Posted: 10/29/2007 10:58:49 AM EDT
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I can't remember if we tallked about these lately - seems we have but a cursory search showed no topic. I am thinking about digging out and installing rainwater cisterns underground at my gutter drain outlets. I will likely just do a couple at the outlets served by the largest roof area at first. This could be used for watering gardens, watering livestock (right now all I have is some chickens and a few old white ducks). I have a deep well and its been fine so far but here in NC they are warning about possible deep aquifiers drying up within the next 4-6 months if we don't get enough rain/snow to replenish them. Just having an extra source to pump from for miscellaneous stuff would help. Right now I'm looking at some poly barrels I can get locally, but may look into concrete structures and seal them with polyurethane or some such. Anyone else using undergound cisterns have some input? |
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I'm not using cisterns now. But, when I build my next home; underground cisterns will be a definite part of the plan. (triple redundency to a back-up plan). Doing without water is not something I want to experience to a great degree; especially with kids. If not off the house structure, containment off the barn/workshop; if for nothing else at least for a back-up water source for the garden/orchard during droughts (pumped out with a solar/battery pump trickling to soaker hoses). I'm also considering having a sand filter somewhere in the plans for drinking water if it comes down to it. Different ways of doing it, but concrete seems to be the most versatile with a lime(?) washed interior as the simplest/cheapest way. I don't know if you could economically fiberglass a very large stainless or HDPE drum and then bury it. iirc; I think I saw something about fire protection cisterns (and I thought it was in the Carolinas also) on the internet somewhere. And then there was the one older fellow that had a hand dug cistern, dug out of the clay (iirc I don't think it was lined either) and his family drank from it most of their lives. Google water cisterns or cisterns to find out more. |
| My family and I live off of cisterns. We live off of two 1,500 gallon od green poly tanks that sit behind our house. During the drought our 315' deep well went tits up, AGAIN. After a month without water I was able to get everything installed like I wanted it. It was the best thing I ever did. I'm planning on buying two more 1,500 gallon tanks next year to catch the over flow of the other two. We got our above ground tanks from plastic-mart.com. I'm pretty sure that they have below ground tanks as well. |
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I have a below ground tank. We use it to water the yard and our garden. With my Berkey it could be used for household use, fine to flush toilets as is. A very prudent investment. I also have a high flow gas engine powered water pump and hose-a stopgap fire fighting system. Lots of advantages to having a big water tank around! |
Do you pump from the well to the cistern and/or use rain water catchment? In other words, how do you will the cisterns up? R. |
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I'm planning on sometime in the next 5 years installing a 1500 gallon underground cistern to catch the rain water off the roof of our house... I've got my degree in 'Environmental Desing in Landscape Architecture' now, and a *LOT* of people are designing their new homes for long-term sustainability in an attempt to get partially off-grid in both stormwater management, wastewater treatment, and electrical / gas as well. After doing the math, I'd probably do just fine with just one 1500 gal underground tank for the stormwater, and re-using that for irrigation or other things... If I calculated it correctly, my roof will get 990+ gallons of rain water from a 1/2" rain storm, and 1990+ gallons from a 1" storm event. With a $500 pump I can re-use that effectively for irrigation, or if there's ever a problem with drinking water I could run it through a 50 gallon filtration system, and then I'd have enough potable drinking water to last a while... I've also been thinking of ways to pump some of this collected storm water to fill our toilet tanks, etc... |
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If you're living off a well system, you'd be VERY WISE to use the well to feed a cisterm system in the event of a drought... That will give you somewhat of a buffer to live off until the well will start to rebound a bit, and that could be quite a long time (like a couple months or more) before the ground water tables recharge... In the city where I'm living now, I've also managed to convince one of my neighbors to (in the future) pipe some of his stormwater from his roof into one or two cisterns if I get around to installing them one of these years. |
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Q: Do you pump from the well to the cistern and/or use rain water catchment? In other words, how do you will the cisterns up? A: To be specific the water runs off my roof into a roof washer which allows the first few minutes of rainwater to wash away any debris, leaves, bird poop, etc. The water fills up the roof washer and then flows into the cisterns. I pump the water into the house with a half horsepower shallow well pump from Lowe's. It is connected to a bladder/pressure tank and goes through a 10 micron sediment filter and then through a 5 micron carbon filter before going to the rest of the house. I got so sick and tired of my $4,300 well screwing up, that I used the bladder/pressure tank from it and I don't even have it connected anymore. Since I've been using rainwater for all my household uses, I have never been without water, even during the drought. I'm planning on adding two more 1,500 gallon tanks and buying a Staber washing machine to cut my family's laundry use from 50 gallons per large wash to 17. After that I'll have more water than I'll know what to do with. Not including the water catchment off my woodshed and off the front porch for watering the garden and animals. |
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We've talked about it many times in the past. My grandparents used a cistern for anything but drinking, had a dug well for that. Next door neighbor runs a pretty elaborate cistern system with pumps, sand filters, ect. Personally, I'm not drinking cistern water without some sort of viral treatment (because of bird shit from the roofs).  To each his own. |
| The only difference between my cisterns and my well is that I catch the water before it hits the ground and I have an easy way to get my water without having to use my generator to run a pump, should the need arise. Well water hits the ground first and there are more contaminates on the ground then on a roof. For some reason people feel safer drinking filtered well water then filtered rainwater, even though it is technically all rainwater. But like you said "to each his own". |