FREMA
Water collection.
Water sources.
Equipment details.
What are the pros and cons.
There are basically four methods of collecting water, and they all have their Pros & Cons. I will deal with that now.
- Pumping from a river, creek or lake. Here are three proviso’s. You need one that is close to you, it has to be relatively clean, and also fairly permanent. If it is a public use facility it will certainly need cleaning up, from a medical point of view.
- Pump water from your own dam. The top three parameters apply. This source has one extra consideration, the amount of soil that washes into the dam. It may require some serious filtering to get the suspended soil removed.
- You may be lucky and you are able to drill down to the water table and create a water bore. However this method present a bundle of surprises. In most cases the water is quite clean, but the surprise is the rocky environment. Often minerals in the rock get dissolved into the water. I will discuss some of those:
- If limestone is the issue, then you often we have hard water. This will minimise the effect of soaps and other surfactants. In addition it could damage you installations, by the precipitation or cacking of tubes, valves, pumps, vessels, and heating elements. Also there could be a health issue with hard water and the skin.
- Iron rich, or manganese containing, water often creates brown or black water, that has a taste to it. It can also stain white textiles in the wash. Thirdly a brownish sludge can build up inside the pipes.
- If sulphur is dissolved, the smell and taste issues will nor reach a completely new level of annoyance. In addition a corrosive issue has entered the scene.
- Depending on you location or environment, you could be close to brackish water, in which case your water will taste salty.
- Next, if you are unlucky to be near an industrial area, or a previous land fill tip, there could be other issues, like dissolved heavy metals like for example, but not exclusively, lead, copper, arsenic. These metals will not just an annoyance, but could be poisonous.
- Then there is a last problem, which has nothing to do with the water quality, but rather the quantity. You have no idea how much water is down there. It could be here today and gone tomorrow. I think with all this with a water bore luck has to be on your side.
- Last but not least there is rainwater. Now unless you live near a chemical factory with a smoke stack or a power station, rain water is pure water. But the process of collecting goes via roof and gutters. They will often have environmental dust, leaves, bird droppings and insects to cope with. Normally those will not cause us any problems. Nothing that a good filtration setup cannot fix. The only problem here is to make sure you have enough storage to overcome the inevitable dry periods.
Now I am not dealing with difficult water sources. But I will deal with the basic management of predominantly rainwater.
The equipment.
Let’s discuss this.
- Gutters nowadays are made from role-formed Galvabond steel or Zincalume. Every house has gutters, but not every home occupier is happy with that. Because gutters need maintaining. Open gutter will collect lot’s of leaves and they need cleaning out. However we can install leaf guard, but broken down leaves and dirt will still collect below that. Now the cleaning job becomes even more difficult. But apart from all that, gutters do their job to bring the water to the pipes.
- Collection pipes are mostly made from 100mm PVC stormwater tubes. They are easy to install and not easily blocked. They too do their job.
- Tanks. Here we have a situation where there is choice, and with choice comes pros and cons. The choice is mainly around tank materials. I have created a comparison table which is shown below the carousel.
- Pumps are a very technical item. The selection often hinges on the function the pump is doing. A chemical engineer could not do his job in design work, without a good knowledge of pumps. But in that industry the selection is often at the top of the game. Whereas for domestic use, we often chase the lowest price. Firstly there is choice of material like, stainless steel, copper (or bronze), cast iron and plastic. The price and quality starts with stainless as the highest and reduces down the list. With an item like this price and brand usually relate to quality and lifespan. I won’t expand further on pumps in the section. However I will explain extra when I come to my selection of specific items later. The most common domestic water pump is a cast iron or plastic centrifugal pump.
- Distribution pipes was mainly copper a few decades ago. But the material and the labor became too expensive. Now polyethylene (PE) pipe with its own series of plastic fittings has replaced copper. There are quite a few types or brands, but they are all good and do the job. A lot of pipework can be built with hand tightened fittings, or with dedicated crimping tools. In my installation I have used various systems together.
- Filtration is again a bit of the technical subject. The idea is to piggy back on other common filter applications. I use two types of filters.
