The water we drink

That's why I drink only beer & straight spirits.

I dont understand why more people dont just collect rainwater (rainwater harvesting) you can virtually live of the beautiful rainwater in the winter months for the price of a 10/000litre tank and a small pump. In our area there is no scheme water. Most people have 100000 litre tanks to store water.
Cant beat rainwater fellas.


Plumb the house pipes into the rain water tank.

I already told you Flyspot. It's in the hand hints thread - drink your own urine! It's the only 100% safe alternative.

If you're using the water for things that aren't seasonal then 10kL is way too big for a normal house.

Rain tanks don't make sense in Perth or a lot of other places in Australia. In Perth, 50% of a house's annual water use happens in summer when we don't have any rain.

Studies have been done which calculate the cost of water from tanks in Perth at about $5/kL (and I reckon even then they're being too easy on rainwater harvesting). Water Corp will sell you 1 kL for about $1.50.

By my (admittedly very rough) calcs, if every house in Perth put in a tank it would cost about $1.4 billion to set up and would have very high ongoing costs relative to a reticulated supply. The tanks would produce about 40GL/yr (about the same as a desal plant which costs about $0.4 billion). That leaves $1 billion to set up a renewal energy source to run the desal plant (besides, rainwater tanks also have power requirements if set up with a pump - and if they're not set up with a pump then they're a very poor alternative to a reticulated supply system anyway).

Rainwater tanks aren't a new idea. The reason we have a reticulated water supply system that services everyone rather than individual rainwater collection is simple - if everyone pools their funds to set up a reticulated supply (such as we and every other major town/city in the developed world has/does) we end up with a more reliable system which produces water which is cleaner, cheaper and easier to manage than everyone catching and using their own rain.

also lead off older flashings and roof materials.
btw, perth IS a great place for it because it doesnt rain in summer. 100kl thats the idea of the larger tanks.
keep in mind theres some good bore water here as well to use.

My house mate has just installed a bench top filter for $600. Apart from the fact that it does remove most fluoride and all chlorine we now have drinkable water in the house.

The chlorine smell is so bad that the dogs will avoid freshly run water.

When I lived in a chemical free environment, we never had any toys

Fish poo in water.
When they start climbing out of the water to poo,
then I'll drink it.

Yep,,,no meds anymore cause it says on the bottle "Take with a glass of water"

I dont understand the need to take fluride out of the water??
I grew up with it and have never had a filling.

Maybe its just because some dont like being forced to do anything,,even if its good for them.

In Sydney there are some places where they make you put a water tank in (for plants etc) for all new dwellings.

Not sure I would want to drink it unfiltered but a great idea for washing / watering things.

In related news, how can we have a water topic and no pm33?

there is a filter attached to roof runoff, however in NSW, you arent allowed to plumb tank water to drinking taps where there is town water available, only to toilets, washing machine and outdoor taps for garden use.

My holiday house at the base of Mt Buller used to have water supplied to the area which was directly pumped out of the delatite river with no treatment.

Water was superb and never had an issue.

2 years ago they upgraded the pump house and incorporated a filter and chlorination system.

Now (at times) the water is heavily chlorinated and there's now an orange slimey run off that goes back into the river 50m downstream.

But, when the river isn't high and the chlorine is low, it's the best water to drink.

Hmmmmm.....

Now I wonder what beer from snow melt would taste like?

I hate the taste of rainwater.

Or maybe it's the taste of frog sh1t, bird sh1t, dead rats and road dust that I don't like.

You can only have this conversation in Oz. Ever tried tap water in the UK, most of Europe, Asia, Africa, the sub-continent, Middle East, Sth America? All that I tried in the US was OK, and I've not been Canada. I don't think I'd risk it in Mexico or Central America either.

I admit that the chlorine can smell a bit strong, especially on Summer mornings, and where I live the calcium salts get a bit strong, but from coast to coast we have potable, clean and disease free water. As for fluoride, it's in miniscule amounts and has given us a couple of generations of almost carie-free kidz. The advent of bottled water has saved the dental profession from extinction. There are a lot of urban myths about fluoride.

To answer your question about " dirty roofs etc." the caps shown in the picture" ( get get diversion valves) are released first rains to flush any foreign contaminate that comes off the house roofs.
Also its neglect and absolute laziness of house owner to let there roofs get to an unmaintainable stage is a contributing factor to poor rainwater harvesting. .

Shallow bores are used for retic .

Businesses are now placing water harvesting tanks below there dwellings.

Its can be a better money saving alternative than solar panels. If desalanation plants are expencive to build and the price of water is passed onto the consumer.