Water Tank

[mobile69]

Planning on a 2000lt tank on water tower. Which material for the tank is best?

[Morden]

Planning on a 2000lt tank on water tower. Which material for the tank is best?

We recently installed a low level stainless steel tank with a pump. The choice of material was based solely on local recommendation and the fact that most tanks that I saw were made from s/s Perhaps other materials are either less durable or less hygenic.

[zzap]

In our village concrete tanks are the norm, I believe the reason is cost.

But they are adequate and easy to make. There are prefab round modules of different diameters you (or rather the builder) can pile up to the desired height/volume.

[lopburi3]

I would also recommend SS as they are easy to keep clean as have a drain at lowest place on bottom. They also should last longer. Are you planning a high tower to use natural water pressure? Most people use tanks at ground or roof level and a pump to obtain house pressure.

[GuestHouse]

I depends what water you are going to use and of course cost.

The SS tanks come with a 5 year guarantee, of course they may last longer but you have to be careful if you are using water from a well that may contain salt - This will greatly reduce the tank life. I know, SS is supposed to be rust proof... The problem is the grade of SS and the welded joints or SS/Brass/Carbon Steel connections. SS Tanks do suffer corrosion will even low salinity.

There are range of High Density Poly Tanks, that have a 25 year guarantee and are suitable for placing above or below ground (The are not damaged by UV in Sunlight). These are great if you are handling ground water.

I really do not like the concrete tanks, cheap yes, but they soon start leaching water and get moldy.

Oh and check the outlet hole size, If it is too small it will limit your water flow. 1.5" is about the minimum I would use on a house installation.

Edited March 25, 2006 by penzman

[Gary A]

I have one fiberglass 1,500 liter tank. It has a twenty year warranty. It's a nice tank made by Cotto. It cost 10,500 baht. I looked at a friends stainless steel tank and was amazed to see so many pin hole leaks rusted right through the sides. They must be made from a very low grade of Stainless. We have a 500 liter plastic tank on a tower. It has a five year warranty and is already four years old. I have no idea how long the bowl type cement tanks last but I have two of them also. They are supposed to hold 1,000 liters.

[raro]

Does anybody know how much to cough up for those towers with the water tank on top?

[billd766]

It all depends on where you live. If you live in a place with a permanent mais supply which never fails all you will need is a 3 or 4,000 litre tank, a filter and an electric well pump. The whole lot will be less than 15,000 baht and you can buy in house filters with uv and all the extras to purify your water to drinkable standards.

I have no idea of the cost of a tower and it will depend on the local water pressure if it is able to get up to the tower tank anyway

If you live where I live in the sticks we have had no government water supply for about a month so we go to the stream and share a pump and pipes with our neighbour and pump the water about 250 metres to our storage once a week.

On the other hand I haven't had a water bill this year.

I have 14 x 2,000 precast concrete water storage tanks which we use for general use, around the house, showers etc, irrigation. They cost 5,000 baht each and the metal lid to keep most of the crap out is an extra 600 baht. 8 of them are inter-connected both inlet and outlet, and the other 6 are storage that we pump in and out as necessary.

We use a pressure fed water pump to move the water around the 3 houses (a Mitsubishi WP205) but my next pump will be a Mitsubishi WP 255 for more pressure.

Before the tank water goes into the system I use a Pure water filter (cost about 4,000 baht) which is a system of plastic plates in a pressure bowl to keep out most of the sediment then to a big Mazuma charcoal filter to clean it more (cost about 12,500 baht). I used to use replaceable paper filters at 100 baht each but both the 10 micron and the 30 micron filters were blocked solid in less than a week.

We use 2 x 3,000 stainless steel tanks for fresh water which we catch off the roof in the rainy season.

We have looked at drilling a borehole and digging a well but we go down about 50 to 100 cm and hit rock from the hills. I suspect we would need a diamond tipped oil drilling rig to bore into that lot and the cost would be too high.

I wish you the best of luch whichever way you go.

[raro]

sorry..I wasn't clear enough. We do need this water tank for a sprinkler system to a) hold the water and hold a certain pressure if the pumps fail. So thanks for your advise, but unfortunately it's going the wrong way. So my redefined question is.....how much to chip in for this water tower and the sprinkler system in a warehouse.

[mobile69]

My plan is to have a water tower supplying water by gravity to the house supply. Originally I thought SS was the way to go, but am having doubts over the quality of the ss & connections. That leaves fibre & plastic. My builder recommends glass fibre, for strength. Hoping for a 12m tower, but this may change once I get some estimates of cost. Plan is for one pump to supply the groundwater to the tank.

I want to avoid having pump kicking in every time a tap is turned on.

[lopburi3]

Believe some have had experience with poor SS tanks, or as mentioned corrosive water, as I have been using the same tanks for over 10 years with no problem whatever. And no indication of any pending problems. The only fault has been a lid hinge. But this is Bangkok water. A tank upcountry has been in use 5 years now with no indication of any problems. All are of the 18-8 grade steel, which seems to be normal here in Bangkok.

But I have also seen a lot of rusting of other stainless steel items here so there must be some very poor quality steel in general use.

[billd766]

My plan is to have a water tower supplying water by gravity to the house supply. Originally I thought SS was the way to go, but am having doubts over the quality of the ss & connections. That leaves fibre & plastic. My builder recommends glass fibre, for strength. Hoping for a 12m tower, but this may change once I get some estimates of cost. Plan is for one pump to supply the groundwater to the tank.

I want to avoid having pump kicking in every time a tap is turned on.