- One is a pool sand filter. Although that is the name, but now a days they use glass beads instead of sand. This equipment is usually a relatively large container filled with the beads, and the water moves through the beads, leaving behind the dirt, sand and leaves. This filter is good for higher water volumes and for collecting larger amounts of debris, because the filter can get rid of the debris by back washing the container.
- The second one that I am using, and that is my main type of filtration, is a domestic filter cartridge installed in an appropriate housing. It is meant for normal tap water volume. One can get a large number of pore specifications, depending on your needs. Most installations use just one or two cartridges in series. Usually a coarse one followed by a finer one. In my installation I have four cartridges in series. The reason for multiple cartridges is, the coarser filters protect the finer filters, by removing some of the larger contaminants that could still block the pores in the finer filter. Starting with 25 micron, next 5 micron, then 0.5 micron and finally 0.2 micron. The last two will filter out solutes like salts, chlorine, heavy metals and forever chemicals. The latter are some of the persistent fluoride compound that do not deteriorate in nature. It will also block some bacteria and cysts. Cysts are thick walled sacks of fluid, that are dormant parasites. They can also harbour bacteria. Once the cysts enters our body the parasite becomes alive and can create painful, actual cysts. But at the same time the bacteria it carries are also released. Cyst sacks are quite common in nature, specifically in still water, moist soil, sediment, snow melt, animal faeces, and plants that are about to rot. So, good filtration is essential. The recommendation is that filters need to be replaced something like yearly. They cannot be backwashed or cleaned.
TANKS.
Let’s discuss this.
I purchased all poly tanks from Clark water tanks, part of NPI group. Tanks are placed in three locations and they are: on the top of the hill, (hill top tank farm), below the main container row, (lower tank farm) and in some cases near a container.
- Hill top farm has three tanks. One 10,000 Ltr tank for fresh water, one 10,000 Ltr tank for grey water and one 5000 Ltr tank for grey water. Since I recycle my grey water, I have two tanks for that stream. The 5000 Ltr one always contains recycled grey water. The 10,000 Ltr one has just fresh water. I keep that as fresh, just in case there is a problem with the processed water, or to dilute the processed contents with fresh water if that is required. If you don’t want to recycle, you only need one stream of water, but I still recommend two 10,000 ltr tanks, in case one tank gets damaged, by say a fire or collision, or lightning strike.
- The Lower tank farm. One 10,000 Ltr tank to collect all the rain water. Then there is a second one of 5000 Ltr, that has rain water that passed through the sand filter. This should be the cleanest water. It is from this tank that I top up the hill top tanks.
- Because I have an incinerating toilet, I do not create black water, so I do not have a septic system. I do however have two separate collection tanks. One 1000 Ltr tank than collects the kitchen sink. This water can have food scraps and grease in the flow. after air and chlorine, this tank discharges into a small transpiration trench. The second tank is the grey water receive tank. If you do not recycle grey water that is all you need and that tank can discharge into the same trench as the sink. But I do recycle.
- Because I recycle I needed two more tanks. One 1000 Ltr tank to take water from the receiving tank and let it settle. The outlet from that tank is 50cm from the bottom. The second tank I need is to chemically process the grey water to remove the soaps and surfactants and kill any incidental bacteria. That tank is 5000 Ltr.
- Now there is yet another tank that I require. Because after a few years I built a proper laundry inside container 6, I need something to collect the discharge from the washing machine and the tub. I purchased a 400 low profile plant spraying tank. The height was perfect for gravity discharge from the laundry tub. I pump that tank nearly empty, (I leave about 60 or so litre behind.), once a month and that goes into my grey water receiving tank.
- But I have more tanks. But they are for very special purposes, that most people do not have. Because my laboratory is a but away from the main row of containers, it has its own gutter, 1000Ltr tank its own filtration using just 2 filters and its own washing tub. I must mention that the lab tank can also be filled using water from the Hill top farm.
- The there is the hydroponics greenhouse. It also has its own 1000 Ltr tank and a washing tub. But it receives its water from the laboratory tank, when needed.
- And this is the last note. I only collect rain water from the three northerly tanks. So far that has provided me with ample water. But I do have not installed guttering and a 2000 Ltr tank to equip the three southerly containers. The contents from this tank can be pumped to the lower tank farm.
