07-31-2007, 11:17 AM
Les, the system I’m looking at is one of the local built units from a local rancher store. The guy was real open and honest and said a filter can be built for under $100 but he likes to sell them for a few hundred to the “city folks” with cabins in the hills.
The basic concept is nothing but a pond filter without all the stuff to remove nitrates and ammonia from fish waste. He also said for a rainwater collection system, you don’t need any pump; just let gravity do its thing. The unit he was building when I stopped in was nothing but a large 3 X 5 X 3 rectangle plastic box lying on its back with a latching hinged cover. Water from the downspout enters the side pipe at the top, drains over a coarse mat that holds back the leaves, insects, dead mouse carcass, bird feathers, twigs and stuff like that. That drains down through a finer mat that is really to prevent the sand from boiling around and it also catch anything that may have come off the mouse. The water drains down through two feet of sand into the bottom where a pipe takes it to storage. You can add other things if you like but it’s really not necessary.
He said it’s not an attempt to get the water to drinking quality; it’s just to remove as much solid matter from entering your storage tank. The idea is that the less decaying matter in the storage tank, the less the water in the storage tank is breeding and creating its own contamination. Supposedly a decaying caterpillar can cross contaminate a gallon of water in a day and that gallon of water can accelerate the cross contaminate of another few gallons of water that has its own debris floating around. If the caterpillar was never introduced to the storage tank, the degree of contamination and cross contamination is reduced. Now multiply that by all the stuff that’s entering an unfiltered storage tank and you kind of get his point.
Maybe I’m over thinking this, but it just makes sense to me.
The basic concept is nothing but a pond filter without all the stuff to remove nitrates and ammonia from fish waste. He also said for a rainwater collection system, you don’t need any pump; just let gravity do its thing. The unit he was building when I stopped in was nothing but a large 3 X 5 X 3 rectangle plastic box lying on its back with a latching hinged cover. Water from the downspout enters the side pipe at the top, drains over a coarse mat that holds back the leaves, insects, dead mouse carcass, bird feathers, twigs and stuff like that. That drains down through a finer mat that is really to prevent the sand from boiling around and it also catch anything that may have come off the mouse. The water drains down through two feet of sand into the bottom where a pipe takes it to storage. You can add other things if you like but it’s really not necessary.
He said it’s not an attempt to get the water to drinking quality; it’s just to remove as much solid matter from entering your storage tank. The idea is that the less decaying matter in the storage tank, the less the water in the storage tank is breeding and creating its own contamination. Supposedly a decaying caterpillar can cross contaminate a gallon of water in a day and that gallon of water can accelerate the cross contaminate of another few gallons of water that has its own debris floating around. If the caterpillar was never introduced to the storage tank, the degree of contamination and cross contamination is reduced. Now multiply that by all the stuff that’s entering an unfiltered storage tank and you kind of get his point.
Maybe I’m over thinking this, but it just makes sense to me.