[Greenbuilding] Living with a rainwater cistern

[RT]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:11:47 -0500, Lawrence Lile <LLile at projsolco.com>  
wrote:

> A friend has a new, well made cistern that avoids the whole cat tea  
> problem.

>  A pump pulls water out of the tank and runs to a basic cartridge water  
> filter, then a rather largish RO filter, and a UV illuminator

>  costs, obviously a lot.


Is the atmospheric pollution in parts of the US *really* so bad as to  
justify such an extensive purification system
for rainwater ?

(This from a fellow whose drinking water for a number of years was,  
unbeknownst to him, unadulterated/unfiltered cat & mouse tea, and so is  
somewhat sceptical of the necessity of such a gizmologically-intense  
purification ).

Reverse osmosis systems are incredibly wasteful of water, dumping  
something like 15 times more water than they yield, which seems at odds  
with the notion of rainwater harvesting as a means of water conservation.

Further, if the house is on a septic system, dumping all that water into  
it will almost surely lead to premature failure of the septic field,  
replacement of which is going to cost ~$20,000 a pop. My guess is that  
failure would occur within 15 years or less, based on what I've seen of  
septic field failures on homes that use water softeners (ie which also  
involve extensive dumping of backwash water).

And even further than that...

I have a simple, dinky, little cartridge-type whole-house filter (usually  
a 1 micron filtering capacity ) on the water line from the well, just  
after the pressure tank.

Plus, at drinking water usage points, I have an under-sink two-cartridge  
filter that consists of an activated charcoal cartridge and a ceramic  
cartridge that "traps and kills >99.99999% faecal coliform & E. coli  
coliform, salmonella typhimurium, vibrio cholera and shigella dysenterie  
bacteria ... and traps > 99.95% cryptosporidium and Giardia lambia  
protozoan cysts ... and filters >99.99% sediment down to 0.3 microns ...  
and reduces >95% chlorine + bad tastes and odours" (according to the  
labels).

If the water is really so bad as to require more "treatment" than that,  
would it not be simpler and less wasteful to just boil one's drinking  
water ?

Simple preventative measures like screens, lids and first wash dump  
mechanisms should eliminate most of the crud from entering the cistern in  
the first place and then I would think that dinky little cartridge filter  
setups on the water lines would take care of whatever else might get in  
there.



-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
< A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a >
manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit "reply"
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