- By the way, because I did not know what to expect, or what I needed. I built my whole setup, being water as well as electrical system to be flexible. I can transfer water from any tank to any other tank. Similarly, for the electrical setup, I have 2 sets of batteries and one large generator plus a small portable backup generator. I can charge a set of batteries from any of the three other sources. Plus some circuits can be switched directly to the main generator.
PUMPS.
Discussion on pumps.
This is the list of pumps I am using at present:
- I have 2 Flowclear by Bestway, sand filter pumps. Those sand filters can handle 4000 Ltr/hr and are originally designed to work with pools. The debris collected can be removed by backwashing the filter. The sand media is glass beads now. The 2 streams I am filtering that way are rain water and recycled grey water before processing.
- Because I have my rainwater collection 5 meters below my containers and my water feed tanks on top of the hill, 20 meters above the containers, I needed a high pressure transfer pump. This pump is a 5 stage centrifugal pump from Edisons in Sydney and can deliver 4000 Ltr/hr. That means if a 10,000 Ltr tank is empty it takes 3+ hours to fill. But I neve allow those tanks to drop more than 30% of its volume, which means 1 hour to top them up. I can switch the input of this pump to either rain water, filtered fresh water or processed grey water. and the stream can be delivered to any tank on top of the hill.
- And because the 20 meter head from the hill top tanks was not sufficient for an acceptable water flow in the shower, I needed to insert a pressure pump in the line. The main reason was the cumulative pressure drop over the four filters. I did ask the importer for information on that topic, but unfortunately a big blank. No idea. Mind, living alone I usually only use one tap or outlet at a time, which would be about 4Ltr/min, or 240 Ltr/hr. The first kind of pump was a Davey XP25P8, a pump for a small home. It delivers 25L/min at 44 psi. But then I pensioned those pumps to the laboratory and green house and replaced them with two Davey HP45-05T pumps. They deliver 7-L/min at 47 psi. But the nice thing with these pumps is, they are constant flow pumps, via the Torrium controller. Unfortunately I had to put the pump near the greenhouse to greener pastures. The bell kept on losing its air. That was mostly due to the extreme temperature at 45 degrees ambient air plus direct sunlight for many hours. It just was not capable to handle that.
- When I had the three skinny black tanks behind the laundry, I had a pump in the pump house suck the water from the tanks and deliver it to the 1000 Ltr grey receiving tank. But I had endless problems with the suction conditions. The suction pipe was about 25m long, but level. So when I purchased the new 400 Ltr blue tank, I decided to re-pipe and install a pump next to the tank. This pump is a beaty, it is a Karcher BP3 Garden pump. It does 3300 L/hr at 60 psi. Plus it has an 8 meter head suction capability. So I put the suction pipe through the top of the tank with a foot valve at the end of the pipe inside the tank. It all works like a dream. By the wat, a foot valve only allows water flow to the pump. It is like a non return valve. That means the suction pipe does not drain back into the tank, when you stop the pump. But outside the tank I have a vertical pipe with a valve on top. I can prime the pump via the valve.
- The last discussion is about the chlorine dosing to the grey receiving tank. This has been an endless disaster. I have a tank with diluted chlorins and a peristaltic pump dosing this chlorine in both the grey receiving tank and the sink discharge tank. By the way a peristaltic pump is like a blood pump. Inside three roller rotate and push the fluid forward in a small tube around the rollers. This is an accurate flow controlling pump. First I had a problem, that an echidna digging under the tank, which made the tank drop and disabled the platform with the 20Ltr tank. (The tank was at hip working height.) So, after that repair, I had several issues with the little control board failing. Than the the pump gave problem, with blockage and leakage. Next the kangaroos became to nosy and chewed the feed tube to the pump and also pulled and broke the 12V wires to the pump. So, I decided enough is enough. Away with liquid chlorine. I already splashed chlorine on one of my jeans. So no mare! Now I am adding Hychlor tablets, which are concentrating and slow dissolving. They last about 2 weeks. So twice a month I drop a tablet through the manhole.
Move to water page 1, water usage
Move to water page 3, water recycling
