Collecting Rain Water For House Usage.

[lufc74]

Hi,

Just wondering if anybody who has problems with well water supply, and lack of water, more so in the dry weather, if they collect rain water for use in the house.

A couple of questions if anybody does this,

1/ whatr do you use the water for, showering washing pots etc, or just general use outside in the garden areas

2/ If use inside, are you using a filter system.

3 Have you obviously built a storage tank to collect the water, and does this water need treating, if stood for a while without any use.

Any advice on this sort of problems ( dry wells ) and how oyu've overcome this, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[juehoe]

I can only say something about rainwater collection how it is used from my spouse's family.

• The collect the water in a huge concrete tank of about 1500 litres capacity.
• The tank is cleaned before the rain season.
• They wait about 3 to 4 really heavy rain falls before collection the water. The aim is to wait until the roof is clean from dust and other things.
• They use a simple cloth as filter.
• The water is used for drinking and irrigation.

During my last visit I drunk quite a lot of tis water and newer had a problem! It also tastes quite good...!

[Nawtier]

At our last house we had a rainwater tank....we used it purely for drinking water only.

Nothing like rainwater for drinking....straight from the sky.......and maybe drained across a little bird pooh and gecko pooh inclusive....drank it for 2 years here and no issues, family and all.

People are so used to 'bottled' bought water and the bullshit marketing they forget about the good old days of simply drinking rainwater.

Of course depends where you live, i would not do it in Bangkok, but we live in the mountains and have clean cool air.

[doggie888888]

Have 10,000liters underground tanks. We collect rain water from roof gutters. It's unbelievable how fast the tanks fill up in a heavy downpour...in hindsight, I should have made larger capacity tanks. I use for the garden only. Tried to pipe it for the house...but had difficulty putting ideas to work due to close minded builder eg difficulty in getting "first flush diverter", putting filters in, making the town water come on automatically if water level becomes critically low, overflow system etc etc etc. In the end, too many things that could go wrong with this builder, so I opted for a simple system that collects rain water from roof into underground comcrete tanks, for garden use only. Have a very simple home made fine mesh filter for rain water going into tanks to filter out leave debris. Works well and generally trouble free.

[billd766]

At our last house we had a rainwater tank....we used it purely for drinking water only.

Nothing like rainwater for drinking....straight from the sky.......and maybe drained across a little bird pooh and gecko pooh inclusive....drank it for 2 years here and no issues, family and all.

People are so used to 'bottled' bought water and the bullshit marketing they forget about the good old days of simply drinking rainwater.

Of course depends where you live, i would not do it in Bangkok, but we live in the mountains and have clean cool air.

Like you I live out in the sticks, in my case next to the Mae Wong national park.

We have 2 x 3,000 litre stainless steel tanks that we use for drinking water that drains off the roof of the house.

We have been doing this for about 8 years now and she who must be obeyed tells me when to open the filler taps, usually after a few good days of heavy rain.

So far we have had no problems during that time but I will drain them one at a time and flush them out during the next rainy period in October/November time.

As the saying goes, it works for us.

[Nawtier]

Tis important to keep them tightly covered....we had a dead 'something' in it once and did not realise until the shower water started to smell...and taste sweet......

[fatfather]

We use rain water for drinking and cooking only. The bore water is filtered and used for the house. Rain water should be kept in the traditional concrete pots (oong) because the concrete is breathing which keeps the water cool and fresh. Stainless steel tanks cannot breath and I personally would have doubts to drink it after three month of storage, like at the end of dry season. Rain water is like demineralized water, so it should not be the only source for drinking. The human body not really need the minerals solved in water, but the minerals prevent the water to wash out minerals of your body (concentration gradient). I didn't realize for years that smaller issues had been created by loosing minerals, i.e. skin/teeth problems, headache etc. Realizing this we now use a small gravity filter system, about 20l, which also have a mineralizer (minerals in a box which solve in the stored water) and things became good. I myself switched to bottled mineral water as drinking source, I'm not Thai and I'm not used to permanently drink demineralized water.

fatfather

[Khonwan]

My storage system:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/174236-water-tank/page__view__findpost__p__1870492

My filtration system:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/204976-converting-conduct-water-to-drinking-water/page__view__findpost__p__2134645