water bowser

[Rankinswood]

I use thick domestic bleach - one good squirt per barrell top up - say 50 litres worth. We do not use this water for anything other than toilet flushing. The thick bleach appears to have a clarifying effect causing small particles to coalesce and sink to the bottom of the barrell. We ocassionally run the treated water barrel down to empty and then clean out any remaining residues.

I had not realised that the bleach degrades to salty water - interesting.

Rankinswood

[SimonFisher]

Interesting article here about disinfecting water: -

http://survivaltopics.com/better-than-bleach-use-calcium-hypochlorite-to-disinfect-water/

[oldclaypaws]

Bleach contains sodium hypochlorite, which is essentially oxidised salt, it breaks down slowly releasing free chlorine and oxygen, but also Sodium chloride, aka table salt. Bleach does degrade over time, so if stored for a long time it isnt as effective.

Calcium hypochlorite does the same, but can be bought cheaply as a more stable solid, often sold as swimming pool chlorine tablets. 20g treats 5000 litres, so you'd have to break up a tablet and use proportionately on smaller volumes of water, maybe weighing it into little separate portions. (1g /250 litres) Try not to get pulled by the old bill carrying 20 little bags of white powder, that might take some explaining......

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10-x-20G-MULTIFUNCTION-CHLORINE-TABLETS-SWIMMING-POOL-/230477562267

[Terry]

We collect rainwater off the roof at home to use for toilet flushing and the primary filter that we use is a ladies pop sock which is attached over the end of the downpipe and held in place with a 45 degree downspout outlet. This catches all of the leaf and moss detritus that comes down off the roof and can be cleaned by a simple reverse flush. Some of the pop socks have been used for well over a year and so are prooved to be pretty robust in service. The rainwater is collected in a 50 gallon butt which is then ported over to a second butt to settle and be treated with bleach to kill off any bacteria or algae. This approach has reduced our domestic water consumption from the mains water supply to one third of previous consumption.

An interesting approach used to collect moisture from the atmosphere in dessert areas is to stretch greenhouse net shading material vertically between posts and wires and then to fix rainwater gutters immediately beneath the lower edge where upon the water droplets caught by the netting then drips down through the net into the gutter where it can then be run to a collection vessel. This approach would reduce the amount of leaves and other bird detritus that falls upon a roof type surface.

Rankinswood

Rankinswood, you must be full of s..t - literally (sorry couldnt resist ) Toilet flushing really accounted for 2/3rds of your water usage????

Sodium hypochlorite is the normal product used on ships to treat fresh water, but as already pointed out by paws there are shelf live limitations to all these products, particularly in liquid forms, (less so as a solid) since the chlorine gradually dissipates.

[Terry]

On a slight derail, does anyone use non-mains water supplies - springs, wells etc for their domestic supply?
If so what testing & treatment regime do you have in place, if any?

[Rankinswood]

Remember that you get charged twice - once to supply you the water and again to dispose of same so reducing water consumption through the meter can have a huge effect on the bill that you pay.

The government target for domestic water consumption is 150 litres per person per day. We got this down to 30 litres per person per day just by using rainwater for toilet flushing.

You do the sums !

Rankinswood

[Terry]

mmm, not on a meter and not on mains sewage so dont know our consumption and pay a fixed (low)rate for our water so dont get involved with the water numbers too much.
30ltr/person /day is pretty frugal - well done.