and supply the cistern and other parts. It would be really awesome to be a 'green' facility and be able to show what you can do using the water that runs off of the buildings.

We will be installing rain barrels this spring, and I am excited about that!

Don't be TOO jealous. In the spring when it is raining the cistern over fills and the cellar fills with water for weeks...NOT fun

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

Sump pump? Do they make those available on solar power?

 

[~gd]

OMG! I am jealous of you 1000 gal cistern, Trim!!!
The barns here have metal roofs, and we are dealing with some heavy runoff due to the lay of the land and the buildings. I am DYING to install a water catchment system including a LARGE cistern so that we can water the fields when the rain stops. Even being able to put a little bit of water onto the pastures when the rain quits would be better than nothing. We have an ideal situation for it anyway because everything is 'down hill' - the barns are at the top of the hill, and the cistern could easily be gravity fed, and then gravity feed into whatever spraying system we have.
The sad part is that I haven't found anyone willing to fund the project and supply the cistern and other parts. It would be really awesome to be a 'green' facility and be able to show what you can do using the water that runs off of the buildings.

We will be installing rain barrels this spring, and I am excited about that!

Don't be TOO jealous. In the spring when it is raining the cistern over fills and the cellar fills with water for weeks...NOT fun

Hey Trim the 100 year old house that I used to have, had a all mechanical deverter valve, when the water reached a certain point in the cistern a float would start to rise and cut off the flow. Plus that was backed up by a overflow pipe that dumped the water outside before the cistern would overflow into the cellar. plus each downspout had a screen/diverter which my father would leave open until enough rain had fallen to clean off the roof [no leaves, bird scat, or dust in the cistern] These can be bought where rain barrels are sold or from Lee Valley a USA/Canada Supplier or all kinds of neat gear.
BTW your filter advise was, well BS, you should backwash filters and activated charcoal supports all kinds of nasty growth omce they are exhuated, Even mixed bed ion enchangers resins have to be back washed and recharged or replaced. did you read what comes with those Britta filters? mine on a picher system says to change them every 2 months even with a CYA factor they are probably shot after 3 montha.
Do you know anything about the 'Camelback' systems that our troops are using in the middle east. Some guys tell me that they are just better canteens while others insist that they will clean up water. I don't know how ex you are but I thought i would ask

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G'day gang,down here if you are not connected to "town water",you have to store all the rainwater you can,plus you have to have a seperate 2000 gal for fighting "bushfires",the photo shows our house water tanks they are 7000 gals each.

regards T.O.R............................

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

G'day gang,down here if you are not connected to "town water",you have to store all the rainwater you can,plus you have to have a seperate 2000 gal for fighting "bushfires",the photo shows our house water tanks they are 7000 gals each.

http://www.backyardherds.com/forum/uploads/3214_img_0181.jpg

regards T.O.R............................

Hmm...."bush fires"....

SC here has been in a drought for 10 years now, haven't seen any bush fires yet. Does Australia home insurance require having a 2K gal cistern onsite to fight them? I love the pic of the cisterns by the way. We want to build something like that here. Aquifers are going deeper now...and less rain.