You can also but a continuous running pump, ie just switch it on or off as you wish for as long as you want. I have a 1 hp pump that cost about 2500 baht. It has a lift of about 8 metres but if you are going for a 12 metre tower you may need a 2 hp oump.

I hope that this info helps.

[mobile69]

Does anybody know how much to cough up for those towers with the water tank on top?

Got a quote of 30,000bt for 9m tower, 40,000bt for 12m tower. That's just the tower, no pump, tank, filter. That's in Chiang Mai.

[Maigo6]

Does anybody know how much to cough up for those towers with the water tank on top?

Got a quote of 30,000bt for 9m tower, 40,000bt for 12m tower. That's just the tower, no pump, tank, filter. That's in Chiang Mai.

Sounds about right, I was quoted 3000 baht per metre in Chumpare, eventually though I bought my own Galvanized steel tubes and made the tower on site, the tubing they use for pre made towers is not of high quality, even the guy that was selling Tanks and towers told me it was best to make it myself.

So I bought a Tank from him and the guy that was doing my well arranged for a welder and they erected the tower on site.

[Paragon]

THanks to everyone for the interesting info here.

Any guidelines about the height of water tank and/or distance of water tank from the faucets?

Building a 2 person house with 2 small bathroom and thinking to build a 9-12m tower but ideally would like the tower about 100 meters away from the faucets? Any commments/advise from experience about a set-up like this?

THanks.

[chownah]

I've never heard that a tank needs to be any particular distance from a water outlet (faucet or shower or toilet tank or etc.) except in the verticle direction. Vertically the greater the distance the more pressure...horizontally means nothing....unless your tower falls down.

[billd766]

The main problem that I see with the towers is that unless your local water pressure is enough to fill your tank 12 metres up is that you will need a pump.

Therefore if you need a pump then you can put your tank at ground level, put the pump after the tank and you will still get water upstairs and save the cost of the tower.

I live up country and my problem is that for a couple of months of the year I dont get any water, so I use the 2,000 litre concrete storage jars (20 of them) interconnected both input and output, through a pump and filter system as I have 3 houses to pump water to.

40,000 litres may sound a lot but when there are 10 or more people, think how much water you use just using the toilet and showering every day.

My friend had a 70,000 litre tank built on concrete piles but unfortunately the builders did not know how to build it and put no rebars in the brick walls. one day it just broke up.

The reason is that 1,000 litres weighs 1 ton and if you have 70 tons plus the weight od the bricks etc with no re-inforcement the water will always find the weakest point.

He actually should have dug a big pit and put it in there as the earth surrounding it would have given the tank all the support it needed.

[chownah]

so he should have built a swimming pool!!!

[Gary A]

A good friend of mine is building a house near Jomtien. He has just had his 38,000 (10,000 gallon)liter water tank delivered. He is going to bury it. He also put in a drilled well. It is 54 meters deep. He is also in the process of putting up a water tower. Due to the well being so deep and the pump having to be so powerful he decided he would use water off his roof and pump it up to his tower from there. He will use the deep well to keep the buried tank full during the dry season. The whole project turned out to be quite expensive. The tank is fiberglass.

[lopburi3]

I just hope he is on high ground/he never has a heavy rain with that tank low on water or he may see a sub become a boat.

[Gary A]

The guy is pretty savvy. I asked him why he was putting such a strong foundation deep in the ground. He grinned and told me it was the anchor.

[chownah]

The buoyancy of an object is equal to the weight of the water it displaces. A 38,000 litre tank will displace 38,000 kilograms of water. This means you will need 38,000 kilograms of concrete (I'm ignoring the weight of the tank in this analysis.) to completely counter the buoyant force of the empty tank. The thing to remember is that you also need to make the connection between the concrete and the tank strong enough for this force and you need to be sure that the attachment point of the connection..both at the tank and at the foundation are able to take this force.

This is a conservative estimate. If done this way you will surely solve the problem. If there is some soil covering the tank then it can supply some of the weight to counter the buoyant force but the calculations for this are more difficult so I won't go into them.

Edited July 8, 2006 by chownah

[lannarebirth]

THanks to everyone for the interesting info here.

Any guidelines about the height of water tank and/or distance of water tank from the faucets?

Building a 2 person house with 2 small bathroom and thinking to build a 9-12m tower but ideally would like the tower about 100 meters away from the faucets? Any commments/advise from experience about a set-up like this?

THanks.

You might consider using a somewhat larger diameter pipe running between you tank and the house. The greater the distance the more fricyional forces on the water flow by the pipewall.

[wernerfreitag]

Does anybody know how much to cough up for those towers with the water tank on top?

Got a quote of 30,000bt for 9m tower, 40,000bt for 12m tower. That's just the tower, no pump, tank, filter. That's in Chiang Mai.

Where was it in ChiangMai? Any recommendations ? We are just looking in that area.

Regards

Werner

[kurgen]

I've just had a bore hole drilled and decided to have a concrete underground tank to replace my s/s one, mainly so I can have a cold shower as the s/s tank heats the water as it's in the sun.

At the moment the concrete tank is empty, what should I do to clean the tank before I start using it?

Someone (down the pub)mentioned putting some chlorine or bleach in and pumping the water back out after a day or so but this someone is renowned for talking boolax.

I am still filling my existing tank from the new bore hole at the moment so I can check the water coming out and it does seem clear without any smell.

Thanks for any help.

[jingjoke]

Does anybody know how much to cough up for those towers with the water tank on top?

In Cmai as of June 08, 4000B per meter in height less the cost of the tank.